Reality TV

Anyone who's asked my opinion about "The Biggest Loser" (and also those who haven't) knows that I have more than a few misgivings about it. So when I heard that ABC was going to launch a "reality weight loss" show, I was immediately skeptical - until I read about the premise...

New research in the Medical Journal of Australia suggests that reality TV shows focused on appearance may be bad for your self-esteem.

I'm a sucker for reality shows that focus on weight loss. Typically, these shows feature people who are attempting to lose weight and get fit with the whole world watching.

Last night I watched a show about three women trying to get "thin" for their wedding day. Although the template for this show was typical, the tactics involved seemed pretty darn unkind. I actually cringed at times as the very thin, very strident host taunted these overweight women and ridiculed them for their food and drink choices.

The camera angles seemed purposefully constructed to be as humiliating for these women as possible. And I wondered, are shame and harassment successful strategies for weight loss?

I remember watching the first season of the network show, “The Biggest Loser” and being amazed as participants would weigh-in each week and lose 10-25 pounds a week.

By the end of the show, the winner was crowned and his name was Ryan Benson. In one season, he was able to lose a staggering 122 pounds!

So how is Ryan Benson doing these days?

Giant basketballer Shaquille O'Neal has finished with doing Burger King ads, and wants to help obese kids get fit.

Researchers in Australia have claimed that "A growing fear of being fat has fuelled a doubling in the number of Australians with eating disorders in the past decade". The number of people regularly binge eating, abusing laxatives, making themselves sick or undergoing extreme fasting jumped from 4.7 per cent in 1995 to 11 per cent in 2005.(via)

There is an air of desperation about these statistics. What drives this fear of fat?

Turn on the TV. Surf the channels. Almost everywhere you look -- there are shows about looking younger, looking fitter, looking thinner.

There are shows about getting better houses, better gardens, better kids. Even public libraries lend more self-help books than science books - a new trend over the last 10 years.

Ever wondered how much "reality" is in a reality show?

BBC UK has a interesting opinion piece about the current glut of reality TV focused on fat folks. There is a relative banquet of programming out there to choose from, "Biggest Loser UK"," Biggest Loser US", "Perfect Bodies", "Extreme Make Over", "Honey We're Killing The Kids", "Super Size Surgery" to name a few - enough to satisfy the biggest appetite for this particular brand of reality TV.