I have a confession to make. I sat down
tonight and watched a full episode of The
Biggest Loser. Why? Because I wished to see this “Big Kev” channel tens
incessant ads tantalised me with (much to my chagrin he wasn’t even in this
episode so I guess it serves me right). But in watching it, my initial dislike
for the show was reaffirmed.
I actually think that the concept could be
quite a good one. We are living in a time when over half the population is
overweight, where one fifth of children are overweight. Raising the public
consciousness about the imperative to lose weight is admirable (if he that is
so large he has to travel by waddle can muster the willpower to lose weight so
too can you sitting and watching it on the couch; yes, put down that bag of
deep fried food and change your ways so that you don’t die before your fortieth
birthday).
However, the competitive format of the show
undermines this message. As an Australian citizen, I am surrounded by food. As
the grandchild of Europeans, I am surrounded by people who can cook extraordinarily
well, but categorise ‘lite’ or ‘fat free’ as profanities. I am painfully aware
of the results of over-eating. But keeping your weight in check is not something
that you do for other people or to win a prize. You do it because you
want to lose weight, because you don’t want to get diabetes, not because
you honestly believe that if you don’t change, you will die, not because
someone else tells you to change. A few years ago I read an interview conducted
with the then-spokesperson of Jenny Craig. Her comment was that you have to
love yourself enough to change, not hate yourself.
Sending people home who are still – let’s
face it – obese, and motivating them to continue training with the promise of
potential ‘re-entry’ is not sending a message to the rest of Australia that you
should lose weight so that you don’t suffer accompanying health issues. It send
the message that you should lose weight to be a winner. Similarly, weight loss
at such a dramatic pace as occurs on TBL can be a really difficult think to
achieve – placing additional stress on participants to lose the largest amount
of weight during a given time or they will quite literally lose, is not
conducive to a positive, or more importantly, lasting change.
the contestants take time out to pose like a boy band
Then again, maybe that’s not what TBL is
about. Maybe it’s just so that voyeuristic viewers can get their kicks watching
fat people mournfully go about the business of being utterly humiliated – look
no further than the clothes that the contestants must wear during ‘weigh in’. I
was struck (and I’ll admit amused) by the insensitivity of placing life-sized
images of these people on the side of buses. It really does bring new meaning
to the phrase ‘he’s as a big as the side of a bus’. Look at the opening
sequence where all of the individuals stare balefully at the camera, and ask
yourself if this is a show that exists to actually ignite a positive difference
to the collective Australian waistline, or because we enjoy watching the
struggle of people fatter than ourselves.
