New TLC reality show Big Sexy
I feel very very conflicted.
On one hand, I love the message that big girls can be healthy and active and part of the world (I loved it when they beat the college guys at volleyball in Miami!). I like the awareness message that it sends about how hurtful the world can be and how that's fat bias and wrong minded. A person's weight status is their own damn business and nobody has the right to treat them differently because of it, period. I like the way they humanize the participants.
However, in the context of other voyeuristic TLC reality type carnival sideshow genre shows, its message gets severely conflicted. Sometimes (like most of these shows) even when the actual dialogue says fat girls are people too, the editing or camera work, the selection of scenes, the activities they have the girls do are sending opposite messages: these girls are freakshows, we invite you in to fetishise their struggle, their pain, to identify with them, but to never forget that they are freakshows.
It's endemic to the genre. Some are subtle, some are obvious... but whether the show is about the million baby families, the polygamists, the little people, the strange addictions, the couponers, the creepy pageant moms the very format of the show serves to both honour and ridicule the subjects in the same moment. It's exactly the same thing as the dustbowl carnival sideshows of days of old.
On one hand, I love the message that big girls can be healthy and active and part of the world (I loved it when they beat the college guys at volleyball in Miami!). I like the awareness message that it sends about how hurtful the world can be and how that's fat bias and wrong minded. A person's weight status is their own damn business and nobody has the right to treat them differently because of it, period. I like the way they humanize the participants.
However, in the context of other voyeuristic TLC reality type carnival sideshow genre shows, its message gets severely conflicted. Sometimes (like most of these shows) even when the actual dialogue says fat girls are people too, the editing or camera work, the selection of scenes, the activities they have the girls do are sending opposite messages: these girls are freakshows, we invite you in to fetishise their struggle, their pain, to identify with them, but to never forget that they are freakshows.
It's endemic to the genre. Some are subtle, some are obvious... but whether the show is about the million baby families, the polygamists, the little people, the strange addictions, the couponers, the creepy pageant moms the very format of the show serves to both honour and ridicule the subjects in the same moment. It's exactly the same thing as the dustbowl carnival sideshows of days of old.
My four cents. No I don't think they are doing harm to the obese community by taking pride in how they look.
Up until about 275 lbs., I loved how I looked. And it wasn't so much the excess weight that made me stop. It was how I felt CARRYING it. I got depressed about how my body felt and let myself go. I didn't dress nicely or do my hair (look at my before pic...that really was how I looked most days).
Both my children are overweight. My little diva will likely be the bigger one. I reject the notion that to improve your health or body you have to first hate your present self to get to a self that you can love. I know lots of BBW who eat even healthier than I do, who go to the gym (my Zumba class has some GORGEOUS fluffy girls...heck...I may be one of them!), who are active, who enjoy their lives and who show the world that big can be just as beautiful as small.
So I guess I come in on the side of health. I believe everyone should try to be healthy. I am a walking example that healthy does not equal thin. I have great blood pressure, good muscle tone, my cardio endurance improves day by day. I am not thin. I don't think I ever will be.
Up until about 275 lbs., I loved how I looked. And it wasn't so much the excess weight that made me stop. It was how I felt CARRYING it. I got depressed about how my body felt and let myself go. I didn't dress nicely or do my hair (look at my before pic...that really was how I looked most days).
Both my children are overweight. My little diva will likely be the bigger one. I reject the notion that to improve your health or body you have to first hate your present self to get to a self that you can love. I know lots of BBW who eat even healthier than I do, who go to the gym (my Zumba class has some GORGEOUS fluffy girls...heck...I may be one of them!), who are active, who enjoy their lives and who show the world that big can be just as beautiful as small.
So I guess I come in on the side of health. I believe everyone should try to be healthy. I am a walking example that healthy does not equal thin. I have great blood pressure, good muscle tone, my cardio endurance improves day by day. I am not thin. I don't think I ever will be.
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