Slim Pickins

BY Jackie Wykes

Okay, I admit it. I watched The Biggest Loser. And not just so I could write about it. I watched because I was fascinated to see fat bodies – bodies like mine – on television. Fat bodies not covered up and hidden, but put on display. Every weeknight for ten weeks I watched some of the biggest bodies on television bared for the cameras as they exercised, sweated, jiggled, cried, vomited, celebrated, and weighed in.

Although the amount of flesh shown is by no means unusual on prime-time television – the bodies were generally more covered-up than, say, the average Big Brother housemate – it was remarkable to see that much fat flesh exposed anywhere (except, perhaps, certain niche internet sites). The irony was that that the purpose of making all that fat visible was to get rid of it.

There was no mistaking the meaning behind the show’s title: to be fat is to be a loser. For the twelve Loser contestants, the aim of the game was to transform themselves from fat losers to thin winners. Weight loss became the measure of worthiness as each week those who had not lost enough weight were liable to be voted out of the house.

The first episode saw all the contestants line up in their scanty outfits and one by one step up to the scales to be weighed. The number on the scale was like a confession, a tearful admission of the ‘true extent of the problem’ not only to themselves and each other, but also to a television audience of millions. Like going on Springer and confessing your infidelity.

The Springer analogy is apt insofar as both shows revel in the display of the obscene/off-screen. But perhaps a better comparison would be Oprah. Both shows are hosted by women who have publicly battled with their weight (Ajay Rochester lost nearly half her body weight and started the ‘Healthy Body Club’ before she landed the Loser host job). And both shows have an almost religious belief in the power of a makeover to change lives. Or, more accurately, to reveal the ‘real person’ apparently hidden beneath the fat. These shows present physical transformation as a form of self-actualisation.

This idea that a makeover will change your life underlies many shows, especially in the ‘reality’ genre. Extreme Makeover, for example, presents plastic surgery as a life-enhancing procedure that will fix low self esteem and cure the painful shyness which, according to the show, is only a reasonable response to feeling ‘ugly’. If plastic surgery and body modification seem a little too extreme, then there are the friendly wardrobe/grooming/interior design makeovers of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, What Not to Wear, and Better Homes (than yours).

The message is clear: true happiness is just a makeover away.

After the initial weigh-in, one of the contestants, Kristy, sobs, “I don’t feel like a fat person until I look in the mirror.” Leaving aside the mystery of exactly what a fat person is supposed to feel like, Kristy’s claim here is that she isn’t really a fat person inside, so she shouldn’t be one outside. The old adage “inside every fat person is a thin person trying to get out” encapsulates the central idea of the Loser’s makeover-as-self-actualisation. The ‘new you’ is always the ‘real you’.

In principle, I don’t disagree with the premise that the way you look should reflect who you feel you are. I have a wardrobe bursting with all manner of clothing so I can dress to suit how I feel on any given day. I have a bathroom cabinet full of makeup to effect changes on my face. I have a healthy enough dose of vanity to force me to run to the train most days because I spend a few too many minutes admiring my reflection before walking out the door. I also don’t necessarily disagree with the proposition that a person’s physical state affects and is effected by their mental and emotional states. Hell yes, looking good can make me feel great. But then, so can a second helping of tiramisu.

But I am suspicious of the assertion that looking more like an ideal image will make you more yourself. I am suspicious of the idea that the best way to gain self-esteem and confidence is to make yourself over to fit a somewhat narrow idea of normal. Or that the only way to truly be yourself is by ex(er)cising those bits that don’t fit with the idealised image. It seems ironic that the process of self-actualisation, which is firmly rooted in the idea of discovering and expressing individual uniqueness, results in a deeply conformist vision of the self.

There seems to be a sort of new-age Puritanism at work, re-shaping vanity into virtue. Or maybe a sort of new-age keeping-up-with-the-Joneses, with the imperative to look good relocated from the house and car to the body, in the hope of impressing not necessarily material success but emotional and spiritual wealth. And of course, health.

As voluptuous foodie Nigella Lawson (whose luscious recipes have made a significant contribution to the maintenance of my own Rubenesque figure) says in the introduction to the ‘low fat’ section of her book How to Eat<?i>, “Dieting claims almost a moral status when health comes into play. With what piety and smugness do the dietetically pure wave away those wicked, fat-clogged foods and show us, sinners all, the way, the truth and the Lite.”