http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/opi...at-such-a-fractious-issue/20110131-1aba9.html
I did something cruel and unusual the other night. I allowed the children to watch The Biggest Loser: Families.
I'm not proud. But I had my reasons, and I'll probably let them watch it again.
They were, like most viewers, horrified. They were, unlike most viewers, capable of doing a little deconstruction. Benefits of having a full-time media guy in the house. They knew it was just television, and so not always to be trusted.
How can it be a surprise when the trainer calls, if the cameras are already there filming everything? one asked.
I don't think they always lay the table like that. I think that's for the cameras. Laying the table like that would take too much time when you could be eating.
Indeed.
It's not like I'm living with McLuhan and Foucault but they did at least understand the artifice involved in The Biggest Loser. They also thought it was a bit unfair to people who really needed help that most of them would be kicked off the show.
Why can't they just stay on until they're better?
Why not indeed?
Because it doesn't make for great TV. Not over a whole season. Even MasterChef, which rewrote the playbook for reality TV by gentling its losers out the door, still sent them packing when the time came.
And in spite of the artifice, and the constructive cruelty of a show like The Biggest Loser, they couldn't help be drawn in even as they were repelled.
I must confess I tuned in mostly because I wanted to see if Commando Steve's facial muscles would twitch when he had to inhale a dozen or so Big Macs that had been conveniently blended into a smooth liquid for him.
Or, what would happen to the tae kwon do hottie when she was force-fed her own weight in cookie dough.
For the kids, however, I have to confess it was the freak show aspect that drew me in. I wanted them to feel disgust at the carefully calibrated circus presented for us by the program's producers. Why? Because as a parent fresh fruit, oatmeal for breakfast, drinking lots of water, and playing sport rather than Nintendo DS, is a hell of a hard sell. The grotesque obesity on display in Biggest Loser makes explaining the benefits of good nutrition and exercise that much easier. Harsh and ugly, but true.
I write these words knowing that a hate wave is inevitably a heading my way for having done so.
Obesity is an intensely politicised topic. Especially online. The Fat Acceptance and Health At Any Size movements can be swift and terrible to behold when they turn on someone ignorant or simply ill-mannered enough to frame a discussion of obesity in any way that belittles the obese.
Fair enough. That's a lesson I've learned to my own cost over the past year, and it's one I've taken to heart. Traducing someone's character, or mocking them for their weight, isn't far removed from doing the same things on the basis of their skin color or ethnic background. Grown-ups should be above it.
There is another element to the movement, however, that's more problematic; a belief that obesity is not so much a health problem as a political or cultural construct. In the face of constant warnings from the medical profession about the dangers of letting ourselves get fat flies an argument that it's really not a big deal.
And to take issue with this argument is to hazard yourself to being described as a douchebag for hating fat people.
It's a pity because there is a debate to be had here. The medical research into obesity is vast and, like all scientific research, occasionally conflicted and uncertain. It may be that some people are genetically condemned to obesity just as some are gifted with a metabolism that burns energy with minimal effort. It's undeniable that shows like The Biggest Loser are grossly exploitative and not always in the best interests of the contestants. But they're not necessarily evil incarnate either.
A willing exchange of tweets between trainer Mish Bridges and sociologist Dr. Samantha Thomas enlivened the show on Sunday night after Thomas lit into Bridges and what she described as a a hateful, horrible, television show. The Biggest Loser creates further stigma and hate for fat people wrote Thomas, a leading researcher in the area of body image.
To be fair to Bridges, who like most trainers just really wants to help, the politics of Fat Acceptance were almost certainly unknown and alien to her, as they are to her fans and followers who buried Thomas's argument under an avalanche of tweets about ''how awesome you are, Mish'.
It's a pity too, because despite the freakshow dynamics of Biggest Loser on television, the website isn't bad. Granted, there's any number of video nasties with highlights from the show's most confronting moments. Wheel of brie sandwich, anyone?
And yet, for anybody who's interested in losing a few kilos, there is also plenty of advice about exercise and diet that would see them on their way.
What you won't see, however, is a debate about the politics of fat.
