CHMP on “The Biggest Loser”

Posted By elissa on Mar 8, 2011 | 1 comment

I loved this 6-part series on “The Biggest Loser” by Tristin Aaron of the Center for Health Media and Policy Center at Hunter College. She gets right at what irritates me the most about this exploitative bit of “fitness porn.”

Over the season, the show sometimes depicts the dieters sympathetically. They have to. It’s essential that viewers invest in the “characters” and the competition between them. But the Biggest Loser’s occasional kindness and warmth towards its dieters is a cynical part of a formula entirely based on disrespect.

Contestants start their “journeys” as worthless, miserable, and lost. They are burdens to their families, expensive to taxpayers, and (as is invariably mentioned, over and over and over) they have one foot in the grave.

Then the show, like an angel, plucks the dieters from despair and intervenes. Medical advisor “Dr H” even claimed the show deserves a Nobel peace prize for saving their lives on the Thanksgiving “Where Are They Now” special.

Then, while never explaining to viewers exactly what program is being followed, making it impossible to replicate (isn’t that the opposite of “empowering?”), all credit is given to the trainers instead of the contestants.

Listen to the language in this voice-over during the finale:

“For ten seasons on the Biggest Loser, trainers Bob and Jillian have taken over 200 morbidly obese Americans and turned them into the epitome of health.”

This is the formula: in the course of each season, the trainers yell at and physically punish the contestants until they vomit and yell back and eventually cry.

That “breakthrough” allows the contestants to “find their inner warrior”, lose 100 – 200 pounds, and “become the person they always wanted to be.”

Viewers are left with nothing but breadcrumbs to trace how it happened. It seems to involve copious amounts of sponsored products Yoplait, Brita, Extra dessert-flavored gum, Subway, and Jennie-O ground turkey. And Ford vehicles.

…Thus, the fundamental unacceptability of the overweight person is the core of the brand of the Biggest Loser. She or he is a failure. Feeling too ashamed to enter a gym is normalized rather than challenged.

To take it a step further, the shame is evoked and then monetized. We have a product to help you with that.

The message is always that with the show’s help, change is possible. Otherwise, you’re just a tragedy.

Bingo.

Here are the series of posts, from 11/10/10 – 12/16/10:

Last Night’s The Biggest Loser: Gender Warfare Is The Least of Your Problems, Honey

Last night’s “The Biggest Loser:” Do It For Your Family

Last Night’s Biggest Loser: “It’s A Beautiful World We Live In”

Last Night’s “Biggest Loser:” Suppertime Cometh

Last Night’s Biggest Loser; The Long And Winding Road

Biggest Loser” Finale: The Fix and The Fixers (Part One of Two)

Biggest Loser” Finale: The Fix and The Fixers (Part Two of Two)

It’s a long series, but worth the time.