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FOX's "More to Love", brilliant marketing, or exploitation?
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Will one contestant on More To Love find her soulmate?
Next Tuesday FOX network premiers the new series, More to Love. The show, modeled after ABC’s The Bachelor, “follows one regular guy's search for love among a group of real women determined to prove that love comes in all shapes and sizes”, according to the show’s website.
The series follows 300 plus pound Luke Conley in his quest to find love among 20 full figured women. This program spotlights overweight women as being ‘different’. Some women, the show’s website notes will “experience their first real dates”.
Many health professionals cringe at such shows. Television has not always treated the overweight with dignity. Consider a temptation employed by The Biggest Loser. Contestants are placed in front of a vending machine which contains snacks, candy, money, pound passes to use at weigh in and coveted chances to see much missed family. Random items drop when buttons are pushed. If a snack or candy falls, the contestant must eat that item. Some are brought to tears as they force down foods that they have struggled to give up. Certainly they can stop at any time. But for some, the prizes tempt them on.
How different is a show like More To Love? Is it beneficial to overweight people because it highlights what’s ‘under the surface’? Might it reduce weight prejudice as people identify with individuals on the show? Or is this simply a circus act further perpetuating the myth that those who are overweight don’t offer as much as their thin counterparts?
Relationship expert and psychotherapist, Charles Bonasera, L.C.S.W, had this to say. “America’s preoccupation … or should I say obsession … with how a person looks as being a determining factor as to how able or unable they are to enter into a healthy relationship has become a national crisis. There has been a dramatic shift from WHO a person is to WHAT A PERSON LOOKS LIKE.”
Certainly obesity is a national crisis. There are multiple health reasons for which overweight individuals should change their lifestyles and lose weight; “all too often there are psychological and social issues that go unmentioned and untreated,” Bonasera notes. Weight loss therefore, is not as simple as ‘starting a diet’.
Time will tell whether this show exploits or disarms the prejudices faced by overweight men and women. One thing is certain Bonasera states: “Until America matures into realizing that healthy relationships deserve more attention than the amount of weight someone brings into a relationship there will be more and more reality shows of similar ilk.” Let’s all hope that the participants are treated with the respect and dignity that they deserve.
Photo credit Flickr user aussiegall
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