Thursday, July 30, 2009

More to Not Love

I, like my colleague Emily, have a somewhat vexed relationship with reality TV. Some days, there's nothing more enjoyable than collapsing on the futon and flipping to Bravo to watch mindless, ridiculous (and often staged) drama unfold.

However, I'd like to think I have my standards. You know, certain lines in the sand that I draw with the crappy-tv-world. When I first heard about FOX's new show, More to Love, I had suspicions that this would, tragically, be one of those series that crosses said line. Unfortunately, my suspicions were realized when I sat down to watch the first episode on Tuesday evening. Check out a trailer/clip below:



For those not familiar, here's the description of this new gem from FOX's website:
MORE TO LOVE, the new dating competition show from Mike Fleiss ("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.
The tragic part is that this sounds like it could be okay. If I put aside my general disdain for dating shows, it seems like this could be a step in the right direction - breaking open the definition of what the public sees as desirable and even "normal." The show's trailers frequently made mention of the fact that the average American woman is a size 14, as opposed to the size 2 stars of most reality TV. But the issue here is that More to Love seems to fall prey to the binary standards of acceptance and tolerance it (hopefully?) sought to debunk. Here's a few examples:

1) Whenever the women are speaking solo (both introducing themselves and commenting on their experience) the caption beneath them states their name, age, occupation, hometown, and - get this - their height and weight. Now, in my experience, the best way to reify a concept of 'normalcy' is to shore up an 'other'. Excuse the dusty women's studies vocab, but I have trouble thinking of any other reason for the women's height and weight to be included other than to make sure that the audience knows that these folks don't fit the social standards of your "normal" bachelorettes.

2) The introductions were the most painful. Primarily because, with a few self-assured exceptions, the women introduced themselves by way of heartwrenching stories of unrequited love, failed relationships, and prom night agonies. All of this, of course, on account of their size.

Okay. As mentioned before, I really don't like dating shows in general - they seem to feature women as a) utterly weak and pathetic or b) extremely cutthroat. Also, these shows equate a relationship with happiness - ignoring the reality of both extraordinarily unhappy relationships and perfectly happy single people.

I'm starting to think, maybe I was giving this genre of TV and FOX itself too much credit here, with the assumption that by producing this show they would be carrying the message that "it's possible to be happy and to be greater than a size 2." Throughout the show, I was disappointed that most of the women spoke about their size and love lives with such disgust and sadness. If we're really trying to increase personal and social acceptance, it makes me cringe to see women giving credence to a flawed, arbitrary concept of normal and in fact blaming their lack of compliance for their misery. Isn't this just another way of underscoring the notion that living within a socially constructed norm equates with happiness, while everything outside of that will mean a life of unfulfilled misery? Awesome.

3) Also, I struggle with the choice of bachelor and emphasis placed upon his also-greater-than-"normal" size. With terrible euphemisms related to the size of both bachelor Luke and the women competing for his attentions, the show describes itself. "This brawny prince is searching for one curvy Cinderella to take on the romantic adventure of a lifetime." (Thank you, FOX, for your clever usage of a thesaurus and deliberate avoidance of the descriptor "fat.")

This gives me qualms. I am totally for increasing size acceptance for both men and women alike, but I'm struggling a little bit with the connotation here. Are viewers to take away the message that the only way a fat woman can be happy is if she's in a relationship with a fat man?

It seems to me that if we did the same for any other physical attribute, it'd be at best, silly, and at worst, extremely offensive. If I suggested a show where only black women competed for the affections of a black man, I'd be thrown to the dogs - and rightly so. What if we restricted the field of bachelors/bachelorettes based on ability? Or ethnicity? Hair color? And is it any better to restrict based on the trait of fatness than it was for the other reality shows to (tacitly) restrict the pool based on thinness?

Like I said, I'm a little torn over this one. Overall, obviously not impressed with More to Love. I'm disappointed because I wanted to believe it would exceed my expectations, and I'm anxious because I worry about the message it sends to viewers and to society. What are your thoughts?

3 comments:

Madison said...

I am so glad someone else is not excited about this show. I've been seeing the commercials all summer and have just been repulsed the whole time.
Not by the people - I'm sure all of them are great. What a great opportunity that is... to be on television and feel like they're not alone in their negative stories of body image...

But really, this is ridiculous. If any television company wants to include programming about normal people, why don't they actually -do it-. Why not have women of all sizes and men of all sizes on The Bachelor/ette? I feel like creating a whole new show for people who look different is just for show, while the other show is still excluding.

Also, I know for a fact that all people, especially women, especially women who end up on television have body problems (enforced by the media) of all kinds, so trying to include people that look different than their normal cast but then making their presence all about the thing that makes them 'abnormal' in an attempt to make them feel 'normal'.... It's just as silly as this really really long sentence.

I am NOT impressed by this show AT all, and won't be encouraging my friends or family to watch.
Glad to know I'm not crazy in my thoughts about this craziness.

Laura Ponchick said...

I think that the show sounded great in theory, allowing young viewers of all shapes and sizes to think that love doesn't have to be restricted to a size 2. However, I will shamelessly admit to watching at least 7 seasons of America's Next Top Model, in which they ALWAYS pointed out what an issue having plus size models was (and by plus size they were usually about an 8 or so).I imagine the producers of ANTM were very proud of themselves for including plus-size models to create a larger viewing audience, but rarely did the plus size model ever actually win the competition.

I think the fact that this show feels the need to display the contestants' height and weight is entirely superfluous, as viewers know that it is a show about plus size women. By putting the statistics with their names, viewers associate a certain size/height with each contestant; something that truly shouldn't be done. Why would you want to think: oh I like Jenny, she's 180, but Jane is 190? Isn't the point of the show that weight DOESN'T matter?

rjleaman said...

And this is exactly why I have stopped watching television at all. Oh dear, oh dear...

First, this business of adding height/weight to description and making the woman's whole story about her "otherness" instead of her humanity...
It reminds me of a radio piece I heard yesterday about Native artists struggling to be accepted as *artists* - makers of art, not makers of modern artifacts. For one thing, First Nations artists in a mainstream gallery show wanted to have their works labelled as other artist's would be - instead of having their tribal affiliation appended to the artist's name. How can people be judged for who they are in their entirety, if we continue to define them by just one aspect of their identity?

And then there is the whole issue of euphemisms - are we helping the cause of size acceptance at all by tip-toeing around the word "fat" as if there's an inherent insult there? Perhaps a euphemism is meant as a kindness, but I think it's a cop-out that backfires. The term "plus-sized" for example is a clear implication that 14+ women are somehow not "normal" because of their body measurements, and we know that's simply not true.

And then there's the whole dangerous fallacy of trying to find happiness through someone else - don't get me started!

You ask, "Are viewers to take away the message that the only way a fat woman can be happy is if she's in a relationship with a fat man?" I think it sounds as if that message is there, whether or not it's intended, and I share your concerns. Seems to me that this TV show's whole concept just reinforces an idea that's already quite firmly fixed in North American society - can't you just imagine the comments from Neanderthal types in the forums, if the "curvy Cinderella" was matched up with a slim man or the "brawny" bachelor paired with a hipless runway model?