Are you watching More to Love, Fox’s latest reality dating show? What did you think about it? What did you think about its portrayal of fat people?

Dilatory, frivolous, patronizing, bigotry-based and absurd. Sort of like “Negro Day” on the Corny Collins show…

I would definitely agree with that sentiment as it pertains to nearly all reality television and the way that it portrays people. Granted, some shows are different than others, but most reality television contestants - particularly the dating ones - evoke our ridicule.

Accepting that reality television (or at least reality dating shows) is terrible as a premise, I still can’t help but ask the question right before this show airs: is it designed to allow the public to ridicule fat people or is it a recognition by the industry that actually showing fat people should be the norm?

I can’t deny that FOX is definitely not motivated by the desire to liberate Americans’ thinking and make them recognize that we’re not all thin and that being fat is okay (though perhaps they should be), but maybe somewhere in their boardroom someone is glad that the station is going to do a show with regular people - people with bodies more like the average viewer’s body.

This all isn’t to say that I don’t think the show could absolutely be like you’ve described, but I really hope it’s not.

If you catch the premier, I’ll look forward to hearing your thoughts afterwards.

I spent a bit of time looking at the Fox site for the show and I am very interested to see the program tonight!

While More to Love possibly opportunistically exploits fat people, isn’t that the case for any actors, actresses and even “regular folks” (read non-professional actors) who appear on television? Are they not being exploited for the network to gain profit?

Regardless of the motives of the producers of the show, I am excited about something I believe the show will achieve. More to Love will make fat people look fabulous just like other reality shows make skiny people look fabulous. I am often bothered by the way in which fat people are portrayed in movies and in TV shows. It often happens that they do not go through the same process of emphasizing their attractive characteristics as their skinier counterparts. I am happy that finally fat women will be wearing dresses that show off their gorgeous curves and make-up that makes them feel confident. I look at the bachelorettes of More to Love and cannot help but think that that the women (and the bachelor as well) look amazing and attractive!

Often times skiny people are thought of as beautiful because our pop culture makes them appear so on TV -  but we should remember that when they go on camera they are wearing make-up, select clothing and their hair had just been styled. This allows for for the completely unreal and erroneous exclusive association in people’s minds between slim and attractive. It is my hope that More to Love will promote the public discourse associating fat with fabulous and have some positive impact.

I saw the show last night and have mixed feelings.

I was very pleased to see that the people in the show were very real. For reality show standards, the contestants of More to Love had real conversations and they showed real emotions. It was refreshing to see the honesty of the women, their feelings and desire to love. Most of us feel the need for love and these ladies had the guts to say it out loud - on national TV.

I am also happy that, as Estzer mentioned, the show portrays fat people as their curvy beautiful selves. Luke’s (the bachelor) occasional open declaration “I just want to tell you that you all look beautiful, gorgeous etc” also sends the right message. Though the need for such statements speaks critically of society for itself.

Many of the contestant women spoke of their sadness that their skinny friends get to go on dates, while they are lonely and alone. Though I am not sure how I feel about the way in which these declarations were emphasized by the creators of the show, I like how More to Love might make many of the “skinny” friends and others aware of how our body-image-perception-distorted society makes fat people feel. It was heartbreaking to see the girls tear up to just be loved for who they are, to find a man who does not care if other people look at them “funny.” (The show also made me so thankful to have found a man who loves me for who I am, my curves and most importantly my personality.)

Despite all these positives, I did not like how we as viewers were almost forced to pity the contestants by the heartbreaking monologues that were played. Their desperation for love, I think, was emphasized way more that their humor and fun personality.

Also, I think it is a bit twisted that the women get a ring and a promise at the beginning of the show and then have to part from it at the end of the show only hoping that they will get it back again. That seems like an unnecessarily careless way to play with the emotions of the ladies who truly put themselves out there in the hope of finding love, many of them (sadly and wrongly) thinking that this is their only chance for love.

It is interesting how everyone on the show avoids the word fat. By this they signal that they don’t want to acknowledge the connotations that come with this word. I think FAT is fine to say, what we should focus on is changing the associations with the word. When there is nothing wrong or shameful about being fat, than the word will be fine to use in any context.

I think Luke seems like a very nice guy who has the emotional maturity to deal with women. Though if I were him I would be careful holding the hands of girls and kissing them because they are very vulnerable.

Overall, I am engaged in the show and will continue to watch while trying to maintain a critical eye for the way in which the show exploits people’s emotions while hopefully also doing some good.

I also found the shame associated with the word FAT disappointing, as in “I’ve never thought of myself as the fat girl.” Every effort was made to avoid the word. Additionally, I didn’t like the fixation on weight. I don’t mean the way the women talked about it - that fixation on weight is illuminating, and I’ll get there in a bit. I mean the way FOX focused on the girls’ weight, both by constantly showing clips of the women talking about it and by actually displaying their weight when they were introduced. Why is that relevant? I also think it’s crazy that the heaviest woman was only 270 lbs but the rest were all below 230. That’s fine, but FOX need not pretend their existence is revolutionary.

I did like that the show opened by sharing the statistic that the average woman on reality dating shows was a size two and the average American woman was a size 14. That’s an important figure I think we should all know, because it reminds us that what we see in the media is abnormal.

Do I think that FOX’s portrayal of these fat people was exploitative? A bit, yes. At the same time, however, I think that the network’s portrayal of everyone on its reality shows is exploitative. That doesn’t justify the way FOX made these women increasingly vulnerable - and I believe that their love histories and the reason for those histories (their own fixation on weight as well as the fixation of the men they’ve been with) make them more vulnerable and genuine than the average reality dating show contestant - and then portrayed their vulnerability, but it does make it more ubiquitous than fat-hating.

The show did something right away that someone mentioned above - it made all of these women the beautiful people (on the outside!) that they really are. All 20 of them looked great, and it’s because a professional did their make-up, they were wearing their best clothes and they had big smiles on their faces. It’s all about how you carry yourself, and only two of the girls said that they always walked around confident and happy with their size. Why don’t all of them? This compared to true fat-hating shows like The Biggest Loser, which actually goes to painstaking lengths with lighting and make-up and dress to make its contestants - at the beginning of the show when they’re at their fattest - look awful.

What I really hope this show does is make viewers understand (and here my hope is that the viewers comprise a nice cross-section of society) the unnecessary pain, hardship and poor treatment that fat people experience every day as a result of our culture’s thin fixation. These women were sweet and beautiful and most of them felt terrible about themselves. They weren’t blaming society for those feelings, but it was quite clear that if they weren’t made to feel awful about their size then they would have been happy and believed that they were worthy of being loved. I just hope the show opens people’s eyes to these issues. But perhaps that’s naive.

What did you think?

Hello Jay!

Its been 2 episodes now and I’m grateful that the height/weight stats have been removed. Hopefully it was a result of the overwhelming negative feedback about this on personal blogs, in media reviews, and on Twitter. As the author of a book with the exact same name, I’ve been a bit overwhelmed with both watching the show, reading some of the thousands and thousands of blogs posts/articles on this topic and formulating a response. You can read my full response on my blog here More to Love vs. More to Love
I agreed with Golda’s post, that the artificiality of the show does not reflect the true love found between people of all sizes. All reality shows are very staged and heavily edited to emphasize the melodrama, and occur in a stage set “mansion” with fabulous clothes, makeup and hair. All involve talking to a camera. Not exactly the way most of us conduct a romance!
Despite its many flaws, I continue to be hopeful that at the very least, majority-sized, plus-size and/or fat people (whatever term you prefer!) are participating in this very modern, very strange part of American pop culture, and are not just on TV as the funny sidekicks or in a weight loss competition.

I’m also thrilled that the weight display has been removed. I wonder if it’s feedback or just something FOX new it could only get away with for one episode.

I jumped on here to say that one girl (who I actually found horribly annoying) said something wonderful as she left the show (she was eliminated tonight). She said that she was really grateful to Luke (the guy, in case you’re not watching) for giving her the tools she needed to feel confident and beautiful and ready to start a new chapter in her life of being proud (I may have modified that a bit but it was certainly the sentiment).

Now, I don’t think that it’s necessary to be empowered by someone else, but I do think that we grow a lot from our relationships - particularly the romantic ones. There’s a reason a spouse is known as one’s “better half.” We want to be with people that make us better people to be with. Not that this was a long-term relationship we were watching on tv, but it was nice to know that some of these women aren’t walking away feeling worse about their already unfortunate insecurities, but that exposure to a man that treats them like women makes instills them with the confidence they deserve.

On the other hand, another girl walked away nastily saying that her own confidence was shaken because she lost to an “uglier” and “fatter” girl than she - and she named that other girl. It was not nice, though someone with such a not nice attitude perhaps isn’t the sort of person who will grow from an experience like this (do I really mean FOX reality dating shows?) but the kind of person who would let it affect her so negatively.

I hope more large women see this show and recognize that their beauty is in their confidence and how they hold themselves and not in their dress sizes.

I spent a bit of time looking at the Fox site for the show and I am very interested to see the program, I’m busy now i try to catch it in next year..!

Coming up is the much-anticipated last episode of the show, More to Love! I am curious how your perceptions changed about the series since its beginning.

It was interesting to see the personalities of the girls (and Luke) develop, although it seemed like the directors had a strong influence in how we perceived the participants of the show.

Who were your favorite candidates? Who are you rooting for between the final two girls and why?