Supersize vs Superskinny post that I did for Billi's blog
Supersize vs. Superskinny: it’s one of those shows that I know perfectly well I shouldn’t watch, due to the way it makes my blood pressure soar and my eyebrows knit like needles, but thanks to my masochistic streak, I can’t help it. For those who are lucky enough not to have stumbled across this truly exploitative show, allow me to condense it into a few lines for you.
The basic premise of the programme is that a very underweight person - the “superskinny” - swaps diets with a very overweight person - the “supersize”. These diets are never healthy and incredibly dull in their predictability: the skinny one barely eats and the fat one eats a lot. This, to me, does not seem worth making a programme about. It seems common sense.
One particularly irking thing about this programme is that it tries to market itself as health-orientated. However, in the true fashion of non-doctor Gillian McKeith, it’s more concerned with shock tactics which certainly seem to have little, if any, bearing on health. I don’t know about you, but I personally really enjoy the scene in which the suspiciously handsome doctor-cum-presenter pours the two unhealthy people's week's worth of food into two clear tubes so that viewers can feel nauseous whilst patting themselves on the back for eating slightly better than the people on television.
One segment of the show has Anna Richardson, a Dawn Porter-a-like, trying out different quick, lazy, unhealthy methods to lose weight. Highlights include the television presenter trying to live on baby food for a week, and constantly referring to “the perfect body”. Interestingly - or not so interestingly, really - the perfect body seems to only be attainable by losing weight, no matter which size the women start out as. And, of course, the diet brigade is comprised only of women, as it is obviously only neurotic women who struggle with their weight.
The sort of exercise that Richardson suggests also does little to combat poor body image and calorie-counting. If one eats a sensible, varied diet, then there is absolutely no need to calorie-count. Anna Richardson calculates the exact calories in a particular popular treat - biscuits, cheese, etc - and then teaches her willing subjects a form of exercise that will burn exactly that amount of calories off! Not only is this fairly unnecessary, but is alarmingly similar to non-purging bulimia, in which the sufferers binge on food and then exercise for hours to burn it all off. But it’s fine when fat people do it.
Another part that makes for intensely unpleasant viewing involves a few anorexic people being followed and filmed whilst eating or buying food. Watching anorexics struggle with eating, or engaging in ritualistic behaviour, seems so voyeuristic and pointless that it is genuinely uncomfortable. The gratuitous body shots and gleeful stating of their very low weights seem to only reinforce the message that being thin will get you attention - it will get you noticed. And with a lot of people very interested in fame and attention, it is not a healthy message to put on prime time television.
The basic premise of the programme is that a very underweight person - the “superskinny” - swaps diets with a very overweight person - the “supersize”. These diets are never healthy and incredibly dull in their predictability: the skinny one barely eats and the fat one eats a lot. This, to me, does not seem worth making a programme about. It seems common sense.
One particularly irking thing about this programme is that it tries to market itself as health-orientated. However, in the true fashion of non-doctor Gillian McKeith, it’s more concerned with shock tactics which certainly seem to have little, if any, bearing on health. I don’t know about you, but I personally really enjoy the scene in which the suspiciously handsome doctor-cum-presenter pours the two unhealthy people's week's worth of food into two clear tubes so that viewers can feel nauseous whilst patting themselves on the back for eating slightly better than the people on television.
One segment of the show has Anna Richardson, a Dawn Porter-a-like, trying out different quick, lazy, unhealthy methods to lose weight. Highlights include the television presenter trying to live on baby food for a week, and constantly referring to “the perfect body”. Interestingly - or not so interestingly, really - the perfect body seems to only be attainable by losing weight, no matter which size the women start out as. And, of course, the diet brigade is comprised only of women, as it is obviously only neurotic women who struggle with their weight.
The sort of exercise that Richardson suggests also does little to combat poor body image and calorie-counting. If one eats a sensible, varied diet, then there is absolutely no need to calorie-count. Anna Richardson calculates the exact calories in a particular popular treat - biscuits, cheese, etc - and then teaches her willing subjects a form of exercise that will burn exactly that amount of calories off! Not only is this fairly unnecessary, but is alarmingly similar to non-purging bulimia, in which the sufferers binge on food and then exercise for hours to burn it all off. But it’s fine when fat people do it.
Another part that makes for intensely unpleasant viewing involves a few anorexic people being followed and filmed whilst eating or buying food. Watching anorexics struggle with eating, or engaging in ritualistic behaviour, seems so voyeuristic and pointless that it is genuinely uncomfortable. The gratuitous body shots and gleeful stating of their very low weights seem to only reinforce the message that being thin will get you attention - it will get you noticed. And with a lot of people very interested in fame and attention, it is not a healthy message to put on prime time television.