When I first heard about the premise and saw the preview for the upcoming Fox show More To Love. My mind began immediately swimming with different thoughts and feelings. On the one hand, it could be inspiring and uplifting for people to see plus sized women treated like human beings on national television. On the other hand, I see a few problems with the overall premise of this show.
First, “plus sized” women are not a new trend, a fad, or a fashion accessory for the summer of 2009. They are people, just like all the other contestants on all of the other reality shows. They have been around for quite a long time. I have a problem with the “mission” of this show, according to Fox More To Love is all about loving yourself and self-worth, I disagree entirely.
If Fox wanted to uplift “plus sized” women, they would’ve made a clone of ABC’s The Bachelor and made half of the women “regular” and half of the women “plus sized” and let the best woman win based on all of their attributes. Instead, by choosing (In Fox’s own words) “a single average guy with a big waist and an even bigger heart” as the prospective bachelor and choosing all “plus sized women” as the contestants, the show (and Fox) imply that all ‘big people’ should break off from the rest of society, pair up, have ‘big people babies’, and move to the mountains where they won’t bother anybody.
I argue that if the women that Fox has selected to participate in More To Love are so well adjusted, confident, and self-loving that they would have no problem ‘competing’ against any woman for any man. All of the press I have seen for More To Love tries to paint it as this big ‘coming out party’ for “plus sized” women, that Fox just discovered this long lost tribe out in a cave somewhere like King Kong and are bringing them to the world for the first time.
Maybe that is the point here? After all, who’s fault is it that people are so hung up on their weight in this country? Why are there so many women (in general, not even “plus sized”) who have a poor self image? Who sets the standard for beauty in the United States? You guessed it, the media. The fact is that this show wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for the constant and unwavering amount of self-hatred that people feel when they turn on their TV, read magazines, or watch movies. So “plus sized women” are okay as long as you’re exploiting them in some ridiculous fashion but when it comes time to cast a show at primetime guess what?
Sorry, no plus sized women to be found.
This is part of a larger trend in our society. All companies (not just media companies) need to stop pretending like they are doing people a favor by exploiting them, For a completely unrelated example the mortgage bubble was “a great opportunity for low-income families to become home-owners” just like More To Love is “[…] a dating show that sends the right message about embracing and loving yourself no matter your shape or size," as long as the person you’re interested in has “a big waist and an even bigger heart” otherwise, you’re completely out of luck.
-Drew
[...] you read my previous article entitled More to Exploit, you know that I was skeptical about the Fox network’s motives when it comes to their new show [...]