Between messages sent by the news, primetime and reality shows, television is sending us some confusing information about the current state of body image, weight and health in the U.S.
While obesity has been declared a national epidemic, with one in three Americans falling into the category, emaciated actors continue to portray average people on television. A new show on ABC, however, called “Ugly Betty,” stars America Ferrara as the title character, a size-14, donut-eating, poncho-wearing secretary at a fashion magazine.
Betty has a unibrow and braces. Her coworkers are set on promoting the thin beauty ideal. Thus, conflict ensues. In theory, the show strives to put forth the final message that one should be comfortable with oneself and not conform to beauty standards. In reality, the message isn’t that clear. Betty isn’t a regular girl who works so hard at her job that her coworkers overlook her physical unattractiveness. Betty is fumbling and clueless, and her coworkers attempt to sabotage her job to make her leave the magazine. The entire show centers around her exaggerated unattractiveness.
In the same fashion that Dove centered its Campaign for Real Women around the fact that the women portrayed in their advertisements were real, a person who does not look like a runway model is tokenized on television, representing people who are fat and ugly. Even down to its title, “Ugly Betty” can’t get past the fact that its main character is not a size 2. I wonder why the show can’t be centered around an intelligent, young woman who works at a fashion magazine and struggles with the magazine’s message of homogeneity of impossible beauty standards. Instead, the magazine struggles with her ugliness.
On NBC, “The Biggest Loser’s” latest season has obese contestants representing 24 states competing to lose the most weight. The contestants are treated like mindless cattle, herded through workouts, scolded by trainers, and constantly tempted by sweets. At the end of each week, their weight is revealed, and these contestants come to lose their identity and take on the number on the scale in its place.
“Celebrity Fit Club,” now in its fourth season, is VH1’s answer to “The Biggest Loser,” in which D-list celebrities compete for cash and prizes by losing the most weight. One contestant on the show, Carnie Wilson, takes the stage as a proponent of gastric bypass.
The news would have us believe that pervasive images of the beauty ideal as emaciated are on the way out. There’s been a recent ban on too-thin models in Spain that caused controversy during fashion week. This ban has been publicized in America as a turning point in the fashion industry. But this is just one story, and in one country. As a reaction to the controversy, Jean Paul Gaultier incorporated a size 20 model into his runway show during Fashion Week in Paris, saying that he was trying to prove that beauty comes in all sizes. I don’t buy his claim. If this is truly his message, why didn’t he employ a regular-sized woman? Why must we pendulate from one extreme of size to the other? The size 20 model makes light, in a way, of the hopes of those people who banned too-thin models. They didn’t want to see one size-20 model on the runway amid a sea of size 0s; they wanted to see a fashion show with models who are all healthy. But it’s impossible for the fashion and entertainment industries to portray a regular woman. It’s like they’ve been doing for what they’ve been doing so long that they no longer know any real women and wouldn’t know the first thing about portraying one.
You may recall that on “Friends,” the character Monica had a past issue with overeating. When we see “Fat Monica” in flashbacks, the character is stupid, naïve and obliviously jolly. Every joke relates to her weight and every sentence she utters, between bites of bagels and pizza, pertains to food.
So we can see the depiction of plus-sized people on television as a step in the right direction, but I see it as a step back. Yes, we’re finally seeing non-thin women on television, but they are tokenized and any semblance of personality or intelligence is removed. When we ask the entertainment industry to portray a real woman, we’re asking for something more: for a female character with substance, intelligence, depth, personality, and a defining quality beyond her appearance.
Leave a Reply