Fat Talk

On February 4, 24-year-old Rachel Frederickson made headlines when she won NBC’s “The Biggest Loser” after losing 155 pounds, or 60 percent of her body weight.  At 5 feet 4 inches, and now a size 0-2, Frederickson has garnered national attention for being “too thin.” Reporters and bloggers have claimed that she and the show went too far. They point out that Frederickson’s final weight gives her a BMI below 18.5—“underweight,” according to the CDC. Others use her body shape as their central argument. As Time Magazine put it, “It’s easy to see that Frederickson looks unhealthy. … People at home were wriggling in their seats at the sight of her now-emaciated body.” Twitter users have called her story “terrifying and depressing.” One was “seriously concerned that the confetti [would] knock Rachel over.”

So, before the show, Fredrickson was too heavy. That was bad. Now she is too thin. This is also bad. I can imagine the show’s executive producers sitting in a room thinking, “Crap, rewind to twenty pounds ago and ‘The Biggest Loser’ could have seamlessly moved on to its 16th season.” Whatever that perfect weight might have been, Frederickson missed it. But what if she had lost just 100 pounds? Would she have earned our congratulations and admiration?

Although it’s good that viewers are reconsidering “The Biggest Loser,” the rhetoric of most commentators is grounded in the same weight-shaming and body-idealizing philosophy that makes the show problematic in the first place. In declaring that Fredrickson is too skinny or needs to go to an eating disorder rehabilitation center, we reduce Fredrickson to her body shape. We carelessly diagnose her with a serious psychiatric illness, anorexia, just by looking at her, and slap moral valence onto her “weight loss journey.” We impose our definition of health in the same emotionally torturous way that “The Biggest Loser” does.

One of the problems with The Biggest Loser is that, except for its tearful pep talks, it presents weight as entirely within one’s control, a mere function of one’s work ethic. The show gives contestants a few opportunities to share stories of trauma and emotional abuse, but the real reason these “Losers” are on national television is that they are obese objects in need of fixing. It is the mission of the “charismatic trainers” to motivate them to lose drastic amounts of weight in short periods of time. The higher the percentage of body weight they lose, the longer they get to stay on the show, and the more likely they are to win $250,000 (and a lifetime supply of weight-loss-engendered happiness).

I understand the appeal of “The Biggest Loser” for the contestants. Lose weight, win money: You don’t even have to woo judges or sleep outside like on other reality shows. In fact, if I were on “The Biggest Loser,” I think I could win. I might have an unfair advantage having struggled with bulimia for five years. But can I let you in on a secret? I spent entire summers losing weight by binging and purging; minus passing out in the shower a few times and destroying my gums, I did quite a good job. No, I spent no time with friends, and no, it was not sustainable at school, and yes, a few times I wondered how to self-induce a coma, but I don’t think they would air those parts on TV. After all, the giant scale that contestants weigh themselves on at the end of each episode, where the weight reading jumps around like a crappy significant other who can’t decide whether or not to leave you, doesn’t measure your emotional wellbeing or your self-worth. (I weighed 50 pounds when I was in third grade – does that mean I was a better human back then?) I could win the competition by whittling my body down to nothing, to the point where I would be confused as to whether I was dead or alive, and earn a quarter of a million dollars.

By equating the number on a scale with physical and emotional wellbeing, the contest ignores the mental health of its contestants. “The Biggest Loser” doesn’t trouble itself with the complex relationship between food and emotions; rather, it frames weight loss as a straightforward (and, of course, financially profitable) enterprise.  However, in all the press surrounding the show’s finale, it is clear that neither the show nor its audience care about Fredrickson or the other contestants. The show shamed Frederickson into losing weight, and now audiences are shaming her into gaining. The show neglected her mental health, all in the name of health, and now commentators are equally ignorant in pushing her to gain weight. We as a society care about that number on the scale, not the person whose bones, muscles, and—yes—fatty tissue comprise that number. Rather than critiquing Fredrickson, we ought to consider the dangerous implications of the discourse around “too fat” and “too thin” for all of us.

Angela Lee ’14, a former Co-President of Student Mental Health Liaisons, is a social anthropology concentrator in Dunster House. Those interested in taking a stand against “The Biggest Loser” may sign this change.org petition: https://www.change.org/petitions/the-biggest-loser-stop-abusing-contestants-on-your-show.