Reality TV program 'humiliates fat people'
By Amy Lawson February 12, 2006 http://www.theage.com.au/news
HEALTH experts have slammed a new reality television show that pits
overweight contestants against one another in a "battle of the bulge".
The Australian version of The Biggest Loser will premiere tomorrow
night on Channel Ten amid stinging criticism that it promotes negative
stereotypes about overweight people, humiliates and shames them and
gives people unrealistic expectations about weight loss.
Jenny O'Dea, nutritionist and researcher at the University of Sydney's
faculty of education and social work, said the show set contestants up
to fail and in the process intentionally humiliated them.
"The entertainment value is based on deliberately humiliating and
degrading people, on blaming and shaming them," she said.
"I don't see that as a decent sort of entertainment. It's certainly not
ethical."
Dr O'Dea cited several scenarios in the first episode in which the
contestants are severely humiliated.
"People are being set up to be humiliated for the sake of getting a
rise out of viewers, which is just pathetic," Dr O'Dea said.
"A successful life is not built around having a suitable weight.
Another myth is that weight loss equals happiness. It does not."
Martha Lourey-Bird, lecturer in the school of public health and
community medicine at the University of NSW and scientific adviser to
Weight Watchers, said , there was a risk that overweight Australians
would see the contestants, who range in weight from 101 to 196
kilograms, and become complacent about their own health problems.