The Biggest Loser, the worst show on TV

Weight is not a moral or character issue. It’s a health issue. But the Biggest Loser is relentless in characterizing contestants as initially weak, childlike, and even, in trainer Bob’s words, “broken” people.

Then, while never explaining to viewers exactly what program is being followed, making it impossible to replicate (isn’t that the opposite of “empowering?”), all credit is given to the trainers instead of the contestants.

Listen to the language in this voice-over during the finale:

“For ten seasons on the Biggest Loser, trainers Bob and Jillian have taken over 200 morbidly obese Americans and turned them into the epitome of health.”

This is the formula: in the course of each season, the trainers yell at and physically punish the contestants until they vomit and yell back and eventually cry.

That “breakthrough” allows the contestants to “find their inner warrior”, lose 100 – 200 pounds, and “become the person they always wanted to be.”

Viewers are left with nothing but breadcrumbs to trace how it happened. It seems to involve copious amounts of sponsored products Yoplait, Brita, Extra dessert-flavored gum, Subway, and Jennie-O ground turkey. And Ford vehicles.

And of course, who can ignore the messaging in the Biggest Loser Challenge Video game, endlessly promoted throughout the season?

A blonde woman, of medium weight, enters a gym. She sees intimidatingly thin and attractive women everywhere. So she leaves, saying, “Why does working out have to be so humiliating?” Then she goes home and works out to her Biggest Loser videogame instead. “This is more like it” she says.

Then trainer Bob weighs in, promising, “The new Biggest Loser Challenge will have you breaking right out of your shell.”

Working out in public is”humiliating?”

A gym full of attractive, fit people is intimidating, maybe. Why is it “humiliating? Presumably the narrative goes: it’s humiliating because our lady knows that she should look like them. She doesn’t. So she’s humiliated and is better off at home.

Thus, the fundamental unacceptability of the overweight person is the core of the brand of the Biggest Loser. She or he is a failure. Feeling too ashamed to enter a gym is normalized rather than challenged.

To take it a step further, the shame is evoked and then monetized. We have a product to help you with that.

The message is always that with the show’s help, change is possible. Otherwise, you’re just a tragedy.

The biggest irony is that proponents of the show champion its model of behavior modification over surgical intervention, but the Biggest Loser refuses to treat overeating as simply a behavior to be modified. It indulges in the constant characterization of the obese as pathetic human beings, deserving of pity and in need of intervention.

Think of Jillian’s comment about the makeover week fashion show. The contestants were not “sexy,” “glamorous,” “stylish,” or “hot.” Her take? They were “adorable.” Like children playing dress-up.

It could provide, for example, replicable meal plans and encouragement to working families trying to eat less processed, unhealthy foods in the real world of limited budgets, kids, and time constraints.

Instead, the show appears to guard its program explicitly so it can sell that information to viewers, through cookbooks, cruises, spas, videogames, supplements and hundreds of other products and platforms.

Why the **** are we sponsoring and supporting shows wherein subhumans bring themselves without shouting distance of the human form? Who the **** cares? We should put them on an island with no food and give the person who eats the rest of them a medal, then walk them off a cliff. It's a testament to our society that we champion these pathetic pieces of ****, rather than having tv shows wherein above-average athletes spent 8 weeks training their *kitten* off to compete in a variety of athletic endeavors- trying to make pro sports teams, competing in bodybuilding, etc. Shows wherein above average people attempt to become superhuman, rather than shows where our genetic dregs attempt to attain a human form. ******* pathetic.