labrys, études féministes/ estudos feministas
janvier/ juin / 2014  -janeiro/junho 2014

Policing Excess?  Weight-Loss Reality Television, Femininity, and Failure

Kathleen LeBesco

Abstract

This essay examines the discourse surrounding the extreme weight loss of 2014 The Biggest Loser winner Rachel Frederickson, from a cultural studies perspective and textual analysis. An analysis of the ideologies embedded within the show about health, beauty, fatness and femininity is coupled with an examination of media and individual fan responses to Frederickson’s transformation, to produce an argument about the ways in which the show polices all kinds of excess and reproduces the notion of the body as a project that must be continually worked on.

key words:extreme weight loss,body,health, beauty, fatness and femininity

In February 2014, the final United States episode of The Biggest Loser (Season 15), the weight loss franchise viewed in over 25 countries around the world, garnered much negative media attention after crowning Rachel Frederickson its winner.  Frederickson, a former athlete, lost nearly 60 percent of her body weight, going from 260 to 105 pounds in seven months (Conlin, 2014).  As confetti rained down on the Biggest Loser soundstage, trainers on the show reacted with alarm to the sight of this extremely lean young woman.  Within hours, through social media, the public had spoken, and was largely critical of Frederickson’s weight loss, disappointed in a show that had gone too far this time.  Despite Bernstein & St. John’s (2006) contention that the series unhelpfully condemns body fat, this critical response to “too much” weight loss confirms the argument of Sender and Sullivan (2008) that audiences are able to resist the messages of the show and its emphasis on extreme weight loss—or does it?  This essay examines the kerfuffle over Frederickson’s corporeal transformation and considers the ideological underpinnings of both the series and the public discourse about Frederickson.

The Biggest Loser, which began airing in the US in 2004, features a typical reality show contest format.  A number of fat contestants living at an isolated ranch are split into teams at the beginning of each season, and assigned different personal trainers, who oversee a strict training regimen for several months.  Contestants face physical and emotional challenges as they exercise to the point of exhaustion and endure highly restricted diets, while being isolated from their homes and families. Bernstein and St. John contend that tasks and challenges on The Biggest Loser seem specifically designed to induce body shame among fat contestants (2006, 26). Episodes tend to include some form of temptation, a reward challenge, various workouts, a weigh-in, an elimination challenge, and a vote.  As a result of the latter, unsuccessful contestants are made to leave the show, and of those that remain at the end, the one with the highest percentage of weight lost wins a quarter of a million US dollars and claims the mantle of “the biggest loser,” a back-handed compliment if ever there was one.  The series has been a ratings success in the US, with between seven to ten million viewers per episode (Patten 2012).

Despite its appeal to the viewing public, the series has occasionally been criticized for the methods of weight loss it promotes, which some view as unhealthy and downright dangerous.  The winner of the first US season, Ryan Benson, told The New York Times in 2009 that after dropping 122 pounds in 2004, he was back above 300 pounds and that “he dropped some of the weight by fasting and dehydrating himself to the point that he was urinating blood” (Wyatt 2009, A1).  Likewise, Kai Hibbard, the Season 3 runner-up, admitted to actively dehydrating herself in order to rack up big weight loss numbers (ibid), and said that her experience on the show cultivated an eating disorder in her.  Yet these rare instances of former contestants criticizing the practices promoted by the series have been casually dismissed; it is not the show, according to trainer Jillian Michaels, who has appeared in most seasons, but rather, the occasional overzealous contestant.

“‘Contestants can get a little too crazy and they can get too thin,’ she said. She said contestants are medically checked and disqualified if they are dehydrated or are found to be taking drugs or diuretics” (Wyatt 2009, A1).

That Frederickson took the show’s premise to its logical extreme seems to have escaped the many commentators who deride her exceptionally thin state.  Bernstein and St. John note that the weight-loss practices on the show—

“[...] being encouraged to workout [sic] until they vomit and then resume exercising, severe food restriction before weigh-ins, pressure to ignore exercise-aggravated injuries” constitute “boot camp to develop an eating disorder” (2006, 27). 

Surprised, Bernstein and St. John observe that there was no critical outcry over contestants’ posting of huge weight loss numbers in short periods of time in the early season, joining a chorus of public health scholars who have problematized the dangerous and unrealistic methods popularized by weight-loss reality shows (Christenson and Ivancin 2006; Rich 2011; Stein 2007).  Furthermore, they note that the critical discourse about reality show participants who surrendered their bodily autonomy to an external “expert” that had characterized other shows focusing on bodily transformation was utterly absent from the early seasons of The Biggest Loser (2006: 27).

Even in the most recent US season, in the case of Rachel Frederickson, there was little clamor about her submission to the diet and exercise regimes imposed by her trainer, Dolvett Quince.  In fact, much was made of the “fact” that she looked normal and healthy when her time at the ranch concluded (Conlin 2014), and that she had problematically escaped the watchful eye of her trainer, getting herself into this disordered mess on her own, by losing the last 45 pounds in the two months leading up to the final weigh-in (Chan, 2014).  Indeed, per Bernstein and St. John,

“By shifting from sedentary binge eaters into over-exercising dieters, contestants are transformed from fat people with one set of impairments in their relationship to food and their bodies in to thinner people with a different set of socially rewarded impairments” (2006, 28). 

That moral outrage found its target in Rachel Frederickson for embodying the show’s natural end-game suggests that some viewers are fooling themselves about the ideological underpinnings of the show.  That similar outrage has not been directed toward a male contestant after posting similar numbers suggests that there is a gendered dimension of this ideological work, too—that feminine excess (in the form of fat and in the form of its absence) is a failure that must be policed.

A closer look at Rachel Frederickson’s trajectory on the show is instructive. Rachel frames her journey on the show as “getting my life back.”  From the season’s first episode, when she chronicles her weight gain after years as a competitive swimmer, her words function as the kind of confession described by Levy-Navarro (2012) that disparage her present state and anticipate a slimmer, “healthier” future.  In post-win interviews, Rachel shares her euphoria over having succeeded in getting her life back; between the lines, she is describing her formerly fat self as not having a life—as dead, in effect—and thus she perpetuates “a view of the fat person as immature, pathological, and morally loose” (Levy-Navarro 2012: 347).  Levy-Navarro concludes that “each time a person confesses that she has found a new me that is younger, more energetic, and healthier than her former fat self and every time we applaud her transformation, we are with her implicitly making the fat self all that we must hate, avoid, and finally control” (2012: 348).

In short, the work of The Biggest Loser series is to make the body itself into a project—to encourage an un-ending pursuit of a new self.  As Sender and Sullivan put it,

“[...]epidemics of will and failures of self-esteem are the stock-in-trade of makeover television in which we must never stop working on ourselves” (2008, 582).

Despite my belief that the show does not promote sustainable or healthy behaviors, that is not my biggest axe to grind, as I feel that the cultural work accomplished by the series is not most threatening it its potential to make gullible viewers think that these weight loss methods are ideal.  In fact, Readdy and Ebbeck (2012, 584), in an audience study of committed fans of the series, concluded that the identification the fans feel with the contestants on the show does not translate into actual weight-loss action.  They argue that “Society’s overwhelming acceptance of a show like The Biggest Loser is a complex blend of a desire to witness self-transformation, a need for entertainment, and an uncritical belief in the health dangers of obesity that is shaped by techniques of governmentality” (Readdy and Ebbeck 2012, 585).  What is my concern is that these ideological foundations are left unexamined and that the series cultivates problematic assumptions about body size, health, excess and, in the most recent season, femininity. To wit, Sender and Sullivan, in their audience study of watchers of The Biggest Loser, argue that “audiences are able to distance themselves from humiliating representations and to critique the specific instructions provided” but that they fail to critique the larger framing of fatness on the show (2008: 582).

The experience of Rachel Frederickson, who employed the discourse of “getting her life back” while running triathlons, begs questions: What then happens when a contestant works on herself to the tune of 6 hour-per-day workouts and 1600 calories per day?  She is chastised for taking things too far and not fitting in properly. Peppers (2014) reports that Frederickson admitted, weeks after winning the show, that she had been “maybe a little too enthusiastic” with her training, working out six hours per day and consuming only 1600 calories per day.      

The response to Rachel Frederickson’s weight loss is consistent with what Sukhan has described as a ubiquitous attack on Western women’s body size and shape (2013, 197).  Comments following many online stories about Frederickson’s win are instructive, as they present a variety of perspectives on the ideologies embedded in The Biggest Loser and in the coverage of negative public reaction to her very thin appearance on the final episode.  In response to a brief ABC News Online article about Frederickson sharing her diet and exercise secrets (Messer, 2014), the first commenter frames Frederickson’s weight loss positively as a temporary means to a gratifying end (the cash prize of US$250,000), and suggests that her weight loss is no different from that of actor Matthew McConaughey who lost weight to star in the film Dallas Buyers Club. 

However, this commenter fails to discuss the gendered dimension of the difference in response to these weight-loss scenarios.  Other commenters with a more critical perspective point out that most people cannot take the 3-4 fitness classes per day that Frederickson says she participates in.  Yet much of the commentary is directed negatively at Frederickson’s appearance, saying that she looks like a much older woman, that she looks unhealthy and borderline anorexic, and that she doesn’t look “attractive.”  Very few commenters who criticize Frederickson’s appearance place their critique in the context of a show that promotes troubling behaviors related to and beliefs about health, fatness, and beauty.  A rare exception is commenter Lisbeth, who finally sees the entire enterprise of The Biggest Loser as ideologically dangerous after it champions Frederickson’s weight loss:

The role these celebrities play don't claim to be "healthy, strong or inspirational", and to fit the role is part of their job. Rachel claims her drastic weight loss is just that, healthy, realistic, and strong. She agreed to share her health journey on a family-oriented reality show that aims to inspire others. However her image addressed the opposite. Her bones show, her face has aged, and she just appears unhealthy. The trainers, viewers, and other contestants thought that too.

No other Biggest Loser female or male winner caused this much controversy, we rooted for them throughout the season and cheered during the final. Dani's journey from last season was amazing. No other winner felt the need to go below the healthy range to win, she won by a long-shot and made a new record. Was it necessary? No. There's a difference between obsessive and competitiveness. Going to 4 different classes per day is obsessive, not competitive. Previous winners looked healthy at their win, she did not. She took it too far, and sent the wrong image to viewers. She did not represent strong or healthy, but instead thin.

I've been a fan of the biggest loser for years, however after seeing them cheer and applaud someone who is now a "thinspiration" alters my view on what the show was originally about. I've decided that I will no longer watch the show or support its franchise.

It is comments like those of Lisbeth that finally connect the experience of Rachel Frederickson to the larger ideologies promoted by the show.  Although she still takes pains to castigate the extreme efforts of Frederickson as an individual, in the end, Lisbeth recognizes that Frederickson seems only to have taken the show’s mandate to its logical conclusion, and thus has decided to abandon her viewership.

It is my hope that viewers and critics who confine their critiques to the “troubled” likes of an individual contestant are ultimately able to see the elephant in the room.  The series, and its ilk, bear much critical consideration, and not merely from the “are people exercising too much?  Are they losing too quickly?” perspective.  A productive critique of the series must engage with its larger themes—its uncritical embrace of the “fat equals unhealthy” mantra, its mandate to contain excess, and its insistence on the body as an ongoing project.

Biography

References

Bernstein, Beth and Matilda St. John. 2006. “HAES/The Biggest Loser,” Health at Every Size, vol. 20, pp. 25-29.

Chan, Jennifer. 2014. “Celebrity Nutritionist on Biggest Loser's Rachel Frederickson Weight Loss Transformation: ‘It's a Little Scary’,” E! Entertainment Television Online, 5 February,

 http://www.eonline.com/news/507771/celebrity-nutritionist-on-the-biggest-loser-s-rachel-frederickson-weight-loss-transformation-it-s-a-little-scary, accessed 14 March 2014.

Christenson, P. and M. Ivancin. 2006. The “Reality” of Health:  Reality Television and the Public Health.  Washington, DC:  Kaiser Family Foundation.

Conlin, Jennifer. 2014. “A Big Reveal Touches a Nerve,” The New York Times, 9 February, p. ST12.

Levy-Navarro, Elena. 2012.  “I’m the New Me: Compelled Confession in Diet Discourse,” Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 45, no. 2, pp. 340-356.

Messer, Lesley. 2014. “Biggest Loser Rachel Frederickson Shares Diet and Exercise Secrets,” ABC News, 7 February,

 http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/biggest-loser-winner-rachel-frederickson-shares-diet-exercise/story?id=22408780, accessed 14 March 2014.

Patten, Dominic. 2013. “Full 2012-2013 TV Season Series Rankings,” Deadline.com, 23 May,

http://www.deadline.com/2013/05/tv-season-series-rankings-2013-full-list/, accessed 15 March 2014.

Peppers, Margot. 2014. “Biggest Loser Winner Rachel Frederickson Debuts Healthier Looking Figure on the Today Show as She Defends Dramatic Weight Loss,” UK Daily Mail Online, 26 February,

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2568389/Biggest-Loser-winner-Rachel-Frederickson-debuts-healthier-looking-figure-Today-show.html, accessed 14 March 2014.

Readdy, Tucker and Vicki Ebbeck. 2012.  “Weighing in on NBC’s The Biggest Loser:  Governmentality and Self-Concept on the Scale,” Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, vol. 83, no. 4, pp. 579-586.

Rich, Emma. 2011. “‘I See Her Being Obesed!’: Public Pedagogy, Reality Media and the Obesity Crisis,” Health (London), vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 3-21.

Sender, Katherine and Margaret Sullivan. 2008. “Epidemics of Will, Failures of Self-Esteem: Responding to Fat Bodies in The Biggest Loser and What Not To Wear,” Continuum:  Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, vol. 22, no. 4, pp. 573-584.

Stein, K. 2007. “When Overweight and Obesity Become ‘Reality’,” Journal of the American Dietetic Association, vol. 107, no. 10, pp. 1709-1710.

Sukhan, Tiara. 2013. “Bootcamp, Brides, and BMI:  Biopedagogical Narratives of Health and Belonging on Canadian Size-Transformation Television,” Television and New Media, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 194-210.

Wyatt, Edward. 2009.  “On ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Health Can Take Back Seat,” The New York Times, 25 November, p. A1.

biopgraphy

Kathleen LeBesco, Ph.D., is Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Marymount Manhattan College in New York City. She is author of Revolting Bodies: The Struggle to Redefine Fat Identity, co-author of Culinary Capital, and co-editor of Bodies Out of Bounds: Fatness and Transgression, Edible Ideologies: Representing Food and Meaning, The Drag King Anthology, and several journal special issues. Her work concerns food and popular culture, fat activism, disability and representation, working-class identity, and queer politics.

labrys, études féministes/ estudos feministas
janvier/ juin / 2014  -janeiro/junho 2014