ABSTRACT
One night, while channel-surfing, I came across an episode of the American version of The Biggest Loser reality television series. It seemed to be the final for that series, as three contestants were presented as competing to be the ultimate winner. I watched in horrified fascination for a time as the ‘journey’ of each of these three was detailed in flashback accounts. The focus on humiliating, vilifying and punishing the contestants in the programme was overwhelming. It was shown how the contestants at the beginning of the series, and for each week during it, displayed their bodies dressed only in skimpy, stretchy bra-tops and shorts for women and brief shorts for men. This apparel allowed their rolls of wobbly flesh to be fully on display to the studio and television audience. One flashback showed each contestant’s initial experience of a public weigh-in in the first episode of the series. They stepped onto scales and their extreme weight was displayed in giant letters, establishing the gargantuan nature of the task that lay ahead – to lose enough weight to be considered ‘normal’.
