As a big-boned TV creative, I’ve sat through talk about how fat is funny, witnessed weekly staff weigh-ins and had senior colleagues explain ‘the problem with fat people’. Enough is enough
For a long time, fat people like me have been the butt of a television obsession. The search for the next “turn of the wheel” in the world of fatness is at the forefront of many a TV commissioner’s hit list, hence shows such as How to Lose a Stone in 21 Days, The Biggest Loser and Channel 4’s latest makeover series, The Unique Boutique. This is a fashion fix format aimed at helping people with disabilities and plus-size people to find clothes.
As someone who comes up with TV shows for a living, I’m in the room when these sorts of ideas are concocted and it is rarely pretty. I say this despite being someone whose doctor and dad describes them as “morbidly obese”. We’re talking about an industry with a deeply chequered past when it comes to fat people on screen. It either ignores them entirely in hits such as Love Island, where a man boob or some beautiful billowing back fat won’t make it through customs, let alone poolside at the villa. Or it puts them in factual entertainment shows like The Biggest Loser, which encourage restrictive, unrealistic fad diets for sport.
