A Kitchen Witches Corner

My parents brought their TV with them for the visit, as we don't have one and they like their programmes.  And one night we find ourselves watching this brain-meltingly vile programme called "super sized vs super skinny" or something.  Basically, as far as I could tell the programme focussed on two areas.

1- Get a group of fat, chubby or generally "unfit" women and set Gillian McKeith on them to berate them about a particular body part.  This time around, it was "saggy" bottoms.  Saggy is in quote marks here because the goal was, in fact, to lose inches off of the bum, not to make it perter or rounder or fuller or the other things one would usually associate with "saggy".  Oh, and there were no slim or skinny girls with saggy butts, only fat or chubby girls.

2- Get one woman who is "underweight" to a dangerous, eating-disorder level and one woman who is "overweight" to an equally disordered level.  In other words, one compulsive eater and one anorexic.  And make them switch diets.  In fact, make them prepare their normal food during the day and then swap plates.  Then see if they successfully approached a more "healthy" weight.

Let us ignore point 1 for a moment and skip straight to point 2.

Take one woman who has severely disordered eating to the point of possibly life-threatening anorexia, who clearly has a dangerous relationship with food, and make her binge for a fortnight.  A woman who has the visible signs of anorexia as so loved by the media; the jutting collarbone, the wasting limbs, the hollow face, the bruises. Do this by taking a very fat woman, making them live together, and have the fat woman feed the skinny woman lost of high-fat, fried, sugary and salty junk food, or very starchy food, or other forms of unhealthy food.

Take one woman who suffers from a compulsive eating disorder, who has suffered some terrible tragedy in her life and become dependant on food as a coping mechanism or emotional substitute/crutch, and force her to starve herself and guilt herself by having an incredibly skinny person present her with half a plate of lettuce as her daily meal.

Now, I hate to feel like I'm pointing out the obvious here, but...

BEING SKINNY OR FAT ARE POSSIBLE SIDE-EFFECTS OF EATING DISORDERS.  THE EATING DISORDER CAUSES ILLNESS AND POOR HEALTH, NOT THE WEIGHT.  THE WEIGHT IS JUST A VISIBLE INDICATION OF A POSSIBLE DISORDER

In other words,

Confused?

What if I made it even easier for you?

Anorexia is not a case of someone simply choosing not to eat.  It is a compulsion, a dependency, an addiction and an illness.  An anorexic person may well fear weight gain, and see in a fat person their own selves.  Having a very fat person feed an anorexic person junk will likely bemore triggering than curing.  Additionally, being skinny does not mean one is free of risk of high cholesterol or similar.  Feeding a person up with deep fried mars bars will not make them healthy, as their body will not be getting the nutrients it needs to heal.  Encouraging such a person to learn to eat reasonable quantities of healthsome food may do, however.  Not only that, but not all anorexic people are super-skinny.  A person doesn't just become anorexic once they fall below a certain weight.  The anorexia is in the behaviour, and an anorexic person can weigh 100lb, 200lb, 300lb, whatever.  If they have the disordered relationship with food that anorexia involves then they have anorexia, and being fat doesn't mean the starvation won't be causing bodily damage.

Compulsive eating is also not a choice.  It is an illness.  Compulsive eating may be related to a binge/guilt/purge/ cycle.  Presenting a compulsive eater with a more socially acceptable, skinny woman, will not cure them.  It will just shove that guilt at their own "weakness" into their faces.  Again, it may be more triggering than helpful, and certainly damaging to their health to start them on a cycle of extreme purges in between compulsive binges by starving them.

I have to admit I was also severely pissed off with all the stereotypes the programme threw up.  The skinny girl who doesn't eat and the fat girl who obviously must just stuff her face constantly.  What about the fat girl that eats little, or diets endlessly?  Or the skinny girl that struggles daily to gain weight by stuffing herself?  Or the girls of both sizes that eat a normal, healthy diet?

Weight loss and gain is presented as a simple choice "eat more/less and exercise", as opposed to a complex issue.

Additionally, there were a lot of contrived moments.

The skinny girl comes in wearing baggy, too-large clothes and no make-up, her hair pulled up roughly.  The skinny girl is shown close-up pictures of her bony limbs, her thin hands and her facial skin.  She is told "Look how frail and claw-like your hands are", as they show a picture that resembles one of a models hands; sculpted fingers and slender wrists.  She is told "See how unwomaly you are" as they zoom in on a hip that looks like the sort one would find on an A-list celebrity.  And then "See how blotchy your skin is" as we zoom into the skin of a prson with no make-up on, who hasn't slept properly and is sweating under hot lamps.

Then, after the new diet, and the weigh in, the skinny girl is dressed in fitting, flattring and glamourous clothing.  Her hair is treated and let down, and a heavy layr of foundation and make-up is applied.  "Look how much healthier you are, now!".

This programme is apparently supposed to show that being underweight and overweight are equally bad for people's health, but when I watched it the whole thing just seemed... just another programme designed to shame people into dieting.  And I hardly see how taking two supposedly unhealthy people with poor diets and making them try an opposite, but still supposedly unhealthy, eating plan is supposed to help at all.

Just... bleh.