Is 'Huge' Falling Into the Fat Trap?

If you have read any of the seminal books on television studies (yes, there is such a thing), you've probably fallen asleep a few times and woken up in the middle of a chapter about representation.

You see, for the longest time, TV scholars loved to complain about how few women and minorities were on TV compared to their corresponding numbers in actual society.

Well, their pontificating paid off... or, at least bored TV producers into submission, and now we have women and minorities all over the televisual landscape. There are even female doctors, if you can believe such ludicrous things!

I make this point not to simply drop some knowledge, but to raise some awareness, as well. While women and minorities have made great strides, there is another cross-section of our culture left in the margins of television: fatties.

People love to talk about how the United States is the most obese country in the world, but as seen on TV, the average American is as fit as an Ethiopian marathon runner. It seems as though we'll only watch fat people if they are rounded up into camps and subjected to torture ('Huge,' 'The Biggest Loser,' 'The View').

'Huge' (Mondays at 9PM ET on ABC Family) is a show about teens at a fat camp, complete with militant camp director and kooky mess hall cook. Think the movie 'Heavyweights,' only not entertaining. The thing is, the show has a chance to give voice to the fat community, but ends up being nothing more than 'One Tree Hill' with more pudding and stretchmarks. It completely trivializes what should be its strength: exploring the intricacies of what it's like to struggle with weight in a culture that tells you you look good to your face, then points and laughs when you walk away.

I'm not sure what it is about the fat that makes us (I am subtly hefty, myself) the scourge of society. Even sexual predators have their own shows ('To Catch a Predator,' 'Two and a Half Men') that, however feebly, try to make sense of it all. Perhaps the plump should adopt a similar strategy: a show where fat people are lured by Chris Hansen to a house miles away with the promise of sheet cake and hot wings. Once there, they are psychologically manipulated into telling the world they eat to silence the voices.

It seems like every marginalized group in this country has an opportunity on television to be heard and to illustrate to the average viewer what it's like to live on the outside of "normal." They have their own shows, and in some cases, their own networks dedicated to the task of cultivating a culture of equality -- except those of us who struggle with weight. TLC has three shows of its own that attempt to show how midgets are just like you and me: they make chocolate ('Little Chocolatiers'), they get married ('The Little Couple'), they can even have regular-sized children ('Little People, Big World'). Where's the show about a lovable fat family attempting to assimilate into the "normal" world? That show should, and could be 'Huge,' but every show about fat people tends to come from a Maury-esque tradition of "can you believe these people exist? Let's change them!"

I suppose that might be the fundamental difference in all of this: being fat is, essentially, a choice... a choice wrapped up in compulsion, physiology, and psychology, but a choice nonetheless; while being black or a woman or a dwarf is not a choice. Perhaps it's the element of choice that makes being fat, ironically, the bottom of the sympathy food chain.

I don't want you to think that 'Huge' isn't worth checking out, because its insistence on manufactured drama and an obsession with the meaningless, trivial aspects of its characters lives may be its attempt to show the kind of assimilation the little people from TLC are going for: the concept that, regardless of your size (height or width) we are all pretty much the same. We get where we are by being as petty and shallow as everyone else around us. It's as American as apple pie ... with some ice cream, and whipped cream, and maybe a cupcake to wash it down.


Dr. Vaughan teaches English/Media/Humor courses at Binghamton University in upstate New York, and he is a big fan of elastic waistbands. You can check out his blog at drvtv.wordpress.com or www.facebook.com/pages/Ryan-Vaughan/21931402981