TV shows

I used to devour TV shows to do with weight loss. Not so much The Biggest Loser - even then I felt uncomfortable at the abuse and shaming of contestants - but the pseudo-medical shows of the type usually aired on the Lifestyle Channel. Even when not on a diet, I would watch these shows in the hope that they could give me tips on how to lose weight, or better yet the motivation to do so. These shows inevitably follow the same format, no matter their angle: the fat person is shown stuffing rubbish into their mouths; they are confronted about the way in which they are ruining their health; they cry, chins wobbling; they go on some sort of gruelling diet and exercise regime; they are pictured beaming ten weeks later, a few kilos down, with soft strings playing in the background. This was a few years ago - I haven't had a TV for the better part of five years, and anyway I've lost my appetite for the MTV trash shows and cooking shows I used to love.

A few days ago I started flicking around again to see what's on, probably for the first time since I started therapy three months ago. What really struck me is how many shows there are now specifically on the topic of weight and obesity. Not just on Lifestyle, whose three channels (for home repairs, food, and "health") are a perfect trifecta for guilt-tripping women, but also on commercial TV and public TV. Comedy channels, documentaries, the politics channel, different news streams, you name it and they're fat-shaming. More often than not, I roll my eyes and move on. But the proliferation of these pseudo-medical shows really caught my attention. There are more of them, and they are all focused on one task: shaming fat.

What set me off yesterday was a show on ABC2 on mothers' obsessions. They covered a broad range of obsessions: exercise, compulsive eating, surgery, shopping addictions, "partying", but with such shaming and with such regressive views on what the role of a 'mother' should be (nurturing stay-at-home role models, apparently) that I ended the hour absolutely infuriated. Yes, many of these women had addictions, and their relationship with their teenage daughters suffered for it. But instead of showing us more about the therapy, an exploration of the underlying issues behind their disorders, and tips on how to counter their obsessions, you had "psychologists" berating these women with a smug tough-love approach for being silly enough to have a disorder in the first place. The only time self-esteem was raised was with the woman who controlled her daughter's weight because she hated herself, and even that was cursory, ending in a shot of the lady taking photos of the sea to show her loving herself (???). The fat woman was simply told to lose weight, with one of the fake psychologists commenting condescendingly that she needed self-control. The lady who hadn't set firm enough boundaries with her 16yo was slut-shamed and told that she was 'sick' for pursuing younger men and that she needed to stay home (would this EVER be said to a man? The woman was 34!). The shopping addict barely even got therapy, just a telling-off from her daughter. (There were also weird racial elements to the show, with black therapists used for black families and vice versa - do you think the black families are too stupid to understand standard American English or what?)

How hard is it to understand? If disorders were just a case of 'stop eating so much' or 'stop buying so many clothes' or 'exercise moderately', then we wouldn't have these societal (and public policy) problems. It's true that not every fat person has an eating disorder, but many do, and spending millions telling them to eat less and jog three times a week is akin to throwing taxpayers' money in the bin. Trying to shame fat people thin just multiplies the number of fat people in the population. In my view, the only way to successfully combat the so-called crisis (more on that later) is through a combination of information on basic nutrition principles and mental health therapy, even group therapy. I understand the frustrations of public policymakers, particularly given the fact that such individual treatments are costly and not guaranteed to work, but they must understand that the current approach isn't working either.

Of course, discourse on mental health in this country is woeful as a whole, so I'm not optimistic about the chances of changing our national discourse on obesity. But here's what I would see in my dream world:

• Explicit emotional education in kindergartens and primary schools - identifying what emotions are and how we deal with them, not quashing them
• Positive body image education in schools (BMI letters for 4yos show that we're moving in the complete opposite direction)
• Nutrition education at schools that doesn't rely on shame or guilt
• A true emphasis on 'health at every size', and education of medical practitioners to this end
• Easier access to subsidised mental health care/more subsidised mental health care
• Campaigns to end the social stigma surrounding fat, from both a society and a state level
• Campaigns to end the social stigma surrounding mental illness and disorders in general!
• (A complete change in culture that ends the sexualisation and objectification of women, and the stereotype of the stoic strong male from whom crying is weakness...)

 For a TV show that actually engages in a meaningful discussion on how to deal with the personal and social problem of obesity, see the obesity episode of Insight SBS.