Starving Yourself – the British Way

{ May 3, 2007 @ 3:43 pm } · { Endemol, Fat Teens Can't Hunt, Media, Reality TV }

A new reality TV series titled ‘Fat Teens Can’t Hunt’ is set to air in the UK sometime in the near future. The premise of the show? It’s exactly what it sounds like: fat teenagers are forced to survive in ‘middle-of-nowhere’ Australia with Aboriginal communities and hunt for their own food. I laughed out loud thinking that it was some kind of joke that somone thought up in response to how much weight people lose on ‘Survivor’. It sounds absolutely ridiculous (and it should), but the show is real!

Based on an existing popular reality series ‘Fat Men Can’t Hunt’ already airing in the UK, the show’s producer Endemol says that it is aimed at “helping overweight children tackle overeating”. Yeah, sure… by starving them! It’s true that Britain has the highest number of overweight and obese teenagers in Europe and maybe they think that by creating shows like this one they are ‘dealing’ with their obesity problem. Personally, I think that the only thing Britain needs to deal with right now is their serious psychological problems. Teenagers already have a hard time dealing with the pressures of society, they don’t need to be blamed and humiliated on public television for them to feel ashamed for being overweight – trust me, they already do. If the British media is starting to make overweight people – let alone overweight teenagers – pariahs of society by sending them to Australia (the same place they used to send convicts) then they’re just reinforcing the fact that skinny is the only way to be accepted which then creates further problems in the minds of those that do not fit this norm. Think about it this way… it’s like being indirectly violated by being told what to think without actually being told.

The British media clearly doesn’t understand that the obesity problem is not going to go away just like that; inevitably, these teenagers will likely go back to their old habits once the show’s over. And then what will they have learned, how to develop an eating disorder? Get the picture?

Afterword: Endemol is also planning on putting in it’s weightloss line-up ‘Help! My dog’s as fat as me!’ What will they think of next?