Fat Acceptance TV?: Rethinking Reality Television With TLC’s<i>Big Sexy</i>and the Carnivalesque

Zimdars, Melissa

doi:10.1080/15405702.2015.1048344

Cited by 10 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…For example, higherweight individuals in reality television shows are objects of surveillance and depicted as in need of weight loss in order to successfully 'fit in' to society (Backstrom, 2012), what Raisborough (2016) calls 'redemption porn'. Few people in reality television are presented as valourising self-acceptance (Zimdars, 2015). Thus, as noted by the participants in the present study, greater representation and less weight-centric characterisation of larger characters is still needed.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 84%

“…Participants also felt that the increased representation nevertheless remained focused on their weight and its problematic nature. Although several mainstream television shows now feature a fat character whose weight is not used as a punchline, more common are fat characters who represent discontent or who pre-emptively poke fun at their own bodies (Zimdars, 2015).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Fat acceptance 101: Midwestern American women’s perspective on cultural body acceptance

Bombak

Meadows

Billette

2019

Health Sociology Review

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Weight stigma is pervasive in the US, with body size being pathologised and weight loss urged for those of higher weights. However, there is a growing movement for fat acceptance and body positivity. The present study explored perceptions and experiences of cultural body acceptance trends among Midwestern American women who are trying to, or have tried to, "accept" their bodies. Participants (n=18) are self-identified women who have ever been labelled 'obese' on the Body Mass Index and have ever tried to develop a more positive relationship with their bodies.Participants were interviewed three times over the course of approximately one year using a semi-structured interview guide that explored their perceptions of how society represented and treated those of a higher weight. Interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim, and interviews and field-notes analysed thematically. Emergent themes included: greater (mixed) representation, lip service, and inclusive cultures. Ultimately, participants positioned shifting attitudes towards fat bodies within wider social trends toward greater inclusion and diversity in general, but remained frustrated by ceilings of acceptable size, disingenuous messaging, and cultural backsliding.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 84%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fat acceptance 101: Midwestern American women’s perspective on cultural body acceptance

Bombak

Meadows

Billette

2019

Health Sociology Review

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…One might suspect that the concept was so broad as to be of questionable utility. The concept has been applied to the motion picture Rocky (Widenfeld, 2016), as well as to a host of television and radio programs such as the Jackie Gleason show from back in the 1950s (Wexman, 1990), British comedy from that same decade (Sobchak, 1996), the reality programs America's Next Top Model (Patton & Snyder-Yuly, 2012) and Big Sexy (Zimdars, 2015), CBC's Randy's Vinyl Tap (Svec, 2020), past and present efforts by Stephen Colbert (Meddaugh, 2010), the television series South Park (Halsall, 2008), and radio satire thought to be obscene (Armstrong, 2012). The concept has been applied to internet satire (Theall, 1999) and internet blogs (McLean & Wallace, 2013) as well as to literary works by Indian author Volga (Kamble, 2019) and British authors William Shakespeare (Termiji, 2015) and J. M. Barrie (Filimon, 2013).…”

Section: Uses Of Bakhtinmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bakhtin’s Carnivalesque: A Reconsideration Based on the BLM Demonstrations of 2020 and the Storming of the U.S. Capitol in 2021

Sheckels

2022

American Behavioral Scientist

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The theoretical insights of Mikhail Bakhtin offer the rhetorical critic of demonstrations and the social movements they are often a part of a useful analytical tool. Bakhtin’s focus on polyphony, particularly the type he termed “passive varidirectional” in his study of Dostoevsky, dovetails with his exploration of the “carnivalesque” as a popular culture and literary mode to offer a subversive rhetoric intended to undermine hegemony. Extant studies of Bakhtin by rhetoricians have bogged down in trying to make sense of his “messy” canon and, perhaps as a result, inadequately understood this subversive rhetoric. After offering an overall reading of Bakhtin and a sense of how the concept of “carnivalesque” has been used by critics, this essay will enrich that concept by applying it to the events of 2020 and 2021 and arguing that, to grasp the critical tool Bakhtin has offered critics, one must recognize (1) its political neutrality, (2) the possible varieties of “ carnivalesque,” (3) the place of violence in the “carnivalesque,” and (4) the new and subtle ways the body plays a rhetorical role in it. The events of 2020–2021 enable the critic to acquire a more nuanced understanding of Bakhtin’s rhetorical insights.

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“…Davidson (2020: 487) notes the many ways by which survival reality television 'departs from the general neoliberal tendency of reality television' by depicting 'the failed promise of neoliberalism'. I find this in my own research on globally circulated reality television series about weight-loss and fatness because they regularly expose their incapacities to consistently support disciplinary logics (Zimdars, 2015(Zimdars, , 2017(Zimdars, , 2019. Reality television functions much like power more generally wherein 'the existence of strategies of power does not necessarily correspond with the successful exertion of power, and (…) intended outcomes often fail to materialize because disciplinary strategies break down and fail' (Lupton, 1997: 102).…”

Section: Is Reality Tv Neoliberal?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Medicalized reality weight-loss television and the negotiation of neoliberalism on My 600 Pound Life

Zimdars

2022

Critical Studies in Television: The International Journal of Te

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On their surface, medicalised reality television series about food addiction and fatness seem to reinforce the same discourses of neoliberalism that have come to define our understanding of contemporary reality TV. However, this article considers how one of these shows, My 600 Pound Life (2012), negotiates and de-centres discourses of neoliberalism through medicalisation and spectacle. The bodies and behaviours on medicalised reality TV programmes can be engendering of sympathy as much or more than of discipline and shame, which reflects expanding and shifting narratives of the ‘obesity epidemic’.

show abstract

Fat Acceptance TV?: Rethinking Reality Television With TLC’sBig Sexyand the Carnivalesque

Cited by 10 publications

References 24 publications

Fat acceptance 101: Midwestern American women’s perspective on cultural body acceptance

Fat acceptance 101: Midwestern American women’s perspective on cultural body acceptance

Bakhtin’s Carnivalesque: A Reconsideration Based on the BLM Demonstrations of 2020 and the Storming of the U.S. Capitol in 2021

Medicalized reality weight-loss television and the negotiation of neoliberalism on My 600 Pound Life

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