sashinka | observation orientated, with a twist of lime | a blog

Hang 'em, I say. And flog 'em, too
OK, so I don't usually watch daytime TV, honest. But I was compelled to watch Trisha this morning. Generally any eponymous show on during daylight hours is to be avoided: Trisha, Esther, Oprah, Ricky, the late-TV-lamented Vanessa, et al. Oh, and Kilroy. But I'll save that rant for another time.

This morning it was Trisha's Challenge; three concerned partner/friends of fat women said how their wife/friend was really fat, ruining her life, their sex life, the universe. One guy, humiliatingly, held up the jogging pants his wife now wears in bed (I think, slightly stretching them at the waistband to make them look bigger), and then held up a black lacey thong and said he'd rather she wore that. Maybe he would, but they're not exactly comfortable, are they? I can just imagine a wet-behind-the-ears TV researcher saying to him; "OK, bring the biggest thing you have of hers, and, yeah, I see it now, something reallysmall." "But she never wore those thongs, even when she was thin." "That's OK, we'll get them for you."

All three showed before and after pictures. One guy held up his wife's size 8 skirt, and said she'd doubled in size. So she's a size 16 now; the average size of a UK women. I'm not saying this because I'm a size sixteen; she really didn't look well in the before pictures.

Daytime TV is bad enough without public humiliation rituals. When it got to the bit where the husbands gently berated their womanly wives; "it's for your own good, you know," I started feeling sick. I don't think that being fat "happens" to you (if, indeed these women were fat; I think if you can still go into a regular shop and buy clothes, you may be a little heavy, but ridicule is not required); I don't think fat people are victims.

I know how hard it is to lose weight, however well-intentioned friends and bystanders are. I don't think you have to pussyfoot around fat people, pretending they're thin to make them feel better, and telling them it's not their fault. I mean, clearly, I've eaten more than I should and exercised less than I ought; it's a simple input-output equation with some emotional stuff thrown in.

But undertaking a public flogging on national TV? Is this the modern day equivalent of a witch-hunt? Are not-so-fat people to be so demonised as to be hauled up before a jury of their peers? Hung in the market-square for all to see?

There's a delicate balance between a supportive, loving partner non-judgmentally helping you do something you want to do yourself, and him selling your relationship for his fifteen minutes of fame. Of course, I'm not qualified to judge, as I used the ultimate voting-with-my-hands tool (the OFF button) so never found out what the women really thought.