Last night Channel 4 aired Plus Sized Wars, a seemingly predictable take on the ‘Fat vs. Thin’ debate, in which attention turned to the wave of plus size Instagram models taking the British high street by storm (several years behind the times, if you ask me). The usual Twitter wars were sparked as thousands voiced their opinion on the matter, while the controversy continued well into the morning as today’s Metro flaunted a mildly infuriating quote from Loose Woman and one-time 00s pop sensation, Jamelia (yes, who?) about pandering to the nation’s obesity crisis. Yet by lunch time the question of waist size had put firmly back on the shelf again, no doubt ready to be unearthed by an uninspired C4 producer in due course.
It’s not that the debate itself is tired- far from it, if statistics on both female and male eating disorders are anything to go by- but the fact that it’s presented in the same tired format over and over again prevents these kinds of shows from having any lasting impact. We take what is a very poignant issue and dilute it for our entertainment, to the point where most viewers don’t know what to think anymore. One minute we’re poking fun at overweight couples who are so unrestrained that they’re oblivious to their own gluttony on Secret Eaters, the next it’s a big fat thumbs down to the fashion industry for failing to accommodate the fabulous curves of the so-called ‘average woman’. Obesity and society’s prejudice against it are both valid points, yet we never engage with the issue beyond these superficial, and transparently voyeuristic, programs. There’s no real debate other than the need to debate; it’s passive media consumption at its finest.
Political initiatives always assert that female body image needs to be addressed. In schools, in the workplace and, most consistently, in the media. Yet in reality we’re offered very limited resources to thoroughly engage with the complex relationship most women have with their bodies. It’s all very well telling us that, on the one hand, sugar makes you fat, while, at the same time, too skinny= wrong, but where do we go from here? What about the millions of girls who are neither overweight nor disconcertingly thin, who all still struggle with their insecurities on a daily basis? Who are they supposed to relate to? In a move not so far removed from the media fat cats who saturate our ad breaks with junk food commercials in the hope we’ll subconsciously take note, those in power continue to underestimate our capacity to think freely for ourselves.
Clearly it’s our fascination with food that drives the creation of programs like Plus Size Wars and encourages us to pick up this morning’s Metro en masse. We consume them with vigour because, along with 140 characters on Twitter, it’s the only way to get involved. You can lay the blame on Western pop culture, the food industry or the individual all you want, but the real failure is society’s expectation of us. For as long as these platforms remain limited, so does the scope for discussion, and worse than allowing women like Jamelia to come out with such idiotic comments, it enables these oversimplified views to have clout.
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