How cruel were early-noughties diet shows?

Though self-esteem and body issues have been intrinsically linked to the way women relate to their bodies for decades, it was not until the early 2000’s that TV shows that explicitly tied women’s bodies to their self-worth proliferated on UK television. As a young child I remember watching women being goaded and berated for being pear-shaped or apple-shaped or some fruit shape, when really they were just… women with bodies?!

Today I will argue that the rise of diet-culture TV was indicative of the socio-political context of New Labour policy (1990’s-2010) that created a system of meritocracy where anyone could succeed as long as they worked hard enough, that in turn bred ‘illegible rage’ in young women. This ‘illegible rage’, as theorised by Angela McRobbie (2007) was then used to further stratify class distinctions between working-class and middle-class women, based on their physical appearance. Engaging in the work of McRobbie, I will argue that the purpose of ‘Supersize vs. Superskinny’, a show that aired on Channel 4 between 2008–2014, was primarily to elicit disgust from the intended middle-class viewers, which consequently led to a redefinition of where working-class women belonged in a newly ordered class-system . Finally, I will argue that the ultimate purpose of the show is indeed not to help women with their eating disorders, but rather it is a spectacle designed to highlight the psychological, individualised problem of the participant, instead exposing the larger, social problem of economic and class inequality created by the neoliberal turn and defunding of social welfare.

One of the most important theories for understanding how these diet shows existed is post-feminism. Post-feminism is understood as feminism having achieved its aims, where women are now equal to men in work, life and marriage. However, it robs women of being able to call out still existing inequalities, by using the post-feminist narrative of accomplished equality to derail arguments that suggest that not all women are liberated. One of the dangers with this post-feminist discourse is how it frames the idea of ‘choice’; there is the assumption that women can make any choice they want, however there are some choices which are implicitly ‘better’ than others. Post-feminism is intimately linked with New Traditionalism, two concepts that call for a return to gender roles and ‘traditional’ femininity. Elspeth Probyn describes the connection of the two concepts; “new traditionalism hawks the home as the ‘natural choice’ which means, of course, no choice. If new traditionalism naturalizes the home into a fundamental and unchanging site of love and fulfilment, the discourse of post-feminism turns on a re-articulation of that choice” (1990, 152).

The re-articulation of the choice between home and work is also dependent on ideas of class. Class is an important factor of post-feminism, where middle-class women are given the choice of ‘career’ or ‘motherhood,’ and as a demographic, are positioned as freer than lower-class women, but less free than men from the same stratification. According to post-feminism, women have now gained all the rights, and it is now up to the individual woman to act upon them in order to succeed. However, as McRobbie notes, not all women are given the same choices of education or work (74). New traditionalism and post-feminism are bound by the ideology of choice, where both hide that the free-choice women have is in fact a choiceless choice, and that traditions are renewed because now feminism has allegedly been achieved.

The post-feminism of the neoliberal New Labour government of the early-noughties borrowed from the liberal feminist agenda of white, young women, to justify their meritocratic ideals (Leonard 2019) that a young woman should be economically active. Any achievement of this young woman, who is ultimately white and middle class, is upheld as a beacon of the reformist agenda of post-feminism. McRobbie argues that this individualism and repudiation of social inferiors is encouraged through “well-trained women gain[ing] their own more independent middle-class status” (2009, 72). Another aim of post-feminism is to cement the idea that now feminism has been achieved, there is no logic left for collective activity, as New Labour meritocracy implies that solidarity is irrelevant.

One way we see this reflected in popular culture is through the television shows of the early noughties. The participants of “make-over” shows are nearly always white, working-class women, who present their class status through the way they talk, dress and most importantly for ‘Supersize vs. Superskinny’, how they eat. The individualization of their problems becomes a problem for society — the narrator of Supersize vs Superskinny quotes statistics about how many obese or anorexic people there are in the UK,[1] which of course means their treatment is a strain on an already strained NHS that was still recovering from the recession (NHS 2017). And it is not just the individual who is the problem, it is their entire social class which they represent. For ‘Supersize vs. Superskinny’, the participants are first broken down through various means of humiliation (parading them in nude underwear, encouraging them to judge one another’s eating habits[2]), and then they are moulded into “better” women. Participants are interviewed about what they hate about their body — “no curves”, “child-like figure”,[3] or “giant thighs and flabby arms” — and then when they are revealed as a changed person at the end of the show, wearing new clothes and lots of make-up, they are praised for their progress towards their desired weight, and by extension, becoming a more accomplished woman. McRobbie argues that the make-over show would not work unless the participants were eager and willing to change, enduring humiliation in order to improve themselves, “On the basis of her own subordinate habitus, the individual… will instinctively, and unconsciously, know her place in regard to the experts, hence the tears, the gratitude and deference to those who know so much better than she does” (McRobbie 2009, 140). In the final scenes of Supersize vs Superskinny, the women frequently cry when they find out how they have changed their bodies, and the presenter, in his superior position, affirms the women on their new behaviour.

In fact, the presenter is indicative of how little the show is meant to help the women. The participants, the ‘Supersize’ obese woman, and the ‘Superskinny’ anorexic woman, are both suffering from eating disorders, yet are exploited for their vulnerability for the spectacle of reality TV. Swapping an oversized for a miniscule meal will not intrinsically solve an eating disorder or help the women, yet this is the premise of the show. McRobbie describes eating disorders as a sign of an ‘illegible rage’ in women, that are a result of anger at the choiceless choices that lead to the narrow concept of femininity. The disciplined idea of femininity is unwritten, it is not clear as to how women should live their lives, but instead instructs young women on what they should NOT be, which produces an illegible rage where one is unaware of what one is angry at;

Far from patriarchy divesting itself of power, in a redistributive and democratising move, so as to permit equality, in many instances it [the patriarchy] seems to be showing itself up once again, in the aftermath of feminist politics. Hence the opacity about the source and meaning of pain. Hence the extent to which young women are perhaps driven mad by the situation within which they now find themselves (McRobbie 2009, 105)

The goal of New Labour’s meritocratic policy, supported by the Post-feminist discourse, prefers women to be harming themselves instead of organising towards political objectives, “[b]etter to be an ill girl than a girl who gets up out of her sickbed and challenges the power of the heterosexual matrix” (McRobbie 2009, 96). As a result of this, a melancholia sets in, where there are no words given to the young woman in a post-feminist world that can make the rage legible, where young women are told that they are equal, yet this equality has arrived without fanfare, and no “adjustment or dramatic change on the part of patriarchal authority” is made (McRobbie 2009, 105). The make-over show of early-noughties Britain is a post-feminist, meritocratic example of how class membership is redefined through the woman’s body. The ideological work of a make-over show is where an individual is transformed “with the help of experts, in the hope, or expectation of improvement of status and life chances through the acquisition of forms of cultural and social capital” (McRobbie 2009, 128).

McRobbie’s definition of the make-over show as moving a woman “from one state, now deemed unacceptable, to another, which is a greatly improved state of good looks and well-being” (2009, 124) highlights the value-judgements entrenched in the viewer’s position. The improved state of the participant is promised to make them eligible to work and participate in consumer culture, as their disposable incomes make them important participants in the market. Because the participants are primarily working-class women, it is also a movement from being in the shadows, to being in the spotlight — from being hidden to being visible. Where the ‘young women’ of New Labour were defined as middle-class and were expected to go to university and financially succeed, the make-over show actively directs the working-class woman to make the right choices so that they can achieve a new definition within their class. Working-class women were historically expected to merely reach the same level of respectability as middle-class women, but through the make-over show, they are inspired to achieve a “glamourous individuality” (McRobbie 2009, 125). Class relations in the make-over TV show are not only conducive with the “meritocratic model of social mobility and consumerism so strongly promoted by the Blair government,” (McRobbie 2009, 130), but they also contributed to strengthening class divides. New Labour was frequently associated with the word, ‘aspirational’, which McRobbie argues is dramatized and feminised in the make-over show, “people are frequently individualised, they are required to invent themselves, they are repeatedly called upon to shape themselves so as to be flexible, and to fit with the new circumstances” (2009, 130). A literal calling to change is seen in Supersize vs Superskinny where the women are called upon to reshape their bodies in order to fit into what the presenter tells them is a normal, healthy body.

There is a symbolic violence that accompanies the creation of new hierarchies of the taste and style attributed to the make-over show, “public enactments of hatred and animosity are refracted at a bodily or corporeal level against weaker and much less powerful people, with impunity, on the grounds that the insult is made in a playful spirit and that it is not really meant” (McRobbie 2009, 130). In the case of Supersize vs Superskinny, the participants are made vulnerable as soon as they are identified for the show; revealing their disordered eating, being put in an unfamiliar environment, paraded on national TV in nude underwear and then forced to eat an extreme diet. The ‘insult’ is understood here as Dr Christian’s comments, “Is that it?” he asks when Jade’s weekly portion of breakfast is dropped down a large plastic tube (Superskinny 2019). This symbolic violence is supposed to re-form the participants so that they can be literally re-moulded into a body that is more ‘acceptable’. The participants first enter the show herded into a room, basically naked, and berate each other for their eating choices. Then Dr Christian comes in and tells them how they can change to fit in with the desired body shape of a woman. Standing between two undressed women, in a smart suit with coiffed hair, Dr Christian is a patriarchal voice dictating to them about how they can be better women. His class-status is evident through his vocabulary and medical profession, cementing the difference between him and the participants. This could be read as Dr Christian being a representative of New Labour and their relationship to working-class women.

The absence of racial diversity in the genre of make-over programmes is glaringly obvious; the majority of the participants in ‘Supersize vs. Superskinny’ are white-working class women. It could be argued that the lack of representation is indicative of how Black and Asian women are still unable to be moved out of their social class — they are unable to be “contained within the category of woman-as-image” (Thornham 2007, 29). By leaving these women out of the programme, they are not just excused from the humiliation, they are also excluded from transformation; this tells us that they were not viewed as ‘ready’ to have their femininity glamorised. The introduction of the show is another act of symbolic violence, where dismembered bodies wear the trademark nude underwear — bloated bellies are cut next to twig-like torsos, while measurements of height and weight are superimposed across the bodies. This medicalisation of the woman’s body pathologizes it before we are introduced to the actual people, leaving them “rendered transparent and legible” (Thornham 2007, 36). They are categorised by their imperfect waist circumference, which is indicative of their failing to be a normative woman.

To conclude, post-feminist TV shows such as ‘Supersize vs. Superskinny’ are emblematic of the New Labour policies that redefined a woman’s worth based on her body and femininity. Popular culture is used as a tool to show that feminism is over, where the dominance of popular culture as a state apparatus of ideologies, circulates ideas as if they were non-coercive. McRobbie argues that social categories of class materialise through make-over show’s reference to the female body, where “[t]he programmes actively produce newly defined social hierarchies on the basis of gender attributes and femininity” (2009, 129). Women, who are the targeted viewers and the majority of participants, are, through Supersize vs. Superskinny, recategorized under New Labour policy as being a profitable part of the economy. And their ability to participate in that economy is dependent on their ability to work, which means they must have a working body that does not suffer from an eating disorder. The success of this show is based on the fact that there has always been a class antagonism between white British women (McRobbie 2009, 146), and whilst the working-class women are encouraged to change, the middle-class male presenter Dr Christian, who the middle-class viewers are expected to align with, is not as invested in their transformation as he is in their humiliation. Overall, it could be argued that the female body in Supersize vs. Superskinny is overhauled so that it is “brought into line with the biopolitical demands of the new global economy” (McRobbie 2009, 148), one that requires women look and behave a certain way in order to overcome their illegible rage that results from post-feminist demands.

References:

Leonard, Sarah. 2019. “The Fall of the Meritocracy.” The New Republic.

McRobbie, Angela. 2009. “Illegible Rage: Post-feminist Disorders.” In The Aftermath of Feminism, by Angela McRobbie, 94–123. Londond: Sage.

McRobbie, Angela. 2009a. “Top Girls? Young Women and the New Sexual Contract.” In The Aftermath of Feminism, by Angela McRobbie, 54–93. London: Sage.

McRobbie, Angela. 2009. “‘What not to wear’ and symbolic post-feminist violence.” In The Aftermath of Feminism, by Angela McRobbie, 94–123. London: Sage.

NHS. 2017. Funding and efficiency. Accessed November 29, 2019. https://www.england.nhs.uk/five-year-forward-view/next-steps-on-the-nhs-five-year-forward-view/funding-and-efficiency/#43.

Probyn, Elspeth. 1990. “New Traditionalism and post-feminism: TV does the home.” Screen 147–159.

Thornham, Sue. 2007. “Fixing into images.” In Women, Feminism and Media, by Sue Thornham, 23–54. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

[1] In Series 6, Episode 1, the narrator announces that 1.6 million people in the UK suffer from an eating disorder, and that 20% of those who suffer from anorexia will die, either from medical complications or through suicide (Superskinny 2019).

[2] In series 2, episode 8, the ‘Superskinny’ Charlotte says, “I did think, like, how can you get to that size?”, followed by a cut to the ‘Supersize’ Heather, who says, “It’s quite scary to look at someone so tiny!” (Channel4 2009)

[3] In series 6, episode 1, the ‘Superskinny’ Katie says, “I hate being this skinny. I look at myself in the mirror and think, it’s disgusting, it’s absolutely hideous. It’s not normal” (Superskinny 2019).