Sweet jesus I thought her entire pussy was out and had also gotten incredibly fat.
The diets these fatties go on are either stupid, unsustainable "crash" diets promising fast results, or else shitty, half-assed versions of diets that actually do work. Low-carb, keto, and vegan all work when you're doing most of your own cooking and using whole ingredients, and can also be sustainable lifestyle changes--but fatties always end up doing them in the dirtiest, most fucked-up ways possible. So of course "diets don't work."
She's not wrong, though, as much as I want to find something wrong with what she wrote. She won't keep people from watching the show, though. One can argue that she is trying to block other fatties from seeking help, but desperate people are not going to deny help just because she says so.Ash from the Fat lip Podcast, got an email from the casting office of my 600 pound life. She writes about it on her website.
Here are the highlights. (It's a long read. I'm only posting small parts from it):
There are some topics that I’ve avoided really talking about no matter how many times I’m asked or how qualified I am. One of those is My 600-lb Life. I’m not going to tell you what that is or where to find it. I like to consider it the Voldemort of TV shows. Never speak its name. Except, you know, right now in this essay.
If you don’t know about My 600-lb Life, please enjoy blissful ignorance and never ever google it. Trust me on this. Most of us do know about it. Most fat people have been asked by an acquaintance or family member or stranger on the internet if they know about it. I wish I didn’t.
I hate this fucking show. It is entrenched in and actually makes a product of weight stigma. It creates entertainment around it. This show profits off of its audience’s fear of fatness and disability. And that’s not even touching what it does to the actual fat people it profiles.
My assumption has always been that the people who appear on the show have applied to participate because they have become overwhelmed by their circumstances and are looking for help. It has never and will never be for me to decide what people do with their own lives and bodies. If people are seeking this out, this is not for me to criticize.
But something happened a couple weeks ago. I got an email from a casting office.
Date: Thursday, March 5, 2020
To: ash@thefatlip.com
Subject: My 600-lb Life Opportunity
Hi Ash!
My name is Gabe, I’m a casting assistant working with TLC on their compelling docu-series My 600-lb Life. Each episode follows the lives of real people as they embark on a road to better health and make the courageous decision to change their world forever.
We are looking for individuals over 18 years old, between 500-800 pounds, who live in the continental US and are ready to commit to a year-long program to improve their health. If approved by the show’s physician, selected individuals will also receive Gastric Bypass Surgery.
I know it would be a big change for you. If you are interested in learning more, I would be excited to hop on the phone to discuss this opportunity in more detail!
I’m looking forward to hearing back soon!
All the best,
Gabe
Ain’t that some shit? Clearly Gabe here didn’t do even the most basic research. I have been vocally fat positive on the internet for over 15 years and have made with my own two fat hands a fat liberation podcast that has been running two episodes a month for nearly 4 years. I regularly post photos of my 600 pound body in varying degrees of undress on the internet. I am not the one, Gabe.
I responded to this email as politely and diplomatically as I could possibly manage: “Not no but fuck no.”
I posted about the email and my response on Instagram and over the next few days I heard from at least 8 other fat people who had received nearly identical messages. Not all from Gabe, though. An Instagram friend with inside knowledge said that casting for these shows is done by independent contractors that are paid by referral.
Apparently at least one of these casting assistants (and I suspect all of them based on the people who seem to have been targeted) went right through the infinifat hashtags and hit up anyone who appeared to be in the right weight range.
Y’all, it is HARD to feel safe allowing yourself to be seen in this world when you live in a very marginalized body. Those hashtags and our once-a-month day of visibility are the one place we fucking have, even in the fat community. Many of us still have a tenuous grasp of body acceptance and of the way our bodies look and move. Many of us would not be able to post those photos without seeing their peers doing the same.
On My 600-lb Life nearly every fat person profiled is told that they absolutely must have weight loss surgery. They are told that they are dying and that this is the only way to save their life.
As I said, I contend that there is no way that they or anyone can make this assertion in good faith. But just for argument’s sake, let’s suspend disbelief for a minute. Let’s say that the doctors and show producers feel fervently that they are offering these people an actual lifeline.
How benevolent of them to give this gift, right?! What a bunch of heroes! But the reality–and truly the cruelty–of this whole production is that it is designed to be a spectacle.
But you are in luck! This show can save you! Only one tiny catch, though. Very minor. In order for the show to provide this life-saving (they INSIST it is life-saving) service, you must reveal your most vulnerable moments–your greatest emotional and physical struggles–to a national audience.
Every fear and insecurity must be recorded. Every swollen limb gets a close-up. Have to step sideways through a doorway? Get that on camera. And boy are they ever going to need to film you eating.
The producers of this show will take great care to show the parts of you that the audience will find most horrifying. They want you to seem grotesque. Monstrous. It is very important that your very existence seems as shocking and tragic as possible and that your body seems hideously inhuman.
But you must subject yourself to this–to being made a gruesome spectacle and cautionary tale–to live. These compassionate heroes will save your life for the low, low price of your actual human dignity. I don’t think I need to say how all-kinds-of-fucked-up that is.
And people choose this. Everyone on this show at some point weighed the pressure of systemic fatphobia against the promise of their absolute humiliation and chose this. And it is partly the fat community’s fault.
I firmly believe that if we did a better job of reaching out to our fattest peers and offering our support–including to those that are housebound or bedbound–that maybe some would decide not to turn to a reality show that wants to profit from their suffering.
And that’s really what My 600-lb Life is about. It intentionally cashes in on our cultural fear and revulsion of fatness, and it does so by manipulating vulnerable very fat people into baring their most personal struggles for an audience that pities them.
I’m begging you not to watch this show.
Link to essay post: http://thefatlip.com/2020/03/21/our-600-pound-lives/
To be even more fair, nobody who would go on any of TLC's trash shows had an ounce of dignity in the first place
Rockabilly is, for most of those women, a way to mentally elevate themselves as “classy.” Even with rubbish tattoos, an extra 60 lbs and terrible hair, they tell themselves that the rigamarole of garters and corsets and girdles and day gloves and dated makeup styles from the 50’s and such makes them FAR more of a “lady” than these slovenly women today in cheap yoga pants and men’s shirts. Look how long it takes them to get dressed! Look at all the cutesy overpriced layers of undergarments and garters and stockings and girdles and petticoats and big fluffy skirts that conveniently hide their big thighs and flat arses and chubby lower stomach area! They’re so much better and more put together than these common women today who dress like slobs and don’t appreciate hyper-feminine fashion (the kind that demands daily shape wear, mandatory high heels and makeup and cumbersome undergarments to achieve the desired look but HEY, they have tattoos, so that cancels out the inherent misogyny of the entire getup!).
I’ve read she was a size 14...to accommodate the large parts of her extreme hourglass figure, but had her clothes tailored down to fit her waist. They don’t fit on a size 14 or 20 dress form today. Anyway, only an idiot would look at pictures of her and see an overweight woman. She was extremely curvy but still a normal weight—they’re fooling themselves.
