More To love-- is it good or bad for society?

More to Love; a brief synopsis; Luke is a single 26 yr old 300+lb guy he started with 25 women, and now is down to 3, one will be eliminated tonight, then the finale next week when he choses one and perhaps even proposes to them on national TV after dating them for 6 weeks

I am currently watching the latest installment of More To Love, a reality dating show by the poducers of the bachelor and Biggest loser.

I enjoy Biggest loser, generally positive, it motiviates and inspires. The Bachelor is fun to watch, the girls are all interesting, most in a good way, but everyone just makes a complete fool out of themselves, it is terribly scripted, and they all drink WAY too much. Hence the funny parts.

Here I am not debating the merits of meeting your spouse on a tv show, or dating 25 women including your future wife at one time, but rather this latest twist, making everyone fat.

What does this show say about our society?
We all struggle with weight issues, our country has the largest per capita sugar consumption on the planet, though they are not 'in style' right now, eating disorders abound as we reconcile our diets with our ideals. This generally results in binge eating, yo-yo dieting, or people who just throw it all out the window.
I once read a book that argued that compusive overeating, exercise aversion, anorexia nervosa, and bulimia were all the same disease, and the solution (in general terms) was to love yourself and make your body healthy.
I had hoped that this show would give us strong beautiful successful women who have been perhaps overlooked because of their size.
I expected a biggest loser style message of "healthy as you can be, beautiful from the inside out"

I was sorely disappointed. Early episodes dwelt on a few clingy needy girls who worshiped Luke, despite now knowing anything about him. They were basicly losers who blamed their lack of dating, social skills, etc. on their size. Perhaps in High school , when everyone is insecure, this would be plausable, but really sometimes you just need to get over yourself. In their defense they were well liquored up during their interviews. The remaining girls are pretty normal, but ofcourse normal doesn't sell air time so the focus is on the crazies.

Every girl has her name and age along with her weight displayed on screen during interviews. I do not know why this is there. We really should just take everyone at face value, look beyond their size, but this is difficult when you are reminded of it so often. By reducing these women to a number, they are just objectified further. It doesn't open anybody's mind.

The show goes out of its way to remind us that everyone is big. One episode they rode horses, they were careful to say that the horses would be able to carry the extra heavy people. Ok, this is a real issue, (as my family now knows thanks to our interesting relative who rode in a parade on a horse, wearing a loin cloth and was investigated by the society for the prevention of cruelty to animals, but that is a story for another day which you really should ask me about)
The next episode they broke a bike. Do extra heavy people really break bikes? Not very good bikes. I think it was a gimmick.

The whole show is a gimmick. It is not empowering, nor educational, does not promote empathy, and is not good for society except in that is shows people can embarrass themselves on tv at any weight.

Alas reality TV will not cure all that ails society.