The real reality

I love watching T.V. One of my favorites is reality shows. They’re filming about people just like me, like us. What else could be better and more real? The experience is very much like real life. When I’m getting bored with movies, I’ll go with T.V. shows for a change. The contestants are not actors or actresses, they share their real thoughts, they react in the most honest way and they do not cry with crocodiles tears.

At least that’s what I thought.

In 2004, The Biggest Loser debuted on NBC. This American show features obese people competing to win prize by losing the highest percentage of weight relative to their initial weight. This year, the Grand prize costs $250,000 and Rachel Frederickson was the champion. 

As you can see, it was such a dramatic weight loss for Rachel, from 260 pounds down to 105 pounds, which means she lost about 60% of her total body weight. With this amazing transformation, she also won the title of the tiniest US Biggest Loser winner in history. Looking at her, I just can’t believe in my eyes! About myself, I’m not a skinny model nor overweight. But my younger sister and some of my siblings are, kind of, chubby and flabby. They called me and cried “Did you see that? She made it!”. For them, that is hope! They totally got inspired by the show. They were bound and determined to get out of the couch and sign up for gym courses. In The Biggest Loser, on average, the contestants lose around 26 pounds within one single week. So my sister was looking forward to seeing such positive outcome for herself. However, not so surprised, she lost only 6 pounds after one month and a half. She was so disappointed. And quit.

Why is that? Why the result was so great on the show but not so sweet in the reality? Not so long after Rachel’s victory, Andrew “Cosi” Costello, who was one of the contestants of The Biggest Loser 2008, revealed some shocking truth about the show. According to Andrew’s speech, I will sum up the main points in order to emphasize the differences between “what we see” and the “reality” from the show.

What we see: “People were spending all day everyday working out in the Biggest Loser house! Look at their red sweaty faces, look at their tears! They even fell down!”
Reality: No one ever worked out for more than two and a half hours a day. It’s the limit, you will be too tired by that and just can’t do more. By using the scenes of many different people working out, the producers are implementing some specific ideas in our brain. They want us to believe that we have to earn our way to look fit and beautiful. It’s a long term process and it requires real effort. And a lot of people are trying over there on the show! We should feel motivated by them! We cannot just hang around and magically turn into slim.

What we see: “The contestants were struggling so hard, they were sharing stories in tears. It looked so moving, so…real!”
Reality: That’s exactly what the producers want the show to be: dramatic, impressive and touching. They want to evoke the empathy in the audience. So when they’re filming, they kept asking the contestants questions like “Do you miss your kids?”. And that always work. As they’re far from their family, not allowed to step outside for months, people just bursted into tears when being attacked by those questions. Producers were so satisfied then. The audience will feel so connected, hence they want to watch every move of the contestants. The more loyal the audience are, the higher watching rates the show is.

What we see: “They lost 12 kilos in a single week! There’s a scale there, it can’t be fake!”
Reality: It was NOT a single week, actually. In 2008 series, a weekly weigh-in was never filmed after just one week of working out. In fact, the gap from one weigh-in to the next was 16 – 25 days, not 7! Andrew himself had to stand on the scales and was asked to say the line, “wow, it’s a great result, I’ve worked really hard this week”. So after seeing the contestants were making so much effort before, this is the time when the viewers should see how blood, sweat and tears pay off. That’s the whole idea. If the producers report the real number, like “after 25 days, this man lost 9 kilos”, it may not sound noticeable or mind-blowing! This “one week – 12 kilos” is deceitful, but it’s stunning. The producers will go with that.

What we see: “Wow, this is really a make-over! They look fantastic in the finale!”
Reality: The Biggest Loser finale, in fact, was similar to giving birth: long, drawn out and painful. It took approximately 12 hours. Before going on stage, the contestants would have their tummies and arms wrapped tight by gaffer tape, just to make sure there would be no flabby bits of skin.

Once again, it is nothing more than to highlight that “this is what we got if we really try!”. Showing the number of weight lost is not enough, they have to look noticeably thinner! It did a good job in impressing the audience. Except for the part that it was completely misleading. Take my sister as an example, as I said, she tried hard for a period of time but quickly gave up as the result came poorer than expected. If The Biggest Loser’s goal is to inspire people to keep fit, it totally fails. In fact, it is counterproductive.

Besides, after the contest, about 75 per cent of the contestants from the 2008 series are back to their starting weight. So isn’t it superficial? Of course the show’s producers will not love the idea of talking about contestants in the previous series, to see how are they now, how do they keep in shape.

What I’m trying to say is, what we see is just one side of the issue, it’s just a half of truth. And not as a bread, (which is still a bread if it’s just a half) a half of truth is a whole lie. The media is framing the reality by selecting some aspects of a perceived actuality and making them more salient in a communicating text, it forces us to pay attention to some certain things in order to serve for their own good. What we see today is not really what we actively and willing to see but it is what the media and the press want us to see. It is said that audience are active users now, we can choose what to believe and what to doubt. But I suppose, that thinking quite underestimates the media’s power. We, the “modern and active audience” are maybe receiving a particular problem definition, interpreting the causes, assessing the moral values and giving recommendation only based on what is framed in the press.

Here in The Biggest Loser, the media is taking advantage of the stout and miserable people, producing a show “seems” to help them and to “entertain” audience, generate the sympathy in the viewers just for one purpose: to make profits. If we think a little bit, we could see that the show does not mention anything about the root of the problem, for instance, what is the reason that they’re so obsessed with food, how to have a healthy diet plans, or how to maintain their shape in the long run. People are given no solution or clue about this lifelong battle with losing weight. They get nothing! Well, except for the cash prize of the winner, of course.

The media taught me a lesson: Never trust anything if you do not experience it yourself. Also, thanks to that, I’m afraid that I’m losing my hobby of watching T.V. and reading newspapers everyday.