Medicalized reality weight-loss television and the negotiation of neoliberalism on My 600 Pound Life
Document Type
Article
Publication Title
Critical Studies in Television
Publication Date
10-13-2022
Abstract/ Summary
On their surface, medicalised reality television series about food addiction and fatness seem to reinforce the same discourses of neoliberalism that have come to define our understanding of contemporary reality TV. However, this article considers how one of these shows, My 600 Pound Life (2012), negotiates and de-centres discourses of neoliberalism through medicalisation and spectacle. The bodies and behaviours on medicalised reality TV programmes can be engendering of sympathy as much or more than of discipline and shame, which reflects expanding and shifting narratives of the 'obesity epidemic'.