TLC’s New Show ‘Hot and Heavy’ Is Receiving Immediate Backlash
In a reality-TV landscape full of revenge bodies and weight-loss challenges, few shows capture the nuance of what it’s really like to be a fat woman in America today—even fewer if you consider dating shows. TLC’s My Big Fat Fabulous Life is one of the few that actually subverts shallow, reductive tropes, but the network just announced a new show that feels like a thousand steps backward.
I woke up this morning to the Twitter-sphere ablaze over an upcoming TLC show called Hot and Heavy. The title made me think I was getting some steamy makeout show. But as I began to read the tweets and show description, my pervy excitement quickly morphed into anger. Hot and Heavy, I learned, is a reality show about hot guys dating fat girls in what the show calls “mixed-weight” relationships.
I, like many others on the internet, immediately felt disgusted. What the hell is a mixed-weight relationship? The term itself is highly problematic. It suggests that all romantic partners are the same weight with identical body types, which is obviously absurd. Aren’t all relationships mixed-weight relationships? Why do we feel the need to specifically highlight a show about fat bodies and thin bodies? Are we as entertained by tall people dating short people? Or brunette people dating blond people? No. We don’t make television shows about the trials and tribulations of someone who is 5’5″ dating someone who is 6’1″. So why are we endlessly obsessed with the dynamic of fat women actually being loved?
I was particularly horrified by portions of the trailer featuring the characters Joy and Chris. Their relationship is introduced with Chris saying, “I love every inch of Joy,” and then quickly adding, ”There’s lot of inches to love,” while he laughs—making an expression of love a joke at her expense. She awkwardly laughs, gives him a side-eye, and under her breath says, “Ew, what?” It’s followed by a clip of Chris’s friend berating the couple asking, “Is it a sexual thing?” implying that Joy could only be loved if she was being fetishized. But the worst part was the camera crew following along as Chris’s friends bring him to a strip club to “try and persuade him to like other girls.”
“He could get any girl he wants and ends up being with Joy,” his friend says in shock.