Mend this fractured family”
Sin, redemption, and familial citizenship on NBC’s “The Biggest Loser”
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11267189 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Natalie Ingraham (0000-0003-3529-7353, California State University, USA, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 44 |
| Issue | 7 |
| Pages | 1255-1271 |
| Publication date | 2022-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Media Culture & Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0163-4437 • E-ISSN: 1460-3675 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/01634437221088953 |
| OpenAlex | W4224937138 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 37 |
Reality television has featured over 15 years of weight loss competitions reflecting American obsession with obesity and weight loss. Qualitative content analysis was performed on 16 premiere and finale episode pairs for six seasons of NBC’s The Biggest Loser (TBL) using a Foucauldian confessional framework. Analysis shows how TBL presents contestants as sinful, fat bodies in need of redemption with the show and the viewing audience as the confessional stage. Contestants frame their motivations for weight loss in gendered ways related to family responsibility. Women felt like role model failures, while men worried about early death and family abandonment. Season finales were the settings of redemption through extreme weight loss where women were now able to be the thin parent role models, shepherding their whole family into weight loss and men were reborn, on a path toward living forever for their families
Abandonment (legal · Art · Confessional · Obesity · Political science · Sociology · Weight loss · Gender Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Law · Media, Gender, and Advertising · Medicine · Obesity and Health Practices · Psychology · Endocrinology
Medical power and social knowledge
Confessing excess
What's Wrong with Fat?
Unbearable Weight
The Obesity Epidemic
The Imperative of Health
Biopolitics and the 'Obesity Epidemic'
Forgive me Father for I have Thinned
Effects of Biggest Loser Exercise Depictions on Exercise-Related Attitudes
Neoliberalism, public health, and the moral perils of fatness
Foucault's progeny
Confessions of the flesh and biopedagogies
Body panic
Inscribing healthification
Viewing The Biggest Loser
Weighing Health
Makeover television, governmentality and the good citizen
Epidemics of will, failures of self-esteem
The new world makeover
Reality TV the work of being watched
Neoliberalism and the Realities of Reality Television
Qualitative research methods for the social sciences
Discipline and Punish
All the News that's Fat to Print
A beautiful show of strength
The politics of women's bodies
I see her being obesed
Morality and Health
Getting your Body Back
There's No Such Thing as a Gay Hero
The Spectre of the Wheezy Dad
Immoral Bodies
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |