So I just watched the first episode of that new show “Big Medicine” on The Learning Channel.

My mom watches TLC a lot so I couldn’t help but notice the frequently ran advertisements for this show. Am I alone in thinking the photos shown during the preview commercials had a real beauty to them? Of course that’s not their aim. I’m sure their aim is shock value and blunt disgust. Lovely. But I’ll admit my biases as most of you know.

I watched the show. I disagreed with some things and agreed with others. It seemed as though they were trying to make it a reality TV sort of thing in the beginning with the father/son medical backgrounds and whatnot, but it lost that flavour slightly as time went on (which I thought was good as it didn’t really fit well with the style of the show). Maybe it was just a bad intro, I don’t know. I don’t make TV shows.

I was annoyed by the psychologist, at least at first. It was her analysis of sexuality early on that rubbed me the wrong way. She is a sex therapist, as I will be some day, so maybe that’s why I listened more critically. Apparently according to her, fat women have a decreased sex drive and the only way to increase it is lose weight. Hardly. I amongst many women my size and larger can attest that weight has nothing to do with it. It’s body image and confidence more than anything else, which she did mention toward the end of the show. I guess that’s redeeming enough, but I was still ticked.

The teenager who had the surgery… wow. She was almost like a skeleton at the end in that bikini. She wasn’t that big when she got the surgery (310), and I don’t approve of that at all. At that young of an age there were certainly other better options for her and I don’t think she should have been approved. Though I guess I’m not the one with the professional opinion. I can see her being very malnourished in the future. Also the statement by her boyfriend bugged me too. Since she didn’t have this “gorgeous” body growing up she had time to cultivate a personality? WTF? Sticking up for my thin friends here on this one – if you didn’t grow up fat, you don’t have a good personality? Though it does further emphasize the fact that fat folks are left out of the mainstream relationship running due to size – many have do have winning personalities that others don’t give them time to show. That point should have been pushed and maybe that was the main idea, but it got lost in the wording big time.

I knew that one woman’s boyfriend would leave her after she got the surgery. You know why? Personalities change big time with dramatic weight loss. And generally not for the better. You become a different person. I’ve seen it so many times and it always makes me sad. You’d think it would be the opposite, and I always hold some faith that sometimes it is, but I have yet to see it. Sad.

The segment about the really big guy was good. I don’t have any complaints surrounding him at all. I hope it all works out well for him.

/rant

~Aurora