Fat suits, food tubes and public shaming: how TV shaped our body image

Should I Delete That?

Alex Light & Em Clarkson

Society & Culture

4.8 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 27 January 2025

⏱️ 83 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s something anthropologists will no doubt look at with bewilderment in years to come: the extraordinary breadth of TV shows that were aired during the 00s. From Fat Families to How To Look Good Naked, we’re not sure there was anything more ruthless than the presenter of a show commissioned by Channel 4 between the years of 2001 and 2010.

From the endless stream of TV shows capitalising on the nation’s almost hysterical fatphobia, to the background hum of misogyny that had weaved its way into every conversation broadcasted at the time, this was a truly WILD time to have eyes, ears, or a television license. In this week’s episode - we’re taking a look at the role television has played, and still plays, in our collective body image.

Thanks so much to our amazing guests who feature on this episode: Colette Foster, Dr Joshua Wolrich and Stephanie Yeboah

Colette Foster is the founder and Creative Director of Full Fat TV, a new factual entertainment company based in Birmingham, focusing on factual entertainment and feature formats with an emphasis on emerging talent. You can read about their work here: https://fullfattv.co.uk/

Follow @drjoshuawolrich on Instagram

Read more about Dr Joshua’s work here: https://drwolrich.com/

Follow @stephanieyeboah on Instagram

Pre-order Stephanie’s book Chaotic Energy: The hilarious, heartfelt, must-read romantic comedy now!

And a special thank you to our guest who wished to remain anonymous in this episode

If you would like to get in touch - you can email us on [email protected]

@shouldideletethat

@em_clarkson

@alexlight_ldn

Should I Delete That is produced by Faye Lawrence

Music: Dex Roy

Studio Manager: Dex Roy

Trailers: Sophie Richardson

Video Editor: Celia Gomez

Social Media Manager: Emma-Kirsty Fraser

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to episode four of our bumper body image series. If you're new to the series,
0:07.9	welcome. And if you're not, welcome back. Over the last month, we've explored the history of diet
0:12.4	culture as a concept and as something that in our own way, we all have a relationship with.
0:18.4	Maybe it was something passed down to us by our mums through their own
0:21.2	unhealed relationship with their bodies, a dynamic that we explored in our second episode
0:25.7	dissecting the almond mum phenomenon. Maybe it was informed by the media we grew up consuming,
0:31.2	the magazine simultaneously full of airbrushed photos of impossibly beautiful models, and tabloids
0:37.1	consisting of articles hell bent on tearing
0:39.6	women down for a faux par as minor as a fat role. If you missed it, we waded through the archives
0:45.3	in episode three. Maybe all of this was just an inevitability, a byproduct of the patriarchal
0:51.3	systems in which we operate. One thing's for sure is left no one unscathed.
0:56.1	And in this week's episode, we're taking a closer look at something anthropologists will no
1:00.2	doubt look back at with bewilderment in years to come. And that's the extraordinary breadth
1:04.9	of TV shows that were aired during the noughties. From fat families to how to look good naked,
1:10.1	we're not sure there was anything
1:11.1	more ruthless than the presenter of a show commissioned by Channel 4 between the years of 2001 and 2010.
1:17.4	And honestly, if it weren't for the fact that old clips keep popping up on our TikTok for you pages,
1:22.5	I'm not sure that anyone would really believe that it could ever have been as bad as it was.
1:27.8	Without the proof, I would be sure that there was something of a Mandela effect at play
1:32.4	because there is no way that presenters describe guests on their shows as porkers, is that?
1:39.4	And it would surely be totally barbaric of producers to blow up huge naked photos of participants to put up
1:46.6	around cities in order that they could ask members of the public to cast judgment on them.
	...

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