This Can't End Well

Drag out the headless-fatty photo file*--a new dating show focusing on "curvy" women and "big" guys, called "More to Love," is in development at FOX! According to the Hollywood Reporter (which ran the story under the headline "FOX orders overweight dating series," as if the show was some kind of mandatory fat-sensitivity exercise), the inspiration for the show came from "the recent ratings success of 'Bachelor' and the popularity of NBC's 'The Biggest Loser,' which [show developer Mike] Darnell credits with shattering an industry assumption that TV viewers only wanted to watch highly attractive people." In an interview with Entertaiment Weekly (which is already billing the show as "The Bachelor" meets "The Biggest Loser," belying the idea that the show's producers won't aim to whittle contestants down to TV size) Darnell's partner Mike Fleiss said the show is about "embracing and loving yourself no matter your shape or size."

Call me a cynic, but I have my doubts that Darnell and his partner, Mike Fleiss, really have the best interests of "average-looking" women at heart. Reality dating shows like "The Bachelor" and "Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?"--Fleiss and Darnell's last foray into the reality-dating genre--trade in the currency of humiliation. People don't watch reality dating shows because they identify with the contestants; they watch them to see the contestants brought down to size. The whole point of "Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?" was to expose how petty and materialistic women could be; the big "twist" at the end was that the "multimillionaire" wasn't rich at all. (Ha, bitches are shallow, get it?)

My guess is that a show in which "average-looking" women are expected, per usual for dating shows, to parade around in evening gowns, drink champagne in hot tubs, and doll themselves up for "lavish dates," as one web site put it, will play the contestants' looks for laughs, not empathy. I hope I'm wrong.

*See, for example, here and here.