Does TV really need more 'fat content'?

In her 2018 PhD study called The “good fatty” is a dancing fatty: Fat archetypes in reality television, Layla Cameron looked at how reality television depicts overweight people.

The abstract states: “Utilising TLC’s My Big Fat Fabulous Life as a case study, the author addresses how the introduction of body positivity into the reality television industry has offered freedom from fat shame only to those who fit into a ‘good fatty’ archetype.”

If Whitney Thore from My Big Fat Fabulous Life is a “good fatty” – upbeat, always dancing and constantly described as “an inspiration” – then the unfortunate souls on shows such as My 600-lb Life, are definitely “bad fatties”. They constantly disobey Dr Nowzaradan’s advice, they complain and they refuse, yes absolutely refuse, to lose weight.