
Fulfilling the duty of this blog to include carb-based posts, I bring the news that Sainsbury's Free From Jaffa cakes have 0.67g of salt per 100g while their regular ones have 0.1g per 100.
Single women need not apply, by the look of it. In fact, the ad doesn't mention women but it is clearly targeted at them. How often do men talk about the need to feel sexier?
Even though Not-Doctor McKeith claims the show is about making women feel better about themselves rather than making them skinny, it is clear that fat = unsexy. Not only should women feel bad about being overweight, they should worry that they are inadequate as women too, that their partners will find them undesirable and maybe even leave them.
She does a 'sexual health profile' on each woman, telling them how sexy they should be for their age and how sexy they currently are - which is of course not nearly sexy enough. To do this, there is a sexy-o-meter but it's not clear on what scientific principles it is constructed. There is also the 'head-turn' test to see how many men turn to look at the woman before and after she has been McKeithed. All randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind, replicable methodology with a sufficiently large sample, then. She is a doctor, after all. Oh wait, no she isn't.
And yet. No one forced these women to be on TV. These are willing victims, accomplices of the Not-Doctor. Whether it is the lure of micro-celebrity or desperation that causes them to expose themselves to the nation, I don't know. It's the women watching who are most vulnerable to the fat= unsexy message, the ones who do not have Domme McKeith to transform their lives from lumpy frump to sex kitten. No matter how many products she markets and how many books she writes, these women will have their negative self-image and insecurities re-inforced. The men, meanwhile, can continue to be as lardy as they like
Maybe the show will encourage some to change but not for the right reasons, not just to be more healthy. They will change to be more desirable to others (men), because they have been emotionally blackmailed to care more about what others (men) think of them than about being healthy and content in themselves. Their complex psychological relationship with food will not be reshaped in a more healthy way, making relapse more likely.
If they are not feeling 'sexy' because of physical or psychological factors, or because the marriage is in serious trouble, then changing their diet and waistline is not going to fix anything.
It would be entertaining if, at the end of the show, the sexied-up woman was told that she could now do so much better than her judgmental slob of a husband and was given the number of a good divorce lawyer.
Good luck, Canada.
UPDATE 10.3.10
The show has arrived in the UK. Not the high-profile slot on Channel 4 she once had but 10pm on the Discovery Channel on Mondays. Lucky us.