The "Reality" of TLC TV

 

I've got the opportunity to watch TLC. Normally I chose something else as my "television-treat", but on a lazy day when I felt like some "not too heavy food for my mind" I went for TLC. I must say, I'm surprised at the programs they offer, as all of them are extremely shallow reality-shows. Many of them are about food, either too much and too unhealthy or extremely elaborate, even glamorous as well as very fattening: For instance some chefs, e.g. from Australia, compete for a title as the best one. Not being very interested in cooking or baking, I don't watch these special programs, but I notice that they are on, maybe even on a daily basis. What's also on, day in, day out are programs about losing all that flab which will inevitably be the outcome of consuming a lot of food of all kinds. 

Cakes like this one are in one end of the specter, and in the other end there are several programs of extreme obesity. More or less desperate people fight the flab, using diets and/or surgery. Some succeed, others fail miserably, or end up half-way in a process of change which they obviously don't really want because they are hooked on the unhealthy food that brought them all that killer-flab. 
 

Sometimes the programs side with the often very, very heavy reality-stars, but not always. The specter contains both unhappy fatties doing their best to lose weight and gleeful people, who presumably are enjoying being "heavy-set" or whatever they call it. This weird mix of elaborate and glamorous cooking competitions, fatness surgery, tough diets and what looks like desperate attempts to give flab some value, even as a beauty asset, is so very odd, that it almost appears to be schizophrenic. 

Little people - namely midgets - in one end of the specter, and very, very big ones in the other end

However, I admits that it's interesting to watch something like TLC if one wants to gain insight in the "art" of reality-shows. I bet that those people who are to be found as the "stars" of those shows felt lucky to get the chance of becoming famous in this weird world of a set-up "reality". All I can say is, that hopefully they earn a lot on their shows and don't fall too heavily when it's over and someone else becomes a "star of the day" ....

  

https://collider.com/tlc-reality-tv-exploitation/ 

 

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