ABSTRACT
During the last ten years there has been a gradual increase in on-air television programmes focusing on large body size. These programmes – The Biggest Loser, Fat Camp, Dance Your Ass Off, Embarrassing Fat Bodies, Fat Actress and Extreme Makeover: Weight Loss Edition – draw on a long history of verbal and visual markers to encourage both audience identification and disidentification. Most of these signifiers are excessive and reproduce socially disabling attitudes, such as the view that fat people are morally decrepit and out of control. Intriguingly, however, another crop of popular programmes have emerged such as Mike & Molly, The King of Queens, The Practice and Gilmore Girls, which embrace characters who just happen to be fat in leading roles. Yet, despite their claim to inclusion, many of the latter continue to draw on the standard verbal and visual markers – for example, there is a constant stream of fat jokes on Mike & Molly.
