Hanging out with T, I periodically get reminded of why I love this girl. For one, I am NOT a pleasant person when I get overheated. Both her cat and I are sitting around in a 90-plus temp apartment, though I have the opportunity to remove layers of clothing, while the cat has to lie on the carpet meowing pathetically at us.
But with the pure knowledge that I have decisions that I can make with my opposable thumbs that help me cool down (like putting cloth between my shirtless back and the leather couch on a day where most people are running away to get an AC fix in Seattle).
At any rate, one of the trailers on the background noise that T plays while reading magazines and relaxing after work is E! Entertainment. This is normally a channel I reserve the same emotions for that one might reserve for a particularly cheap wine, left to marinate around the flesh of a raw chicken, found again in the back of the fridge, but not exactly ready to be tossed. A combination of "EWWWW" and rapid shoving away to ignore until I really, REALLY need to use that glass dish.
The metaphor doesn't QUITE work with E! entertainment, but hey, the girl likes it, and sometimes it's like watching a wasp stinging a nettle. Someone's going to get hurt, you don't care who, and it's entirely possible that in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter.
And she's a reality show junkie. I, on the other hand, am less interested in most of the shows on television unless they have some interesting hook or catch. I churn through movies on Netflix like mad, I collect old SciFi channel seasons that get canceled after only one season (The Dresden Files, Firefly, etc) and I happily rewatch old Star Trek: Next Generation shows as background. So I can't blame her for her addictions. (Apparently, I've just been notified that Joss Whedon's Dollhouse got renewed for a second season, which means that it doesn't make it into the library.)
But reality show junkie or not, there is NO excuse for Fox's new dating reality show: More to Love.
More to Love is apparently a dating show based on the "idea" that a larger proportion of America's population is bigger and fatter than most of the shiny people showing up on The Bachelor, E! Entertainment, or pretty much any television show that doesn't feature Kristie Alley or Monique. Starring a smarmy guy who looks like a massive chubby chaser happily ready to shove his fetish down the throats of people willing to watch damn near anything in the hope that it highlights their short, inanely shallow, pointless lives (which, fortunately, comprises 99% of Fox and FoxNews demographic).
According to the website the show is about a 6'3", 300lb dude who's interested in pursuing a girl with "real" proportions. Coming from a network that led the media charge to a general whoring out of slender, shallow, attractive women to a single man set up as a media icon (without resorting to the always-bizarre February-December 28th matches of Hugh Hefner), it seems a bit odd that Fox is billing "More to Love" as the alternative to all those shallow, cheap, plastic skinny people seeking true love financial stability with some random guy they meet in front of dozens of cameras.
There's dozens of foodie sites out there that celebrate the rotund, the well-fed, the munchied, the girls who slather themselves in slices of kiwi fruit and allow men and women to gently munch the food on their bodies, but there's also the feeders - the men and women who relish the idea and sexualize the addition to food.
Of course, before the end of this blog's writing, I have eaten 3/4 of an order of General Tsao's chicken and a goodly chunk of steamed rice, ordered from the Rickshaw - a Greenwood institution known more for its drunken karaoke and deep well drinks that glow with an unnatural sheen of blue (rumored to contain depleted uranium) while munching with T. Neither of us are svelte, slender creatures - my balding noggin, combined with my slightly barrel-like torso, and T's well-hipped exterior that she mournfully peers down at and wistfully declaims that if she only had thirty pounds down, she would be back to her skinny, high-school self.
But then again, we're not going to go on a reality TV show and expose our bellies to over 40 million potential viewers for fame and fortune. And if we did, it'd be in the T and B tradition, which is on CBS' The Amazing Race - dressed in orange kilts, jumpsuits, and getting through customs the most awkward ways possible.
I think what bothers me most about "More to Love" is simply that looking at the participants and the people involved, I see not beautiful people who are celebrating their difference, but rather fetishists and people with low self-esteem who shade their true selves by attacking that which is different from them - even if that true self happens to love a really well-padded frame.
I love T in many ways, but her physicality has NOTHING to do with why I love her, and I'd hope that my variable belly, plus my sporadic fitness regimes that have little to do with consistency and everything to do with Athletic Attention Deficit Disorder (OOO! Extreme Bocce and Golf! Wooo! Bike Jousting? WOO! Hiking with lots of photographs of girlfriend? HECK YEAH! Mountain climbing? Ehhhh, did that two days ago) won't scare her off, but I'm more than happy to plunk it on the treadmill or elliptical with her and talk for an hour while we churn out the chubby for an hour a day if it's a time that we can set to be together.
Fox's tradition of getting people with a TWIST not only makes me less enthusiastic about getting the show to market, but also much less enthusiastic about the way people, in general, treat the way we look at ourselves. Regardless of whether you're fat and shallow or skinny and shallow, the adjective in common is still shallow. People are still racist if they act, behave, or make racially-charged comments, regardless of their skin color.
Likewise, "More to Love" stinks to high heaven of a man whose fetish is being televised and the twenty women who parade in front of him, hoping to snare him for whatever supposed qualities he has makes me cringe, just like every other "Bachelor", "Bachelorette", and "Joe Average Gonna Get Some By Lying" reality show out there has.
ADDENDUM: T wishes by way of rapid pokes in my tender thigh to express that she does not in any way shape or form intend to watch "More to Love." As a requirement of maintaining a happy relationship, I now declare that my disbelief (specifically regarding her following or maintaining any kind of interest in the reality show whether she actually reads spoilers for the show on Reality Show Forum websites) is suspended for the duration of this blog post.
AND OH LOOK THERE IT IS.
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