This is not to say that I can't be insecure too, I'm just not going to let that or my weight be exploited.

I first saw commercials for this show in the last few days. While I have always said that "big girls need love to" (as a joke but also because I am a big girl who is ignored by most guys as a romantic interest because of her size), I think this show's concept is ridiculous. All it's doing for overweight men and women is saying that they need their own show and their own little community to find a girlfriend or boyfriend. It's alienating and offensive, and a joke for tv viewers. Mmkay, rant over.

About the show's comments on "real women": I don't think that they intend to say that fat women only are "real" women, I think the producers just think that as fat women watching the show, we will all rejoice over being called "real" women, as opposed to thin women who we are supposed to despise out of jealous rage or something. Again, all this does is add negativity and alienation.

I've never interpreted the "real woman" phrase referring to women with less than perfect bodies to mean that beautiful, physically perfect women weren't "real." Instead I've seen it more as an acknowledgment that the "ideal" woman often portrayed in the media does not reflect the majority of women. It isn't that gorgeous women aren't "real," but that gorgeous does not reflect reality for most women.

I see the phrase of "real women" not just referring to plus-sized women (even though it is sometimes used that way) to mean all women who do not fit the "beautiful people" ideal you see in magazines and in the media.

It doesn't mean the beautiful people aren't real, but often in the media it can seem that anyone who isn't beautiful isn't quite real. You don't see very many unattractive people on television. TV's version of "ugly" is a beautiful person wearing glasses and unflattering clothing (In the "real" world, the person would still be seen as pretty).

I think that it can seem like the perfectly beautiful people have such a social advantage, that they can seam unreal - like princesses, angels or fairies not like "the rest of us."

I don't like dating shows period. They're lame, shallow, and as much for entertainment purposes as daytime talk shows... a place where viewers at home are free to hypocritically judge every little aspect of someone's personality, looks, and emotions. They're not for me.

I mean, come on, do you really think people are looking for some kind of political or moral statement about fat people when it's rolled into a dating show? Using fat people is just that. They're used because it's something different, and people like twists on already established ideas.

And fat is the thing now for reality shows.
I think more than anything else, it's just a outlet to GAWK at fat people. Nothing more.

Another reality show that I won't waste my time watching. It does look sort of disturbing and exploitative to me.

Agreed. the focus STILL seems to be on weight.

Yes.

I feel embarassed by it too, I'm glad I'm not the only one! The fact that I have the appropriate stats to qualify for this embarasses me.

It seems that this is just a modern day version (and a socially acceptable one, at that) of a freak-show. "Look at these fat women, they can find love too! It's that shocking!" I don't like it at all. It just shows again that this is one of the last acceptable forms of prejudice. They would never do this with race, like another poster wrote.

I certainly won't be watching it, although I suppose that doesn't say much because I avoid reality dating shows like that.

I think part of what is holding me back from truly disliking the show is that larger women are so heavily( no pun intended) underrepresented in televised media. I don't think it promotes obesity as healthy and acceptable; rather I think it is trying to show that beauty can come in all different shapes and sizes. Health and beauty are different for me because while being overweight is unhealthy, some people are naturally built to be larger and carry more fat on their bodies than others. Health is very difficult to judge, imo from the outside.

The point of this is that if it were a health show, I would have problems with it. It is just a dating show( that nobody really takes seriously anyway) featuring a man who likes bigger women. Many men like larger ladies and tehre is a social stigma attached to that. There will always be overweight people for whatever reasons and there will always be people who love them