It’s a TLC show so you know it’s exploitative!!!

I used to watch this show but now when I look back at it, I’m pretty horrified by what was included in My 600 lb Life. I’m not horrified of the patients in the show but the narrative that is spun by TLC and the famous Dr. Now.

Dr. Now runs the clinic that the patients visit, oversees their weight loss, and performs weight loss surgery on said patients. The show and Dr Now’s narrative (or how I understood it) give the classic “these people are just lazy and that’s why they’re like this” narrative that is prescribed to fat people very often. The show does explore the trauma that the patients have experienced and even sets them up with a counselor, but that portion of the show really takes a back seat to all of the fatphobia.

This show does what Biggest Loser does; shame and stigmatize fat people. I think that My 600 lb Life is more sinister as it pretends to operate on medical expertise and puts fat people with disabilities on display to be ridiculed