“Mend this fractured family”: sin, redemption, and familial citizenship on NBC’s “The Biggest Loser”

Abstract

Reality television has featured over 15 years of weight loss competitions reflecting American obsession with obesity and weight loss. Qualitative content analysis was performed on 16 premiere and finale episode pairs for six seasons of NBC’s The Biggest Loser (TBL) using a Foucauldian confessional framework. Analysis shows how TBL presents contestants as sinful, fat bodies in need of redemption with the show and the viewing audience as the confessional stage. Contestants frame their motivations for weight loss in gendered ways related to family responsibility. Women felt like role model failures, while men worried about early death and family abandonment. Season finales were the settings of redemption through extreme weight loss where women were now able to be the thin parent role models, shepherding their whole family into weight loss and men were reborn, on a path toward living forever for their families.