On today’s episode, Tyra interviewed men who are “obsessed” with obese women. However, it seemed a lot more like a fetish than an obsession. One guest, Scott has been attracted to 400-pound women ever since he was a little boy.

You can view the video here. Here are some of the Jezebel comments:

wait, so being attracted to fat women is a fetish? because sex with a fat woman is an abnormal sexual expression?

does not compute.

also, TOTALLY disturbed by his description of sex “with a big girl” like boxing “you step in there and you knock ‘em out” what the fuck is that supposed to mean?

As a fat girl I’m bummed that this seems to be my main target audience. Chubby chasing creeps me out. I don”t want to be someone’s type because of my poor eating habits you know?

Just because one thing turns you on in particular, I don’t think it necessarily negates that attraction. It just seems when it comes to weight and race, if someone is really attracted to it we find it odd – but yet if it is hair color or another aspect we are okay with it. It is one thing to refuse to look at someone who doesn’t fit the criteria and another just to prefer it.

Yeah, it’s such a murkey area. The subject came up on Feministing not too long ago, and one commenter (Stephanie89) qualified it as: “There’s a difference between a preference and a fetish, in that someone with a fetish (correct me if I’m wrong) is turned on by the actual characteristic and not a person with the characteristic. For example, a man might have a preference for fat women because they find those women attractive or they are fat themselves, whereas a person with a fat fetish is actually turned on by the idea of fatness, and of someone being fat. Does that make sense?”

This whole thing is pretty offensive. Tyra and the audience are asking these personal questions and acting all grossed out about their sex life because Nicki is obese, while she (Nicki) just has to sit there and take it and doesn’t get to say anything.

Then again, I suppose the Tyra show is not where you go when you want to be treated with tact and subtlety.

I’d love to know what your opinion is about this issue! It makes me think of Jimbo’s fat fetish on Rose Is Rose. Am I the only one who remembers this? (Hee. My friend Annie hates any sentences that start with “Am I the only one who…”)

On the one hand, this is a modeling show. The unrealistic ideal of the female body, and being judged on that ideal, is the entire point of the show. Even though Tyra Banks is supposedly so enlightened. But London, the contestant who got eliminated, used to suffer from an eating disorder. And so the lecturing and the cruelty (“there is something unique about her… all that extra weight”) seemed extraordinarily ill-advised.

In an interview, London talked about the elimination:

“When I went to the competition, I was recovering from an eating disorder, so my self-confidence was already kind of shaky because of my experience with my problem beforehand,” London tells us exclusively. “And, I’m pretty sure it did show in my photo shoots.”

On why she was eliminated instead of Aminat, who was in the bottom two with her, London says, “If you looked at the two of us, here you have someone who’s 5 feet 9 inches and who had gained, like, 15 pounds, and then you have someone [Aminat] who’s six feet and about 110 pounds,” continues London. “So in my personal opinion, it was just kind of obvious to the judges who would move on just by photographs.”

London says she has suffered from eating disorders from junior high through shortly before America’s Next Top Model started. “I never realized how long I’d had it until I talked to someone professionally,” she says. “But it never got supersevere until my senior year in high school, which was actually just this past year. This past year up until right before I went on to the show is when it got most severe.”

So you put a girl who has BARELY RECOVERED FROM AN EATING DISORDER on a modeling show? Obviously, it was London’s decision to try out and get on the show in the first place. But the eating disorder wasn’t mentioned at all, as opposed to the “challenges” of the other contestants, such as Tahlia with her burn scars and what’s-her-name with her epilepsy, which were treated in patented Tyra Banks “inspirational” fashion. So the fact that she is recovering from ED was never even mentioned, and then over the course of the show, London gained some weight. And then this happened:

Clearly, judge Jay Manuel wasn’t aware of London’s issues. On last night’s episode, during a photo shoot, Jay pulled London aside to talk about her obvious weight gain. “Where I’m really shocked, it’s not just the fact that she’s gained weight, it’s the fact that as a model you’re expected to treat your body like a temple,” he said.

“It’s a sensitive thing,” he continued, “but it’s something I have to talk about. It just really shocked me today seeing such a huge change physically. When you’re in a competition I understand there’s stress and people react to stress differently; it’s just clear that you’re not taking care of your body in a short period of time, and if this is tough, how are you going to deal with it in the modeling world?”

London’s response: “My body just keeps gaining weight, and it really is freaking me out because I don’t feel comfortable at this weight. Coming into this, I felt a lot more confident, a lot more beautiful, and I just need to lose weight in a healthy way.”

So a girl recovering from anorexia and bulimia is “freaking out” about gaining 10 or 15 pounds, which might be a natural weight for her body. And the answer is… tell her to lose weight! Kick her off the show! Shame her! What a great message.

On a related note, I made the mistake of reading one of the “editorial” articles on TWoP, which suck these days, because they are written by bad writers like Angel Cohn, who says one of her “reality pet peeves” is:

7. Models Gaining Weight
Nearly every season of Top Model or Make Me a Supermodel there’s a wannabe model who over indulges, puts on pounds, has trouble with their self esteem and cries a lot that they aren’t as skinny as all the other contestants. This is a modeling show, where entire careers are based on how well you can fit into sample-size clothing, so put down the donuts and hit the treadmill.

Yeah, fuck you, London. Put down the donut. Start binging and purging again. Clearly, that’s the only way.

1. “Carnie Wilson’s War” (with video from the Tyra Banks show, of course) is Carnie’s battle with her weight after her highly publicized weight loss surgery.

2. Britney Spears is on the Posh Spice diet (water with lemon, steamed fish, edamame, and seaweed) and has gone from a size 14 to a size 10!

3. Oprah has gained weight again!

From that last post:

I hate how we are so quick to pay attention to how much weight everyone loses and gains. I know, Oprah has tons of money and I’m really not a big fan… Nonetheless, money or not, she has the same body issues many of us “normal” women have — probably moreso because she’s constantly being scrutinized by people. When she loses weight, people give her a hard time. When she gains it, people give her a hard time and laugh at her. It’s sad. Maybe I’m just sensitive, but I really hate seeing people being judged by their weight — fat, skinny, whatever.

I don’t want to point out again that all of the posts I ran across today were about women. But, oops, I guess I just did!

When shown J.Love’s bikini pics on The Today Show, the world’s first self-proclaimed supermodel had this to say: “Jennifer Love Hewitt is a healthy, not emaciated, woman. She’s a healthy girl. And these are unflattering camera angles on her. You want to see someone fat? I’m sorry, Tyra. Tyra Banks is fat.”

I have a feeling this is going to degenerate until every publicity-hungry female celebrity has gone on television to call another celebrity fat. “She’s not fat, Bai Ling is fat!” “She’s not fat, Gabrielle Carteris is fat!” “She’s not fat, Downtown Julie Brown is fat!”and so on and so on until the world is destroyed in some kind of…black hole of D-list celebrity sniping? I don’t know, I’m no scientist.

[Ooh, breaking news. Alerted by the posters on Snarkfest, I found photos of Jennifer Love Hewitt dressed in a fat suit for Halloween a couple of years ago. Note the hot dog accessory! Does this make you feel any differently about the whole thing?]

Call it the Fat Follies or the Obesity Opera: How big anyone is, or looks to be, seems to be the most compelling topic for public conversation… In this new world of weightertainment, fat Britney Spears is more fascinating than her younger, slimmer persona. She’s clearly a media savant: The reveal of her chunky middle at the MTV Video Music Awards is what now qualifies as great TV.

Definitely gave me pause to think. I remember the furor over Tyra Banks and her bathing suit, Catherine Zeta-Jones and her anorexia, and of course Britney at the VMAs. Not to mention the covers of People and Star every week. Damn. Maybe she’s got a point.

(Notice that it’s women, though. Always, always women. Sigh.)

Banks insisted the shots of her in a bikini during a winter break were just taken from a bad angle as she launched a ‘So what’ campaign on her TV show and urged the tabloids to stop poking fun at stars’ weight loss and weight gain…. But the terrible photographs forced Banks to take action - and, after months spent eating right and exercising, she has dropped 30 pounds, according to Life & Style magazine.

Thanks Tyra, for your very convincing pro-fat message. I feel so warm and fuzzy inside!

“And so you get people who describe models in truly awful terms. You get people who throw around the slogan ‘Real women have curves!’ as if thin women aren’t real women…. But the anger directed at thin people in general isn’t accomplishing anything. I’m sure, for some people, it’s going to be a really important step on the road to self-acceptance. I just don’t want it to be yet another broken paradigm we are trying to put in place of the current (equally as broken) one. Let’s recruit thin people as our body acceptance allies. They are being fed the same bucket of horse shit that we are. They have their own body issues. And while we might wish we had their problems, they still have problems. It would reflect well on us not to dismiss them so lightly.”

And Weetabix on Elastic Waist:

“We have fat friends. We have skinny friends. We have in-between friends, and friends who used to be skinny, and friends who used to be fat, and friends who never notice whether we’ve lost or gained 20 pounds or if they do, they certainly don’t say anything about it. So why do we hate the Angelina Jolies and Nicole Kidmans out there?”

In general, I feel fine about thin people and people who are losing or want to lose weight; I think people should be at whatever weight feels healthy and comfortable for them. On the other hand, I know I am guilty of a double standard when I find it okay to speak critically about Courtney Love in a bathing suit, but not Tyra Banks. But I’ll work on it.