Nikki Blonsky, Harvey Guillen
HUGE
Friendly Rating: All ages, but mostly upper elementary and older.
Safety Rating: Pretty safe – one counselor may be crossing the line, but so far, so good.
Quality Rating: Excellent
Series premieres on ABC Family at 9 p.m.
In a nation facing an epidemic of obesity, that also worships the unnaturally thin – think we don’t have some issues with fat and being fat?
The thing about Huge is that it tackles all these mixed messages head on by looking at a group of teens at a weight loss camp, particularly Will (Nikki Blonsky) who’s taking the in your face angry method of dealing with her problems – intending to gain weight in the face of her parents’ disapproval. Then you have Amber (Haley Hasselhoff), who is chunky, but hardly obese, and is suddenly the thinnest and prettiest girl in camp – having been dieting since the age of 10. She posts a collection of magazine pics of uber-thin models on her wall and calls it “thin-spiration.”
I like this show. A lot. The performances are wonderful across the board. The writing literally sucks you in. But best of all, the kids are real human beings rather than the usual “types.” Even pretty Amber and snobby Chloe (Ashely Holliday) aren’t totally witchy. Nikki is desperate to question everything, except herself, but she’s not all anger and in your face. The dramatic conflict comes from the difficulties of the relationships, but we can also see that these kids do have other problems besides the weight.
But the weight is still a major part of the show – after all, that’s why the kids are here. And for a lot of them, it’s the first time they are in an environment that accepts them because they all face the same struggle. But while camp director Dr. Rand (Gina Torres) tries to emphasize that it’s about being healthy and living a healthy lifestyle, the kids know it’s about how they look and the thinnest is the most desirable.
It’s clear that too much weight is unhealthy, and I do not wish to imply that I encourage eating irresponsibly. But there is part of me looking at this show and thinking that the reason some of these kids are fat are that they’re reacting against societal pressure to make them impossibly thin.
How much is too fat? How much is too thin? I don’t know that the show is going to answer that, but it does look at unflinchingly at the negative attitudes we have of fat people. Maybe if we can get past “lookism” of all kinds maybe we’ll have the chance to just be healthy without inappropriate deprivation and making food our enemy.
