The average American waistline is expanding into what used to be a size zero T.V. zone. For the critical viewer, an emerging diversity of women’s images sparks a point of subversive discussion about individuals beyond their skin. For the passive viewer, this type of media is becoming as a pathetic excuse for entertainment.

When Dove commercials snagged the image of curvy women wearing double-digit dress sizes and began featuring them in advertisements as part of their “Campaign For Real Beauty” in 2005, an overwhelming crowd of critics began supporting this objectified margin in the media. Typically, models wearing sizes 0-4 are said by anonymous supporters of the full-figured media movement to “grow out of it once they bear children, or hit their thirties.” The advertising agency however, saw the “cha-ching” factor within the sensitive self-image issue.

Society has been drawn to a similar underrepresented group in the media starting in the fall of 2004 through the NBC reality show Biggest Loser. Throughout the course of a season, overweight contestants compete first in teams under the direction of a personal trainer, and then eventually against one another. Since the debut of the show, it has had international versions in twelve different countries and several spinoff competitions including teams of different cultural families, engaged couples, married couples, and those involved with branches of the armed forces.

The Biggest Loser though, has been the launching pad of yet another reality show featuring overweight contestants, giving them “more to love.” Based on the quest of winning the hefty man of their dreams, the dating show More To Love featured twenty “voluptuous” women looking for love in a man that seeks exactly what their bodies feature—curves. As a project of The Bachelor’s producer Mike Fleiss, the show aired in the summer of 2009 and ended with a season finale early October.

The show lacked a higher reason for watching, other than for the support of these women who have stereotypically been rejected from the realms of matchmaking television. It’s not a secret; although some of these women are quite elegant and arguably better composed than some thinner women, Mother Nature’s blessing is seen as a curse to the larger amount of men who seek a Twiggy rather than a Greek goddess.

Whether seen as curse or blessing, producers should not seek characters only representing a certain physique before they look into the type of values that the individuals embody beyond their outward appearance. Just as the most well-toned celebrity can ruin a show, we have to remember that their opposites can do the same—especially since passive viewers are basing entertainment only on what they see on the surface.