Phat Girls Wanted for New VH1 Reality TV Pilot

Phat Girls Wanted for New VH1 Reality TV Pilot

Television News

By our guest blogger, Emma Gray

“Big girls don’t cry… they freakin’ party!”

This may sound like a line from a terrible club promo poster, but it’s actually from VH1’s latest reality show casting call. VH1, along with Doron Ofir Casting and Left Right Productions, is casting for a new reality pilot about plus-sized Los Angeles ladies who love to party.

According to the Doron Ofir Casting website, the agency is “casting the hottest, most bodacious, voluptuous single women who are at least 21 years old and appear younger than 35 to represent the BBW’s in a brand new docu-series that will show a long-awaited glimpse into the ultra-fab world of big girls! If you have your cake and eat it too, we want to hear your story. Whether you’re nightlife’s A-list, a full-sized fashionista, big and business savvy or singlin’ and minglin’ with L.A.’s hottest, we want to meet you!”

Doron Ofir says that the agency is looking for girls who are “unapologetic about who they are and their size.” Being unapologetic for one’s physical traits is clearly a positive quality. Unfortunately, in the sizeist and body-obsessed culture that we live in, it seems unlikely that a reality television show in which party girls are paraded around for the benefits of an audience will bring about any sort of revolutionary change.

Representation of bodies of all shapes and sizes is a good thing, but I wonder why “big girls” need their own show as though non-model size women are a different species. The casting call even seems to encourage a thin vs. fat dichotomy: “Step aside skinny b**ches, the spotlight isn’t big enough for the both of us.”

The key to shows getting produced always seems to be in the pocketbook. Doron Ofir Casting is also responsible for casting reality gems (i.e. cash cows) such as “The Jersey Shore.”

Do you think that this show is a step in the right direction for varied bodied representations on the small-screen? Or is this just another example of gawking at ‘others’ on a reality show?