It’s sometimes hard to believe that it’s already been more than a decade since these shows and movies were on TV. With that span of years, it’s also easy to forget how far we’ve really come with body image and how women are portrayed on TV.
Did they REALLY dress like that on TV in the 2000s-2010s? I’ve been curious to revisit some of the TV favs from the 2000s. It’s a trip back in time, but a few glances at these images are eye-opening.
America’s Next Top Model
Tyra Banks’ America’s Next Top Model is the infamous American reality television series which ran for 24 seasons from the time they originally released it on May 20, 2003, until the series finale on April 10, 2018. On the show, aspiring models all competed for a chance to start their modeling career.
It was a highly rated show on UPN and CW but it was also spun off with the Top Model franchise which has been produced around the world. Some of the controversies from America’s Next Top Model ran the gamut of health and safety issues, mental health insensitivities, cultural offenses, cheating scandals, and more.
TikTokker Carly Ristuccia told NBC News: “I just realized how insanely wrong it was.” She’s now famous for her TikTok video where she said, “It got me thinking about how the ideas in that show probably built my subconscious ideas on body image and the whole industry.”
Are You Hot?
Are You Hot? is another reality TV show that was in search of “America’s Sexiest People.” It premiered February 13, 2003 on ABC and it ran until March 20, 2003. That was six episodes over one season. With so much controversy surrounding the show, along with its super low ratings, the short run is not surprising.
The show purported to evaluate contestants solely on how attractive they were with some sex appeal thrown in. It’s all about whether they’re HOT or NOT. Lorenzo Lamas (actor), Rachel Hunter (actress, producer, and model), and Randolph Duke (designer) were all on the panel of judges with JD Roberto as the host. As he says, “You may not think our competitors are quite that hot but, the important thing is, they think they are.”
The premise of the show is that they will name the “Sexiest Person in America” in the most arbitrary ways possible. They’re looking for a wax figure and their comments along the way include body shaming: “You’d better be careful. Spandex can only stretch so far.” The contestants are portrayed as superficial and nonsensical.
In a bizarre sidenote, Howard Stern sued the show for ripping off ideas from his radio show. He dropped the suit but, really, it’s an asinine and shallow concept for a reality TV show. It’s all about objectification with arbitrary standards that make it dull and annoying to watch. The focus of the show appears to be about insulting contestants based on their appearance and their personal self-image.
Buffy The Vampire Slayer
Buffy the Vampire Slayer wasn’t a reality TV show but it still revolved around super-thin young people, headed up by Sarah Michelle Gellar in the role of Buffy Summers. The supernatural drama first launched on March 10, 1997. It ran for 144 episodes over seven seasons, until it finally ended on May 20, 2003.
While this action-adventure show focused on strong women, male and female actors have since spoken out against the manipulative, abusive, racist, misogynistic, and offensive behavior by Joss Whedon, who created Buffy. Ray Fisher first led the charge against Whedon based on his own experience on the Justice League. He was unceremoniously fired from his Cyborg-role but his honest appeal for justice inspired a myriad of other Buffy actresses to speak out.
Charisma Carpenter, who played Cordelia Chase on Buffy and the spin-off, Angel, said that she spoke up because firing Fisher was the “last straw.” She spoke out against Whedon, saying, “While he found his misconduct amusing, it only served to intensify my performance anxiety, disempower me, and alienate me from my peers. The disturbing incidents triggered a chronic physical condition from which I still suffer.”
Carpenter’s pregnancy also came under fire. Beyond calling her “fat,” she said that Whedon “manipulatively weaponized my womanhood and my faith against me. He proceeded to attack my character, mock my religious beliefs, accuse me of sabotaging the show, and then, unceremoniously, fired me the following season once I gave birth.”
While Sarah Michelle Geller didn’t mention personal abuse by Whedon against her while she was on the Buffy set, she did post to Instagram saying that she doesn’t want to be associated with Whedon. She added, “I stand with all survivors of abuse and am proud of them for speaking out.” In a 2011 interview with Health, she said, “I totally have body dysmorphic disorder.”
The Swan
The Swan is an American reality TV show that premiered on April 7, 2004. It ran for 18 episodes over two seasons with the series finale airing on December 20, 2004. The premise is that the contestants will transform from a homely “ugly duckling” into a swan via an extreme makeover. Each contestant had a team of specialists including a coach, cosmetic surgeon, dentist, (unlicensed) therapist, and trainer who were all part of the transformation.
The first season pulled 9.1 million viewers per episode, so the audience appeared to be eager to see how the women changed over the 3-month period. For each episode, two women were monitored for their achievement, growth, and work ethic over two weeks. Then, at the end of the episode, one woman was selected to compete in the Swan pageant at the end of the season.
The show focused on all those deeply rooted insecurities that women face, while celebrating the possibilities of physical transformation via plastic surgery. To achieve the authentic surprise of the final reveal, the women were isolated without mirrors, TV, or phones.
In her book, Reality Bites Back, Jennifer Pozner called the show “The most sadistic reality series of the decade.” The clear message was that no woman could be a “swan” without a complete physical makeover to make her more closely fit into their standards for beauty. Many of the contestants have spoken out against the show with Lorrie Arias as one of the most vocal critics.
Arias was 34 when she appeared on the show and she received the most procedures of any contestant: breast augmentation, buttock lift, dual facelift, endoscopic brow lift, inner thigh lift, and more. It left her depressed and agoraphobic with body dysmorphic disorder. She told New York Post: “I had the most surgeries of any Swan in the history of the show and it has all gone to absolute s***. I am a 300-pound mess of a person who is afraid to go outside.”
Friends
Friends is an American TV sitcom. It was created by Marta Kauffman and David Crane with its launch on September 22, 1994. The show ran for ten seasons until the season finale on May 6, 2004 with ~52.5 million American viewers. Friends had gradually risen to fame and popularity until it reached the top slot in season 8. It’s now recognized as one of the greatest TV shows of all time.
It may be famous but it wasn’t without its pitfalls, including the body image issues faced by Lisa Kudrow (Phoebe Buffay) on the show. In the last few years, Kudrow has spoken out about feeling “different” on the show. In her interview on SiriusXM’s The Howard Stern Show, she said, “It’s not that I felt horrible around them. Fittings were not fun, that’s for sure.”
The difference felt particularly evident when she wore the same clothes as Courtney Cox and Jennifer Aniston. She said, “Yeah, I have a different body type. I’m just bigger and sometimes the clothes, when I’d see the show, were so, sort of, full of volume.” Even though she was known for her free spirit and eccentricities, Kudrow felt uncomfortable.
Kudrow said, “It was just like, I enveloped them. I felt like this mountainous thing that swallowed them alive.” She compared herself with Cox and Aniston. Earlier on the WTF with Marc Maron podcast, she said, “You see yourself on TV and it’s that, ‘Oh my god, I’m just a mountain of a girl’.” She explained, “And I’m already bigger than Courteney and Jennifer. [I was] taller, bigger. My bones feel bigger, I just felt like this mountain of a woman next to them.”
They were all under a magnifying glass. She was always trying to lose weight and her fans all admired her when she was underweight but she was sick all the time. So, in more recent years, she has developed a more healthy relationship with her body image. She said, “I just go, ‘All right, so what? You’re older, that’s a good thing, why is that a bad thing?’“
How Has Perception of
Body Image Changed?
TV shows are often known for lame and offensive objectification of women, and these shows are only a small sample of examples. What’s the point? The reality shows all judge the contestants and find them lacking. There’s no positive reinforcement, even in the supposedly empowering action-adventure dramas. If the women were doing it for the money or the free plastic surgery in those reality dramas (which some of them probably did), no amount of cash is really worth that level of outrageous humiliation and long-term psychological devastation. And just look at the long-term damage that those shows wrought on those young female stars!
That was then. So, what about now?
Now, we have shows like Dietland, Dumplin, Hairspray, Orange Is The New Black, and Shrill. These shows showcase characters who represent all backgrounds, body types, and orientations.
Dietland
Dietland focuses on the struggles of journalist Plum Kelly (Joy Nash), who has a long history of struggling with her weight. She’s on a path toward a more positive body image, but it’s not always easy. In reference to her role as Plum Kelley, Nash says, “She hates her current body and [thinks] not just that she’ll love her body when she’s thin, she’ll love her life.”
Dumplin
In Dumplin, Jennifer Aniston plays Rosie, the mom of Willowdean Dickson (Danielle Macdonald), who is confronted with body images as she participates in a beauty contest. In an interview with Popsugar, Screenwriter Kristin Hahn says, “It’s exciting to be able to tell a story that is a part of the body positive conversation that’s evolving right now. There’s so much consciousness around building and expanding the definition of beauty and femininity.”
Hahn continues: “To tell a story that is also about getting past our own judgments, which we all have. Our own, sort of, superficial judgments of people, ourselves included. We need to connect with people to see who they really are.”
Hairspray
While Dumplin hits all the right messaging for body positivity and celebrating who you are, there’s still nothing quite like Hairspray. In its various iterations, the show is about Tracy Turnblad, a Baltimore teen who is overweight but dreams of becoming a regular singer-dancer cast member on The Corny Collins Show. The musical, set in the ‘60s, was made into a movie in the ‘80s and became a Broadway hit in the ‘00s, winning eight Tony Awards. It even hit Hollywood in 2007.
It has succeeded through the years because it’s about more than just body image – it also tackles the struggles for racial equality that dominated much of the ‘60s. Tracy belts out, “Tomorrow is a brand new day and it don’t know white from black!” We can’t help but believe that change is somehow possible. It’s simple enough, but isn’t that what hope is really all about?
Orange Is the New Black (OITNB)
Orange Is the New Black is an award-winning American comedy drama which first aired on July 11, 2013. It ran for 91 episodes over 7 seasons. It was widely acclaimed for its body positivity but also for its efforts to humanize prisoners. The all-star cast brings the stories to life with emotional intensity and black humor. It targets hard-hitting issues without whacking you over the head with them. For example, it’s refreshing for a show to promote body positivity by featuring women of different sizes in roles that don’t revolve around/aren’t dependent on their size.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Danielle Brooks (Tasha “Taystee” Jefferson) said, “I didn’t know that we could change lives when it came to certain communities being affected by this show and feeling like they had a voice. I had no idea of the power that this show was going to have.”
Shrill
Shrill is an American comedy TV series which first aired on March 15, 2019. It ran for 22 episodes over 3 seasons until it ended on May 7, 2021. It’s another show where the main character, Annie Easton (Aidy Bryant), is a journalist who wants to change her life but she doesn’t want to change her body. In her interview with Esquire, Bryant said, “From a character growth perspective, I like how Annie learns that you’re not always the hero. You’re not always the victim in a situation.”
At the same time, the show is based on Lindy West’s bestseller, Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman. In the Esquire interview, West says: “It was really important to us to make sure that we weren’t putting out this false idea that accepting your body or gaining confidence is a finish line you can ever really cross. It’s a practice. It’s an ongoing process that you have to work at every day.”
She adds: “She’s still super fucked up. I certainly still struggle with my body, and I’ve been talking about my body, professionally, for a decade. I think it really serves the story beautifully but it’s also really grounded and really true. She’s not a healed person; she’s a healing person.”
Perhaps we could all learn that it’s okay to be human. No matter our body type, we’re more than what we look like…and we shouldn’t be forced to undergo complete revisions of who and what we are to be considered somehow beautiful, better, or right.
What are your thoughts on body image issues on TV and movies? Tell us below!
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