TLC has unveiled Hot and Heavy: a new, totally necessary and sensitive reality TV show focused on ‘mixed-weight couples’.
The series will seemingly explore the various highs and lows of being in a relationship with someone at the other end of the weight-spectrum.
After the network released the trailer for the upcoming show, folks on Twitter aired their issues with the concept, calling it out for what it is: daft, pointless and troll-baiting.
Check out the trailer for Hot and Heavy below:
The series will follow three couples – Joy and Chris, Kristin and Rusty, and Adrianna and Ricardo – as they navigate their respective relationships, as well as dealing with judgement from friends, family and the public.
Here’s the problem: in each of the couples, it’s the woman who’s heavier.
In the trailer, Ricardo says:
We’re just two people that are different sizes and I don’t feel like there should be a stigma behind it.
However, the trailer has not been received well online, with one user writing: ‘This is not okay and that title is horrible.’
Another critic pointed out the ethical issues behind the show: ‘Only showing couples where the woman is heavier aka TLC into enforcing societal beauty standards only on women, kinda sad stance to take into 2020.’
A recurring point in the replies to the trailer is that the network is glamorising obesity, with one user writing: ‘What’s with TLC and morbidly obese people? I can understand My 600lb Life because they actually want help but morbid obesity [is] not to be celebrated.’
Talking in the trailer about her husband of two years, Kristin – who weighs in at 329lbs – says: ‘I think every girl hopes they are going to get a hunky husband, so I totally hit the jack pot.’
‘I absolutely love Kristin’s size – I wouldn’t mind if she was a little bigger,’ Rusty says of Kristin.
However, disagreements between the couple arise with discussions of starting a family together, as Kristin realises she may need to get gastric bypass surgery in order to actually have a baby.
On the other hand, not everyone is criticising the upcoming series. One user tweeted: ‘We’re all attracted to different people! I’m gonna LOVE this show!’
Another person wrote: ‘I’m not going to sit here and judge. Whatever makes your clock tick, it’s your life enjoy it.’
Hot and Heavy will premiere on TLC on January 7, 2020.
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After graduating from Glasgow Caledonian University with an NCTJ and BCTJ-accredited Multimedia Journalism degree, Cameron ventured into the world of print journalism at The National, while also working as a freelance film journalist on the side, becoming an accredited Rotten Tomatoes critic in the process. He’s now left his Scottish homelands and took up residence at UNILAD as a journalist.