Oh, Danny Boy

I have admitted several times on this blog to watching ridiculous television. Not usually a ridiculous amount of television, but by all means ridiculous television. Case in point: The Biggest Loser. Why this show is entertaining, I've truly no idea. Maybe it's the inspiring stories (we know how I love those), or maybe it subconsciously keeps me on track to eat well and exercise more often. Who knows. But I watch.

This season I have found myself repeatedly annoyed with the men on the show. They're big, beefy, probably good boys, but on the show they come off as real jerks. Week after week I have to listen to these guys talk about how the girls deserve to get kicked off (as they have for weeks and weeks) because they just don't work out as hard, just don't eat as healthy, just don't want it as much. Never has it occurred to any of them evidently that part of the reason a woman's never won the show is because they start the show with relatively less weight to lose and a metabolism slower than a man's. Furthermore, women have certain parts of their body that are fat and aren't going anywhere (BOOBS!). Now, I don't live in the Biggest Loser house and don't really know how much everyone works out or how healthy they eat. But it seems to me that the women on the show have done both plentifully. Their bodies just haven't always cooperated in the numbers they dropped. One contestant, Dan, a 21-year-old with a head of hair I'd just like to chop off, always has comments about this. It's so annoying! I want to make him sit through a feminist lit class or something.

So tonight, with two female contestants left and four men, it seemed like another week that a woman would go home. The men made a mockery of the challenge just 'cause they thought it was funny and then made fun of the women for being bothered by it. When it came down to the weigh-in, though, the women went 1-2, and it was time for one of the men to go packing. Here, too, is the irony. Although these boys want to come off as the big, tough, strong men, they are absolutely blubbering fools when any one from their group goes home. They just cry and cry and cry. I would be lying if I said I wasn't THRILLED when Dan got sent home. And there he was crying. First he makes a statement that seems to show him realizing the error of his snap judgment about anyone falling below the yellow line (or, in lay speak, becoming eligible to be voted off the show). But then later he says he wouldn't "in a million years" have put money on the women to lose such significant weight in one week. I had hoped he would grow up. Instead, he goes home with an absurd tattoo and a bad haircut. Oh, and he moved to LA to break into the music industry, despite the fact that he can't sing at all.

Now, here's my disclaimer. I don't know a-one of these people. I'm sure they're all lovely, and I most certainly applaud their wonderful work. I just can't bear cockiness. Humility really is an underappreciated virtue in our world. So forgive me for enjoying while I sit back and watch an arrogant young'un (I can say that, because he's seven years younger than me) eat a serving of humble pie.