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Popular Culture Review
Especially important are the comments from their new husbands.
Melanie, who went from a size 16 to size 12, hoped that on her wedding day
new husband Frank would be “very surprised” and “awestruck.” Thus, the
beauty of each bride overshadows any other aspect of her person, with the allimportant endorsement of their husbands serving as validation of their efforts,
such as Justine’s new husband Tom’s comment: “I couldn’t have guessed how
beautiful she looks.” Colleen’s new husband Chris comments on her
transformation from 163 pounds down to 145, illustrating the importance of the
physical in creating the successful bridal appearance: “She looks like a Barbie
doll or a china doll. Just so perfect and so amazing. So beautiful. Absolutely
beautiful.” Comparing one’s new wife to a Barbie doll further illustrates the
notion of idealized beauty; Colleen apparently did not look like Barbie prior to
her transformation, but now she is perfect. One wonders how she will maintain
such perfection after the wedding day.
Conclusion
Presented on FitTV, a medium purporting to promote health and
fitness, the themes in Buff Brides of bodily disapproval and the wedding dress as
motivator for losing weight and attaining today’s definition of the feminine body
(thin and toned) further enhance the message that the female body serves as the
foremost indicator of a woman’s worth. I found especially noteworthy how these
women, the minority women in particular, viewed themselves as deficient or
lacking in some way. Their expressions of dissatisfaction support Bartky’s
assertion that media images of the perfect female beauty “leave no doubt in the
minds of most women that they fail to measure up” (71). The viewer sees these
women weighed and measured, much like livestock; their waist size and weight
literally define their self worth.
Buff Brides tells women that food must be controlled, denied, and used
only as a reward for following the “rules” of femininity—that is, managing
one’s body. Repeatedly, these women are shown either as “bad” by “indulging”
or as “good” by rejecting food. Rather than portraying food as necessary and
vital to maintaining good health, this program consistently shows that weight
loss can only occur if one can resist temptation. Food becomes an obstacle to the
attainment of the perfect body—which is defined as one that can fit into the
wedding gown and be gazed at by others without the worry of flabby arms. The
program’s inclusion of the wedding planning aspect gives the impression that
fitting into a bridal gown to look good for one’s (male) mate serves as a
legitimate reason to lose weight.
The feminine ideal of perfection, so prominent in other wedding media,
takes on additional importance in Buff Brides, in that all the brides, no matter
their weight loss achievements or disappointments, all are “perfect” brides in the
end. By the time of the wedding, it seems that onlookers still consider these
brides beautiful: success or failure appears to be a moot point in the end. The
hard work and stress that these women undergo as they deny themselves food
and work out to the point of exhaustion and pain are dismissed as a matter of