Honey Boo Boo’s “Mama June” has a new weight-loss show, and it looks…interesting
June Shannon, aka Mama June or Honey Boo Boo’s mom, is returning to reality WEtv with her new show, Mama June: From Not to Hot. Shannon is no stranger to reality television: She starred on TLC’s infamous Here Comes Honey Boo Boo which ended in 2014, and a year later was a contestant on WEtv’s Marriage Boot Camp: Reality Stars in 2015. She also made an appearance on E!’s Botched.
This new show will document Mama June’s extreme weight loss in seven episodes as she embarks on surgery and fitness training. The show looks like it’ll be rife with hilarious Honey Boo Boo-style antics (using a treadmill to eat goldfish) and cringe-worthy blind dates. Take a look:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0TEF9oUvqM?feature=oembed
While it’s hard to resist the honesty and candidness of Mama June, from the show’s teaser it looks like there is a lot of body shaming and misguided motivations in the show.
The teaser shows a scale revealing Mama June’s weight of 354 pounds, which likely isn’t healthy for anyone, but the teaser suggests that rather Mama June’s weightless goals are more motivated by a desire to find love than a desire to get healthy. This conflates a woman’s romantic appeal with her physical image and bodyweight, which isn’t a healthy message for anyone.
From Hot to Not seems to bear similarities to E!’s Revenge Body with Khloe Kardashian, an equally problematic weight loss show which encourages people to use their bodies as weapons of revenge, as a way of showing people that you’re better off without them. These reality shows are not only sharing a hurtful message that losing weight means bettering or “fixing” oneself and that appearing “hot” for others is the only reason one should care about their weight.
Sure, some people like Mama June do need to become healthier. In the trailer she says,
I know that in time, carrying weight around... I could die
That said, shows that capitalize on extreme “before and afters” like Mama June: From Hot to Not can lead to unhealthy weight loss. Mama June’s goal to become a size 4 when the average dress size for an American woman is a 16 suggests that her goals might be way more extreme than they need to be. In the trailer, Honey Boo Boo voices her concern about her mom’s surgeries for this reason and we’ve gotta say, it is pretty cool to see her grow up into a caring person. Here’s hoping this show turns more into a journey to health than a body-shaming quest for romantic validation.
