Strauss: ‘Big Bliss’ a big offense

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to bring you Fat TV. That’s right, all of your favorite shows, now available in plus size. We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to bring you Fat TV. That’s right, all of your favorite shows, now available in plus size.

As a senior who has attended enough Golf Pros and Tennis Hos-themed parties to satisfy me for the rest of my life, I’ve enjoyed spending (at least the earlier part of) my Friday nights this school year watching TLC’s Bridal Friday. Apparently, wedding shows have changed a bit since I religiously watched them in high school. “Say Yes to the Dress: Big Bliss,” a spin-off of “Say Yes to the Dress,” was added to TLC’s line-up a little more than a year ago. It features plus-sized women trying to find their dream wedding dresses, just as the original series showed slimmer women doing the same.

Although I appreciate that TLC is showing brides that are not all sample size (4 or 6), why do the plus-sized girls need their own show? Why can’t TLC just have a mix of women on “Say Yes to the Dress”?

What I have a real issue with is that, by making a separate show for larger brides, TLC blatantly labels larger brides as different and out of the norm, when, in fact, the average American woman is a size 12. What TLC, then, presented as “normal” in the original series is not. Yet the trend for such a separation is typical in the media these days (“More To Love” as a counterpart to “The Bachelor” and “Mike & Molly” as a “Whitney” type show with fat jokes).

Women of all sizes deserve the same care and level of service when dress shopping. We all have our own fit issues because we all have differently shaped bodies. By TLC’s reasoning, there should be a special series for each body type — tall, pear-shaped, large-chested. “Say Yes to the Dress: Wide Hips”?

My issue is not with the actual treatment that these brides receive from the staff at Kleinfeld Bridal. The consultants give the same lovely and fun-to-watch service as they do on the original. My issue is with the premise. In the original series, each episode has a theme: women who bring their fiances dress shopping, hard-to-please mothers, diva brides. The brides on “Big Bliss” could easily fit into any one of these categories, making storyline, not image, the theme of the show.

One of the brides featured on an episode of “Big Bliss” met her groom after he found her on a website for men who like large women. How about featuring brides who met their grooms in ways that have nothing to do with their size — like the rest of the world. Highlighting couples like the one aforementioned makes larger women seem like a fetish niche, incapable of receiving love in the traditional sense.

Then we come to the issue of what I like to call “squeeze shots” — footage of brides getting stuck in dresses. I’ve tried to squeeze my butt into jeans at many Gap stores across the country, and I’m so glad no one has ever  filmed it. Sure, these ladies agreed to be filmed, but the editing of the footage is done to make the too-small-dress-shimmy look humorous instead of like a normal part of the shopping process. A commercial break will come just as the bridal consultant tugs to remove the dress. Will she or won’t she be able to get it off? Will they bring out the scissors? Will Cindy spend the rest of her life in this Balenciaga gown? We have to stay tuned!

The show only chronicles the fit struggle happening with plus-sized brides because the dresses they’re trying on are, as was previously mentioned, the sample sizes 4 or 6. TLC might not be able to change the fashion industry’s idea of “sample size.” However, it can change the way women of all shapes and sizes are portrayed on TV. As happy as I am to see women of all shapes and sizes being given advice on feeling beautiful for their special day, it’s a shame that TLC addresses the issue in this way, turning what could be a great program about embracing all body types into a body-image trainwreck.

We tune into “Say Yes” to see a mom cry as her daughter steps out in a princess dress or the drama when a woman on her second marriage brings along her children who don’t agree with her desire for a more modest dress. The show is about celebrating the beauty of marriage and the fun of planning a wedding, not watching women try to wiggle into a sample size.

Write Courtney at cas136@pitt.edu.