Anonymous wrote:I just watched it and I’m appalled that millions of people thought this degrading and abusive show was entertaining. I didn’t watch it when it was popular so this was all new to me. How were people not outraged at how abusive Jillian Michaels was? Just disgusting.
Not only were they not outraged, they were cheering her on and tuning in to see it.
Much in the same way that people tuned in to see Heidi Klum and team throw shade at Project Runway contestants or Tyra Banks humiliate young hopefuls on America’s next top model or Simon Cowell eviscerate poor singers on American Idol, or Gordon Ramsay yelling at aspiring chefs!
Reality TV show Audiences in the early 2000s had a mean streak. And there were no guardrails. Every producer wanted a financial piece of that ratings gold and no one had put a mirror up to the culture yet to encourage us to appeal to our better selves and reject it!
To put it another way…the culture was just different in that era.
The meanness was rewarded handsomely.
You can say “it was never okay” but that would be denying the reality that it obviously WAS “okay” with the masses at the time because many, many wildly successful shows followed a very similar outrageous-shaming model that made millions.