(Page 1 of 10) - Measuring a Woman's Worth: Femininity and the Disciplined Body in FitTV�s"Buff Brides" authored by Engstrom, Erika.

Measuring a Woman’s Worth:

Femininity and the Disciplined Body in FitTV’s Buff Brides

Erika Engstrom

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

erika.## email not listed ##

Paper presented to the Commission on the Status of Women at the

2007 Annual Meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication,

August 2007, Washington, DC

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Abstract

The author examines the meanings of femininity contained in the fitness reality program Buff Brides, which ties
physical fitness with the world of weddings. Women’s bodies, already subjected to hegemonic ideals, become even
more scrutinized when taking on the role of bride. A textual analysis revealed recurrent themes such as bodily
disapproval, food as enemy, and additional stress of wedding planning. Implications of this program in terms of
mass media portrayals of femininity are discussed.
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Introduction

Reality television, a media genre that purports
to provide viewers the drama of real events and their
participants (Consalvo, 1998), provides a means by
which to examine current social practices and cultural
mores. Recently, the reality genre has been studied by
media scholars seriously (Hill, 2005; Murray &
Oulette, 2004). Though highly edited, reality television
allows for a non-fictional account of contemporary
society, especially the slice-of-life, documentary
subgenre of reality programming.
In October, 2003, a new type of reality program
premiered on the Discovery Health Channel. The
program, titled Buff Brides, combined the long-
established fitness television genre with the video
verite, “fly on the wall” (Calvert, 2000) approach of
reality TV. The program followed women who were
preparing for the decidedly feminine task of wedding
planning—with the additional goal of losing weight.
The women, all from the New York City area, held
professional or clerical occupations (some with
advanced degrees), and juggled working out and
dieting with their jobs and planning the wedding of
their dreams. Now offered on Discovery’s fitness and
exercise outlet FitTV, a medium dedicated to health
and fitness, Buff Brides gives its viewers a glimpse into
what Goffman (1959) called the “backstage.” As these
women prepare for their front stage appearance as the
bride in the wedding script, viewers follow their
progress as they transform their bodies, often in order
to fit into an already-purchased bridal gown.

Like other recent reality-based fitness-oriented

programming, such as NBC’s The Biggest Loser and
VH1’s Celebrity Fit Club, Buff Brides follows its
participants’ progress toward weight-based goals.
However, Buff Brides also incorporates other
dimensions of its participants’ lives, providing more
access into these women’s personal lives, and thus a
venue for feminine performance rather than

competition. Indeed, as the subsequent analysis
demonstrates, the only competition occurs between
these brides’ own self-image and the “reality” of the
scale, the calipers used to measure their body fat, and
the fit of their bridal gown.

On the surface, this program appears to offer an

inside glimpse into weight loss. However, as I will
explain, the program also provides a means by which
to examine how it simultaneously defines femininity
and feminism (referred to here as the progress of
women toward egalitarianism). In that such a program
might be considered innocuous and even trivial, the
subtle messages it contains about modern, working
women and the appeal of the perfect, dream wedding
provides a text with which to examine the status of
women in U.S. society. Particularly, this program, as
well as others like it that focus on the bridal role,
serves as an example of how the mass media provide
women and girls what Ussher (1997) calls “a script of
ideal femininity.”

The purpose of this paper is to examine the

meanings of femininity contained in this particular
program, which bridges the notions of physical fitness
with the world of weddings, a feminine endeavor.
Especially relevant is Hill’s (2005) contention that
learning from reality television has not been common
to discussions of this genre. I find Goffman’s (1959)
dramaturgical metaphor of the front and back regions
useful here; the reality genre allows glimpses into the
back region where “the suppressed facts make their
appearance” (p. 111). Though the camera transforms
the backstage into a front region upon which the
participants play out what occurs behind the scenes,
these glimpses provide material with which to examine
both visual and textual narratives of bridal preparation.
In addition, the inclusion of scenes of brides getting
dressed, at the beauty salon, and working out at the
gym normalize these activities as expected and