I rather despised myself last week for watching The 34 Stone Teenager - Six Months On but even though I knew it was wrong, I couldn't help myself. It caught up with Bethany, who at 19 had hit the titular 34 stone. Her periods had stopped and the amount she was comfort-eating every day would feed a village in India for a week. Desperate to shed 20 stone, she had part of her stomach removed and, by the end of the catch-up, had shed quite a lot of weight, though she was still obese.
Why do we watch programmes like this? Channel 4's Bodyshock series is no less a freak show than the documentary featuring Bethany. In recent weeks, Channel 4 has bought us the fattest boy in the world (sic), a baby with two heads and a family of children with the rare premature-ageing condition of progeria. Last Thursday, BBC3 boasted F*** off I'm A Hairy Woman (Thursday BBC3 9pm). These are the modern equivalent of Georgian London's freak shows, when you could see giants and freaks in return for a few coins. Why do we feel the need to gawp at people less fortunate than us? Modern documentaries do their best to offer something redemptive at the end - Bethany's weight loss, for example, and the astonishing survival of the little girl after her second head was removed - but really, we're just seeking reassurance. My arse may be a bit lardier than I like but it's nowhere near the size of Bethany's. And I eat fruit, so I must be a better person, right?
At their heart, they're about making us feel better about ourselves - superior, even. I'd never allow a kid of mine to get to the size Jambik, the subject of the Bodyshock documentary on the world's biggest child, attained: he's 16 stone at seven years old. Would that make me a better parent than Jambik's mum, who clearly loves him and wants what she thinks is the best for him?
I certainly feel better about the size of my bottom when I watch a documentary about someone who is hugely obese, but better about myself? I don't think so - these films make me feel dirty.
