Sharlene Hesse-Biber's 'The Cult Of Thinness'

Body image has become a severe concern worldwide. More and more people fall victim to eating disorders every year. However, at the same time, rates of obesity are skyrocketing. In Sharlene Hesse-Biber’s book The Cult of Thinness, she analyzes how the societal encouragement of a ridiculously thin body shape negatively affects how people view themselves. Fifteen Million Merits, written by Charlie Brooker and Kanak Huq, is the second episode of the first season of Netflix’s hit series Black Mirror. The episode takes place in a society in which all power is generated by humans riding stationary bicycles placed in front of television screens, and are paid in “merit points”. The citizens of this population are constantly being bombarded with advertisements,

games, and television shows that, instead of portraying a fit or skinny body shape as ideal, portray a fatter body shape as abhorrent and completely inappropriate. Individuals perceived as “overweight” are treated like second-class citizens. Thus, The Cult of Thinness intersects at many points with the numerous messages of this episode.
The main character of the episode is a fit black man named Bingham Madsen (Daniel Kaluuya), Bing for short. His life is dull monotony until the day Abi Khan (Jessica Brown Findlay) begins working a few bikes down from him. She has all the components of what is considered to be, in both the show and real life, an attractive woman. She is fair-skinned, with long brown hair, plump lips, and gives an impression of innocence. Bing is immediately drawn to her, and upon hearing her beautiful singing insists on buying her a 15 million merit ticket (which is all of his merits) to get on the television competition “Hot Shot” so that she can live a life of luxury instead of having to pedal the bikes. She ultimately gives in, but takes Bing with her to the auditions. They make it to a room where the contestants wait to be called on stage. Abi is spotted almost immediately and invited to perform, outraging another woman who is far less conventionally attractive than Abi who says she’s been waiting for weeks to get on the stage. Abi introduces herself to the judges (Judge Hope, a white man, Judge Charity, a white woman, and Judge Wraith, a black man). Judge Wraith then harrasses her and tries to get her to lift her shirt up on live television. Abi refuses, and they let her sing. She performs beautifully and the judges and audience are moved. However, Judge Hope tells her her voice is only good, and there’s no room for only good. Her looks distract the audience from her talent. Wraith offers her a spot on his porn channel, which clearly horrifies and humiliates Abi, but upon intense pressure from the judges and audience, she reluctantly agrees. Bing, heartbroken, returns to his normal life until he sees a commercial for Wraith’s channel, with Abi as the clearly-terrified and unhappy star. Seeing the ad causes something to snap in Bing, so he works hard and eats others’ leftovers for months to save up 15 million more merits so he can return. When he finally gets on stage, he gets the judges attention by holding a shard of glass to his main artery and demanding they listen to what he has to say. He then screams at them, expressing all his frustrations for the injustice of their society’s system and his general disgust for the values being enforced and the total lack of authenticity. The judges are impressed, and offer him his own show where he does exactly that for 30 minutes twice a week instead of having to bike and, regardless of his past rage and the fact that the judges have turned this, too, into nothing more than a gimmick, Bing accepts.
The show portrays an almost comically capitalist society, where commercials are aired on all walls of people’s rooms.

Viewing the ads is mandatory; however, if the individual has enough merit points, they have the option of skipping or muting them. Otherwise, if the individual looks away from the commercial, the walls will sense that their “viewing is obstructed” and will pause and emit an increasingly high-pitched noise until they resume viewing. The two commercials that dominate the screen are for “Hot Shot” and the in-show porn channel, “Wraith Babes”. The former shows past contestants performing, all of whom, not shockingly, are skinny and beautiful. One commercial also mentions that all the winning contestants started out on the bikes, just like everyone else, “putting their back into giving back for a brighter now”. Using celebrities to encourage certain lifestyles, beliefs, and/or actions is a tactic seen every day in the real world. In relation to this, Hesse-Biber says, “The advertising industry and the media provide plenty of beautiful-body icons to worship. There are numerous ceremonies---pageants and contests---that affirm this ideal” (16). The commercials for “Wraith Babes” are shockingly graphic for mandatory public viewing, and some people are shown watching the channel while on their bikes surrounded by their colleagues, so it can be inferred that sexuality is fairly normalized. In contrast, as stated by Hesse-Biber, fatness has become the profane. It’s

perfectly acceptable for Bing’s workmate Dustin to watch uncensored porn at work, but when overweight janitors come by to clean the area, he verbally abuses them and throws trash at them because he can see their reflection in the screen. Although Bing seems to disapprove, he never stops Dustin, and the behavior is allowed to continue.
Hesse-Biber states, “Our culture of fatness within our culture of thinness is a paradox partly created by our capitalistic, weight-obsessed society” (23).

At 18:20, Abi remarks to Bing that the “real food” she had just bought out of the vending machine was worth putting the extra time in on the bike. Bing agrees with her, saying that buying the “cheap, lardy gunk” just means having to pedal more later to make up for the fat and sugar consumed, then craving sugar later and having to repeat the cycle over and over. While the conversation appears basic enough, it is very telling about the structure of their economy. The society is completely built on a system of exploiting people’s body dysmorphia. By offering unhealthy foods for cheap, people will see the gained weight and have to work it off. If they fail to do so, they are first ridiculed by their peers, and if they still don’t change, are then punished. At 11:30, it is revealed a somewhat chubby man who, days before had clearly been struggling on his bike, was fired and turned into a janitor. Janitor positions are reserved strictly for fat members of society. However, they do have one more option of being on a television program known as “Botherguts”. In the show, contestants are all people who have failed to lead a healthy lifestyle in the eyes of the public, and therefore deserve brutal and nationally-broadcasted humiliation. The contestants are put in weak, meltable clothing and hosed down with fire hoses (even to the

point of apparent injury) or have messy food stuffed in their faces in order to humiliate them for the amusement of the audience. Simultaneously, the show is telling the audience members that they, too, will be punished if they fail to uphold the fit standard of beauty. Possibly equally disturbing in a different way, the most popular video game played involves shooting fat people who are attacking the player. Dustin is shown playing the game and, instead of simply shooting the fat people, he brutally dismembers them as well. The game imbues a not-so-subtle message that fat people deserve to die because they will only hurt everyone else. Thus, through a number of different forms of media, violence against unfit members of society is encouraged.
Hesse-Biber states that “A woman’s sense of worth in our culture is still greatly determined by her ability to attract men” (18). While men are still subject to body judgement both in real life and in the episode, the societal focus on a woman’s worth based on her appearance is much harsher. Isabella Laughland plays a character named Swift, who’s name is never actually mentioned in the entire episode. She is the only character of obvious Asian-descent, and is also fatter than what is perceived as attractive but not to an extent of drawing much attention or punishment from others. The entire point of her character is to be interested in Bing, but Bing hardly notices her at all. His attention is entirely focused on Abi, the character who best fits the societal standard of beauty that Bing has been condition to be attracted to. Bing and Swift’s first and only interaction is at 5:40 when she helps him get food out of the vending machine, to which he simply thanks her and sits back down without any acknowledgment to her attempts at small talk. From then on, the only times Swift is seen is when she is expressing jealousy for Bing’s interest in Abi, or to show her continuously pining after Bing, up until the end when it appears she sees him for what he truly is.
The episode was meant to show a plausible future, a critique on our materially-driven, apathetic society. While most of the tropes portrayed in the episode have been done before, Booker and Huq put a new spin on body image discourse by focusing on fatness being offensive rather than directly saying that skinniness is ideal. People are controlled by their fear of being hated and publically humiliated, which drives them to work harder and provide more electrical power for those in power in their society. Therefore, poor self image becomes a critical tool to be used to keep the masses in line and the system functioning, which is true in our own society as well.