Abstract
Critics of weight loss reality shows often present the contestants as victims of commodification and exploitation without any form of agency. This paper seeks to contest this one-sided view of such shows. It draws on interviews with the producers and 19 contestants in the first season of a dance reality show in Ghana, the Di Asa show, as well as recorded video performances online. We argue that indeed the show was organised in a manner that commodified the contestants for purposes of improving the ratings of the private television station that hosted the show. However, to read these contestants purely as commodified objects misses half the story. We demonstrate that these contestants participated in the show with parallel motives to that for which the producers created the show, and were successful in their endeavours. They thus engaged in what we call subversive commodification, a situation where the object of commodification actively takes part in the commodification process to gain benefits that accrue solely to them and not the subject of commodification.
Introduction
In contemporary Western society, fat women face more limitations because of their body size than fat men (Saguy and Ward, 2011). Obese female bodies are generally viewed as ‘out of control’ (Farrell, 2009) and ‘unacceptable’ (Gallagher and Pecot-Hebert, 2007). This contrasts with Western society of the past which had a more positive valuation of fat (Boling, 2011). Similarly, historical research has established a positive attitude towards corpulent African women as it signified beauty, health, wealth and fertility (Brewis, 2011). In recent years, it has become apparent that perceptions about body weight are shifting in the West African nation of Ghana. This shift can be attributed to the linkage of weight gain to chronic non-communicable illnesses in public health campaigns (Wrigley-Asante et al., 2017). The overweight and obese in Ghana are therefore experiencing stigma and prejudice as evident in public shaming, especially stigmatising language (Aryeetey, 2016).
However, other studies in Ghana reveal that despite the stigma and limitations, some amount of weight is still preferable, leading to a certain level of body-image satisfaction in overweight women. This body-image satisfaction is often directly linked to the belief in the body-size preference of male partners or men in general. Research has shown that African men and men of African descent prefer women with large body sizes to thin women (Choate, 2005). Irrespective of the general preference for medium to full body sizes within the African context, when women cross the visible threshold of the ‘acceptable’ body size, they enter the stigmatisation phase of their lives (Aryeetey, 2016; Holdsworth et al., 2004). Within the Ghanaian context, fat shaming is often experienced through stigmatising names such as Obolo, Cargo, Ngozi and Muchoomudoo which makes such women feel uncomfortable and reluctant to take part in social events (Aryeetey, 2016).
The fat female body within the Ghanaian context is plagued by the paradox of shame and desirability. On the one hand, historical and cultural symbolism has placed a certain level of positive value upon the fat female body, but on the other, the globalisation and neoliberal discourse has devalued and placed a medical narrative on it. It is within the context of this paradoxical situation that Di Asa, Ghana’s first dance reality TV show, focused on fat female bodies, emerged.
The Di Asa dance reality show also emerged within a wider feminist scholarly context that critiques both the obsession with thinness and reality shows. Drawing on Foucault’s ideas of discipline and punishment, Bartky (1988) for example reminds women that an obsession with bodily regimes such as fitness or dieting is self-imposed punishment that women internalise given the patriarchal contexts in which they live. Rather than fall for it, Bartky (1988) insists that women should fully recognise these bodily regimes for what they are and actively refuse to practice them. Similarly, Bordo (2003: 165) notes that ‘the female body is a practical, direct locus of social control’ in a patriarchal world. Turning their gaze to reality television, feminists who work in media studies note the hyper-visibility (Cameron, 2019; Gailey, 2014) of fat women in the media with shows such as Three Fat Bodies, One Thin Dress devoted specifically to them. While scholars such as Inthorn and Boyce (2010) argue that reality television sees fat individuals as people, many other scholars are critical of reality television. They argue among others that such shows perpetuate stereotypes about fat female bodies (Sender and Sullivan, 2008), humiliate them (Braun, 2008; Mendible, 2004) and in extreme cases, bully and insult them as and when the host of a show so desires (Raisborough, 2014).
Cameron (2019) points out that even when reality television purports to see fat bodies as people (Inthorn and Boyce, 2010), they inadvertently send the message that not all corpulent bodies are acceptable. The author argues that there is a ‘good fatty’ archetype represented in the media by characters such as Whitney Way Thore in My big fat fabulous life. ‘Good fatty’ bodies are the fat, active beings, who are constantly on the move. Raisborough (2014: 163) re-echoes this sentiment in the words: ‘a body ‘becoming-thin’ and ‘becoming-active’ is rewarded with some respect, dignity and personhood (and only then, if their ‘becoming’ is sustained)’. Similarly, Graves and Kwan (2012) note that in the show More to Love, the women are loved only if they engage in hyper-femininity.
From a political economy perspective, feminist media scholars are deeply critical of reality shows because of their embedded commodification of women. These shows seek to make money off of fat female bodies, even as they ridicule them as being freaks (Palmer, 2012). Such shows are not simply devaluing these female bodies (Gadzekpo and Smith, 2020), they are also profiting off of them (Cox, 2015). With reality shows that include an element of voting, both the media houses and the telecommunication industry benefit from the showcasing of fat female bodies.
Enter the Di Asa show in Ghana which sought to make a profit off of women’s bodies in urban Accra. Unlike the size-transformation television predominant in the Western world, this first reality television show focused on fat bodies in Ghana emphasised the women’s ability to dance, not their weight loss efforts. Compared to other body-related TV shows that ‘tend to frame fat as a problem to be changed or disguised’ (Choi, 2019: 1012), winning the show in the Di Asa competition depended on how well the contestants danced and not how much weight they lost over the course of the show. Winning depended purely on the contestants’ ability to move their bodies and dance. The show’s emphasis on dance is clear in the title, Di Asa, which loosely translates as to dance heartily.
Two scholars, one a feminist sociologist, the other a performance scholar interrogate this show from the perspective of producers and performers to understand the extent to which their actions could be interpreted, using the same language – of stigma, humiliation and especially commodification – that mainstream Western feminist media scholars use. We enter this discussion from a feminist Global South perspective to extend feminist media perspectives on gender and reality shows. Like other feminist scholars from the Global South (Bachmann and Proust, 2020), we caution against the homogenising tendencies of mainstream Western feminist media perspectives. Our analysis highlights the importance of understanding the experiences of women of different socio-economic/socio-cultural backgrounds, to have a fuller appreciation of the reality of women’s worlds.
We argue that fat women in urban Accra protest the commodification in reality television shows by engaging in what we term ‘subversive commodification’. Subversive commodification is the situation where the object of commodification actively takes part in the commodification process to gain benefits that accrue solely to them and not the subject of commodification. We demonstrate in this article that while the maiden edition of the Di Asa show was used by the creators, Atinka TV, to claim a major audience share of the Ghanaian local language media-scape, the women also used their bodies through the show, to change perceptions about their abilities and gain exposure for their individual ambitions. Within a context where there is still a preference for some amount of fat, the women tactically used their fat bodies to their advantage. Subversive commodification is strategic. As Young asserts, ‘strategy implies control, presumes power and has a definitive goal in mind. Enactment of strategy requires tactics – intentional manoeuvres designed to achieve a goal’ (Young, 2018: 69). Drawing on de Certeau (1984), she argues further that tactics are often employed by the less-powerful to adapt to the ‘environment which has been created by the strategies of the powerful’ (Young, 2018: 69–70). The women in this study, mainly low income market traders, used tactics within the environment created by the relatively powerful TV station – seeing as they have the resources and the platform – to pursue goals they themselves did not have the resources to pursue. We argue that while the show branded the women as a commodity meant for consumption by viewers, the women were by no means passive, as they joined the show with individual goals and used the show to achieve these varied goals.
Methods
This paper draws on empirical data collected from participants in the maiden edition of Ghana’s Di Asa dance reality show created in 2017. We conducted semi-structured in-depth interviews with 19 contestants, as well as the producer and choreographer (who also doubled as a technical judge for the Season). The interviews were conducted at various locations of the participants’ choice, between September 2018 and September 2019. Except for the interviews with the producer and director which were conducted in English, all the other interviews were done in Twi and Ga. Each interview lasted between 45 and 90 minutes and focused on the contestants’ experiences of being fat, their motivations for participating in the show and the benefits derived from participation. For the producers, we explored their motivations for creating the show and the benefits that accrued to their media business. We selected participants for the research based on their willingness to participate and their location. Bearing in mind that the producers scouted for talent across the entire country, we approached the producers and requested for data on the show’s 62 finalists who lived in the capital city of Accra. They gave us a list of 20 contestants and after introducing the research project and requesting for their voluntary participation through phone calls; we ended up with 19 research participants. The interviews were coded inductively using NVivo.
In addition to the interviews, we analysed video recordings of the televised dance performances uploaded by Atinka Media Village on YouTube. The video analysis was done deductively, with a focus on identifying instances within the performance where contestants capitalised on their breasts and buttocks to direct the attention of viewers, appealing to a certain demographic of voters. Using this framework, we watched 48 videos of Season 1 performances uploaded on YouTube, as well as promotional videos for subsequent seasons in which Season 1 contestants were featured. Since the videos were excerpts and highlights from the show, they were relatively short, lasting between 3 and 7 minutes. The data collected for this research was managed, stored and protected in accordance with the highest ethical standards approved by the Ethics Committee of the Humanities at the University of Ghana. We obtained informed consent from all participants in the study and we guaranteed them anonymity by assigning each of them a pseudonym in this paper.
The emergence of Atinka TV and the Di Asa reality show
On 7th July 2017, Atinka Media Village launched a dance reality show. The show provided a platform for overweight and obese market women, to showcase their dancing abilities competitively for a range of prizes. A series of auditions followed the launch of the competition across major market centres in Ghana. The 2-month audition period (11th July–13th September 2017) gave the 13-week TV reality show a total of 62 contestants, all dancing for the ultimate prizes of a saloon car, Kia mini truck and a three-wheeled truck for the first, second and third places respectively (See Figure 1). The 62 contestants who emerged at the end of the audition process entered the Di Asa House on 20th October 2017 and the finalists left on 17th December 2017. The 13-week competition took the women through a series of weekly performances and evictions, which led to the final 10, out of which they crowned 3 winners.
Promotional Image for Di Asa Dance Reality Show, showing the winning prizes.
For decades the term ‘Reality TV’ has been used to describe a range of TV programmes that centre nonprofessional actors in a wide range of situations, reflecting both real-life and contrived events (Feasey, 2008). In recent times, ‘Reality TV’ has become a major avenue for engaging with social issues and interests for entertainment. A key characteristic of Reality TV is the presence of unscripted ordinary people on television whom audiences seem to love (Feasey, 2008). This explains the prevalence of the phenomenon on TV schedules around the world. Even though the nature of its content lends it to easy dismissal as trivial, Deery (2015: 1) has argued that ‘it is impact, tenacity and cultural resonance, not profundity of content, that make reality television worth analysing’.
For a television station aiming to enter the Ghanaian media-scape and claim a share of a certain category of viewers, Atinka TV chose the reality format because of its popular appeal. The driving content, fat female bodies, however, proved as important as the format. The creators of the Di Asa Dance Reality Show, Atinka TV, are a part of Atinka Media Village (AMV), a subsidiary of the Tobinco Group, which is mainly a pharmaceutical group of companies. AMV is made up of Atinka TV, Atinka FM (Accra), Agyenkwa FM (Kumasi), Ahotor FM (Takoradi) and Atinkaonline. The television station started operating in November 2015, focusing competitively on the use of local language to reach the masses. 1 Its language format is both Twi and English, but with an 80% focus on Twi, in order to reach their target audience. With this aim in mind, Atinka TV entered the market to meet tough competition as other television stations were already catering to that market. It took Atinka TV 2 years of existence to get the attention of their target audience through the Di Asa Show. Speaking to the show’s producer about the bigger aim of the TV station, she stated that the aim of Atinka TV as a business was ‘to compete strongly enough with the other local TV stations to be at the top. So that was the task more or less. So, he [the owner] just wanted to find that space in the Twi TV channels and be relevant’.
The task for the producers therefore was to find a very exciting product to sell to Ghanaians and become relevant. The product, as it turned out, was the spectacle created by fat female bodies dancing for entertainment. There are a range of factors that contributed to the popularity of the show: the cultural penchant for dance among Ghanaians (Nketia, 1965); the contestants – the oft neglected fat women not considered good enough for TV; and the target audience – the non-English speaking Ghanaians, with a more traditional worldview about body size.
Considering the line of business of Tobinco Group of companies, pharmaceuticals and health, it was expected that with the launch of a dance reality show for fat women, the general narrative would be around health and wellness. They launched the show around the same time that several research findings reported the rising rates of obesity among women in Ghana (Aryeetey, 2016; Wrigley-Asante et al., 2017). The emphasis on healthy eating and exercise in the Di Asa House suggests an interest in ensuring weight loss. However, the Deputy Chief Executive Officer of Atinka Media Village, at the launch, highlighted that the main aim of the show was to ‘give the contestants a sense of belonging and reduce inferiority complex among plus-sized women’ (GhanaWeb, 2017a). It is unclear from his statement how the show would achieve this aim – whether through weight loss, fame or both. This ambiguity is clarified in the introduction of the proposal for the maiden edition: ‘Di Asa is a reality show that will assemble non-professional dancers together to take them through weeks of coaching to develop themselves . . . Our hope is to see these contestants lose excess pounds by dancing to keep fit’. Almost all the contestants interviewed (n=18) reported a certain amount of weight-loss because of the exercise routines, regular dancing and healthy diet while in the Di Asa House. However, none of them expressed concern about being disqualified for not losing weight. Their major concerns rather stemmed from fear of not dazzling the audience with their dance routines. As we shall discuss, dazzling the audience required a focus on shaking the fat parts of their bodies. Unsurprisingly, the women became instant commodities for the consumption of mainly men.
Di Asa and the commodification of fatness
The producers described the maiden edition of the Di Asa Dance Reality show as the most successful of the three seasons held so far. The show was so successful that it catapulted Atinka TV to the position of a high-ranking private television station in Ghana. In an interview with the producer, she revealed how the success of the show carried the TV station along with it: I think it was successful because of the reviews we got. We did this for the Ghanaian public and if the majority of the public said it was a good product, sure we can only say it was. Our clients, sponsors, were also happy, and that was a good sign, considering that it was the first reality show that the station had embarked on and the station was also new. Prior to Di Asa, they didn’t know Atinka. So then, the name Atinka grew alongside the Di Asa [show].
By referring to the show as a product, the producer revealed the inner workings of the commodifying agenda, in that they branded the fat dancing body as a product for sale. The Ghanaian public bought the product on a weekly basis and were given variety in the offering of a Wednesday freestyle performance and a Saturday eviction show. The producers credited the success of the show to the body sizes involved and how these women’s bodies displayed dances ranging from salsa of Latin America, the Ghanaian dances of Adowa, kpanlogo and borborbor, to American hip hop.
To ensure the proper branding and presentation of the contestants, they were given some production support in the form of dance and performance training, costume allowance, hair and make-up assistance. 2 In the initial stages, it was difficult for the producers to get sponsorship for the show, however, as the show gained popularity, several sponsors came on board. 3 As a media house with subsidiary radio stations in major cities (Accra, Kumasi and Takoradi), Atinka TV used television, radio and social media to market the show far and wide.
To keep the sponsors happy, the producers created advertisements of sponsors’ products featuring the contestants, who had by then become household names in Ghana. They created these advertisements as part of the competition where they exchanged their talents for free to promote the sponsors’ products. In exchange, the sponsors maintained their business relationship with the TV station. In addition, more content was created for the station featuring the contestants touring the factories and production sites of sponsoring companies, bringing more attention to their products by riding on the popularity the women had gained through the show.
The principal aim of the show was to create a product (the branded fat female dancing body) and sell it to Ghanaian audiences in order to gain viewership and a major share of the local language audience. This aim was further rehashed by the choreographer for the show who stated that he worked on the show to produce something that is ‘strong and beautiful so that we can create traffic whereby every day we will have people watch Atinka TV’. To achieve this, the fat body has to keep dancing to entertain the viewers, regardless of health issues. The punishment for not being able to dance, which then translates into low votes, comes in the form of eviction. The branding went as far as transgressing the participants’ own beauty ideals. Leticia narrates her ordeal: I am a natural person; I really love everything of mine natural so I didn’t like the makeup and shaping of the eyebrow. I cried when they were shaping my eyebrows but they said they had to do it because of the show. I have not touched it since the show.
A participant’s performance is judged based on 60% public voting and 40% judges’ score. Each vote has a monetary value which is harvested in partnership with the telecommunication networks who mediate between the voters and Atinka Media Village. Atinka TV partnered all the telecommunication networks in Ghana to ensure that a wide range of fans could vote, regardless of the network to which they subscribed. The women, for the love of dance, gave off their hearts on the stage on a weekly basis and when their hearts failed them, they were penalised through eviction, because this was a reality show after all. The producer puts this point more directly: Unfortunately, television is about action. It’s boring to sit down and see someone doing nothing. I’m not sure somebody would watch that. So, if you cannot take part in the activities we do because of health issues, I don’t think it is fair for you to still be in the house.
Another factor that highlights the commodification of the show was the internal competition among the women. The producers assigned a management team to serve as the women’s caretakers. Through these individuals, the producers put fear in the contestants about voting figures [and by extension less traffic to the telecommunication companies], and urged them to call home and ask their friends and especially families to vote more, as seen in Swag Mama’s words: (. . .) when the organizers came, they told us that at this point of the competition, we really needed votes. Therefore, we should call our relatives so they vote more. Approaching the end of the competition, the voting numbers had decreased. It had been 3 months, and they had voted for long so I couldn’t put pressure on friends to vote for me. They will vote, but it won’t be as frequently as that of family. So they advised us to call home, so they vote a lot for us.
In addition to urging the contestants to call family and friends for votes, the producers shot personal promotional videos of each contestant, in which they appealed to all their fans, friends and family to vote for them to win the competition.
Using radio, television, billboards and social media to promote the show, the contestants were made to go on health walks along major streets in Accra, while branded slow driving cars moved alongside them. In the float videos on Facebook and YouTube, most observers who had lined the streets to watch the spectacle of the fat women were men.
4
The producer, in speaking to the reasons for the exponential success of the maiden edition of the show, pointed to a range of factors, including the format of reality shows, and how different the show was in terms of the body size involved. She went further to connect the women’s body size to the popularity of the show: Africans like big women, especially African men, take it or leave it, they like the flesh to hold and all that. So that made a lot of men follow the show. Most of our followers were men. Our voting statisticians provided the data which showed the number of registered phone numbers that are attributed to women and men, and there were more male voters.
There may be other factors that accounted for the fewer number of female voters, as compared to male voters. However, the research findings on Ghanaian men’s preference for fleshy bodies offers a sound reason for the popularity of the show among males. Fat female bodies indeed sell, and they sold so well that the promotional video for Season 2 of the show amplified the effects of the show on the psyche of aspiring contestants. 5 The video ends with a slender woman eating a large bowl of food to gain enough weight, in order to take part in the show. The contestants who participated in this study, expressed the sentiment that fat has finally paid off because now it has given them the opportunity to take part in Di Asa, as seen in Latifa’s statement, ‘I didn’t have any problem about it [stigmatizing names for fat people]. I was okay. Besides, I wouldn’t have even qualified for Di Asa if I had not been fat’.
Furthermore, the producers played on the competitiveness of the show to raise the production quality, without spending much on production value. The management team assigned to the contestants worked like Human Resource Managers, in that, while they saw to the wellbeing of the participants, they were hired by Atinka TV to seek the company’s interest. Through their prompts and advice, the contestants provided all the material that would make for quality production and appeal to viewers, without management having to bear the cost. This can be gleaned from Hope’s statement: During our time, the management we had told me to bring several clothes; African wear, dancing suit, highlife costumes, footwear for dancing, etc, and they gave me a lot of ideas. So, I really prepared myself before coming. So when I went to the house they also gave us some T-shirts which we added to our things and used for dancing.
Also, the producers went as far as fast-tracking the recovery of the contestant with the most votes and popularity, to appear on the final performance date, even in sickness, because her voting fans awaited her. Hope reveals her experience: I suddenly got ill, so they took me to the hospital. . .. On the last day of the show, you would have noticed that I didn’t perform very well because I wasn’t very well; they gave me so many injections so I could get better quickly to come and perform. So I took three drips; Thursday, Friday, Saturday. They didn’t want me to take medicine, so they were giving me drips throughout, I didn’t rest at all.
In addition to the various strategies to brand and sell the show to gain a bigger market share and advertisement placement, 6 Atinka Media Village took the profit-making goal further by proposing to represent the winners as talent managers, for which they were entitled to 10% of any performance contract the women got for a whole year. Hope revealed this in our interview: ‘They said they have brought me to stardom, so they’re going to be my management for a year, and after a year it’s done’.
The maiden edition of the show was so successful that Atinka TV, a station that had no audience share in the first quarter of 2017 (Statistica, 2017), won TV Reality show of the year 2017, during the Radio and Television Personality Awards and nominations in 7 other categories (Adu, 2017; GhanaWeb, 2017b). It seems Atinka TV used the ‘dancing fat women’ strategically to become a mainstream private TV station in Ghana. The success of the show, however, relied on the willing participation of the women who were looking for opportunities to pursue their own goals.
Subversive commodification: parallel motives
In recent times, fat activists have used their bodies in performance to expose the social construction of fatness, to destabilise mainstream narratives about fat (Ronti, 2017). Even though fat phobia is a recent phenomenon in Ghana, the effects of shaming and stereotyping have left many fat women on the side-lines of mainstream media. When fat women appear on Ghanaian television, they are either shamed or presented as sex objects for those who prefer the kind of body they have. The shaming of fat bodies on television is evident in the fact that the context in which they appear, spawns one more negative terminology used to refer to them; Cargo from the Cargo Gin Bitters advert of 2009 and Ngozi from the Ngozi Music Video of 2007 are just two such examples.
The women in the Di Asa show were not deterred by the public shaming that they faced. As Young argues, they had agency in that they had ‘a definitive goal in mind’ (Young, 2018: 69) in participating in the show. From the youngest, aged 24, to the oldest, aged 55, all 19 Season 1 contestants interviewed for this research spoke about their love for dance, dating as far back as their childhood. While a few of them pursued that passion and turned it into a quasi-professional activity, where they performed at product launches, parties, weddings of friends and family, the majority turned their churches, funeral grounds and the marketplace, into dancing arenas. As Veronica explained, ‘When I go to church, I dance a lot. Even at customary marriage ceremonies, even at funerals, I dance to bid the person farewell’.
In narrating their relationship with dance, most of the women expressed a long-held desire for a big platform that allowed them to showcase their talents, while sharing their passion for dance with Ghanaians. The women’s desire for a big platform ties in well with their bigger ambitions for their lives as individuals, which had long been denied them. The main sentiment our respondents expressed for participating in the show, apart from the passion for dancing was to prove to Ghanaians that they are capable of doing much more than they have been reduced to as fat people. Leticia put it best in the following words: Fat people are greatly looked down upon, they push us away in public and that is the major reason I joined the competition to prove to people that what slim people can do we the fat people can also do and do it well. I also joined because of my love for dancing. I was always praying that there would be a program solely for fat people who can dance, unlike the other shows; talented kids from TV3 and Miss Excel plus from GTV.
The ultimate aim for these women, though, in terms of motivation for participating in the show, lay in their personal ambitions. While the common denominators are their body type and the love for dance, each one of them entered the competition with a goal that extended beyond the duration of the show. The most popular response in terms of motivation for participating in the show was the opportunity to gain exposure, which could then translate into a professional dance career, jobs in the media – including television – high self-esteem, fame, among others. Joselyn highlighted this point when she stated: God has blessed me with a car already, so I am not here for the car, but for the exposure. Because if people contact you for adverts and all that, you will be able to buy the car you want. So, I went to Di Asa not for the car, but for exposure and the opportunities that come with it.
With the goal of exposure and opportunities in mind, some of the women pursued their individual ambitions in the show, using ‘body-based tactics’ targeted at voters. In alignment with de Certeau’s (1984) arguments that tactics are often employed by the less-powerful to adapt to the ‘environment created by the strategies of the powerful’ (Young, 2018: 69) the women in this study, mainly market traders, used tactics within the environment created by the relatively powerful TV station. Swag Mama, for instance, began her tactics right at the audition stage where she bought food for hawkers in the market so they could cheer her on as she performed. She did this fully aware that it is the audience that decides who qualifies.
As the women could not create the opportunities for themselves due to perceptions about their abilities as well as the lack of financial resources and contacts, they exercised their agency in the show through subversive commodification. They commodified themselves while they were being commodified, in order to achieve their individual goals of gaining exposure and opportunities. Some of the women defied husbands and family to appear on the show, as seen in Swag Mama’s case: I was in the house watching TV and I saw someone dancing. So I drew closer to watch it and while looking at it, I told myself, I can do better. So I went to look for a T-shirt and washed my boots. When my husband came [home], I told him I had seen a dance competition, and I wanted to participate and he told me not to but I told him it was my time to shine.
To show just how far they were willing to go to achieve their aims, some of them competed despite discomfort resulting from ankle sprains and illness that required hospitalisation, in order to fulfil their personal aims in the show. The only issue that forced Hagar, for instance, to give up the competition was pregnancy, which she discovered 3 weeks into the show: Oh yes, I have really loved dancing since childhood. But when I went to Di Asa, I was 6 weeks pregnant, which I didn’t know. So I told one of the organizers that I wished to be evicted. He asked why and I said I was pregnant. He asked if I could perform with it and I said no, so they evicted me that night.
The stakes were high for the women, and this created serious competition amongst them, such as forming cliques and stealing each other’s rehearsed dance moves, to gain a competitive edge over the others.
Furthermore, the contestants were incentivised by the producers through weekly awards for best costume and best performance, which motivated them to invest heavily in their costumes for each performance. While some borrowed money from family and friends to acquire the right costumes, others brought their own clothes from home.
Of all the tactics used by the women to gain a competitive advantage over the others, the most interesting in terms of embodying commodification is the tactics some women used, that required them to play their cards with their bodies through performance (See Figures 2, 3 and 4).
Season 1 contestant on stage performing with her backside to the audience.
A Contestant, performing in a costume that reveals her cleavage to the audience.
A Season 1 contestant performing with her backside.
As established earlier, there is evidence to the effect that Ghanaian men like women with big breasts, buttocks and thighs. This perception was further credited with the popularity of the show, as the producer clearly declared. It is also evident in the much higher ratio of male to female voters. The women who used their bodies tactically clearly understood the Ghanaian context and how competitions work. Hope put it best when she said ‘Let me tell you something, when you join the Di Asa competition married, you are required to remove your wedding ring not by the producers though. But you would have to in order to get the kind of votes you want’.
From our findings, the women themselves made the decision to ‘sell’ the body for votes, without any coercion from the producers. Initially, most of the women were dancing with their ‘assets’, until the producers discouraged them from concentrating their dance moves in their buttocks, waist and breasts. They cited the position of the TV station’s owner as a high-ranking church official. However, not all the participants heeded this warning, and the results were clear in the number of votes these participants garnered for showing off their bodies in provocative ways.
One contestant, Naa Korley, pointed out the link between provocative dancing and votes: When we went [to the Di Asa house] I realized something. Ghanaian men want you to shake your ‘ass’ and move your body. But we didn’t realize that initially. They told us the man [the owner of the TV station] is an elder in church, so we shouldn’t do that. But because she [referring to a particular contestant] was using her butt and breast since the audition, if you study the videos you will see, and Ghanaian guys loved that, they voted for her.
The Di Asa Season 1 contestants were branded, marketed and sold to viewers by Atinka TV, but they were not passive agents. They were fully aware of their commodification and also the potential rewards they could reap from this commodification. As Becky put it, ‘Atinka Media House is all about money. And it has really helped us too, by gaining the exposure. Had it not been for them, no one would have even known us’. Even though Atinka TV used them to gain popularity and viewership, they also benefitted from the show. The first, second and third place winners won a saloon car, Kia mini truck and a three-wheeled truck respectively, in addition to cash prizes and products from sponsors.
Commodification presented rewards not just in terms of the ultimate prize but also in terms of the employment opportunities it afforded the contestants who made it into the Di Asa House. The producers, with approval from the owner of the TV station who also run a drug manufacturing company, promised all the women formal sector jobs in the drug manufacturing company. Given that most of these women were self-employed as traders, this opportunity to earn a wage and other benefits was a huge one: Oh yes, they have employed a lot of the girls but I’m a mother and a wife. There is no one at home if I leave. If I were to be young, I would have taken the opportunity. And they would have employed me too. Because they employed everyone that went. Some at the pharmacy, others at packaging and all. But because I have become a homemaker now, I can’t go (Swag Mama).
At the time of our interviews with the 19 women, some of them (n=4) aged between 23 and 32 had already started working at the company, mostly in the packaging unit. Apart from formal sector employment, some of the women had also taken advantage of their popularity to dance professionally by starting their own dance groups. Leticia for example shared with us as follows: ‘I created my own YouTube channel after Di Asa about a year ago. Now, I make my own videos and dance pieces and upload them on YouTube and I get likes for the videos. Through that, I get people calling me to come and dance at their weddings’. While some of the women appeared on shows as guests and performers, others used their following to advertise products at launches, and still others danced professionally in music videos.
In keeping with the feminist motto that the ‘personal is political’ (Ronti, 2017: 49), we argue that even though the Di Asa contestants joined the competition for varied personal reasons, they have engaged the political by redefining for Ghanaians what the body of a fat woman can do. In this regard, their bodies in performance served to counter mainstream notions of fatness, and it did not matter whether the producers commodified their bodies. In fact, the women were complicit in their own commodification, because they seized the opportunity to showcase themselves, hoping to transform their lives by achieving their desired outcomes. Commodifying their own bodies sold so well that Pam advised others to do the same: ‘So I told the women who joined the Season 2 show that we [the Season 1 contestants] danced with our breasts and buttocks, so they should also do so’. As we have demonstrated in the forgoing, the contestants were willing to commodify their bodies to achieve their economic goals, even as their participation in the show garnered increased ratings for the media house.
Conclusion: the parting of ways
By centering women from the Global South in this analysis, this paper seeks to de-westernise feminist media studies and its framing of reality TV shows depicting fat bodies as largely problematic because of the stigmatisation, humiliation and downright commodification of these women. We take Raisborough’s (2014: 159) admonition to interrogate the ‘complex and nuanced ways’ of representation seriously. We believe that it is extremely important especially in exploring gender and media representation in the Global South. We show how low-income women in urban Accra turn reality TV’s interest in fat bodies for ratings and by extension profits, into an advantage for themselves as well. As described above, these women used the show to gain exposure, besides other benefits such as cash prizes, products from sponsors, job opportunities and the winning prizes. In an environment where income generating opportunities are relatively scarce, this show gives low-income women access to financial resources that they otherwise would not have. They thus subject themselves to the requirements imposed by the producers of the television show, fully cognizant of what they could in turn get out of the show. The women get as much from the show as the show gets out of them. We argue therefore that rather than read these women as commodified beings, we should read these women as humans engaged in subversive commodification. Whether the exposure they gained would yield long-term results that fit their goals is beyond the scope of this paper. What we know for sure is that regarding participation in the dance reality show in Ghana, the fat women who entered the competition were not simply commodified for the benefit of others, they also took advantage of the commodification to achieve their own short-term goals.
