Oh, America. You’ve got such a fickle heart. There’s no telling if you’ll be in love with Spam or Tickle Me Elmo or Snuggie or whatever.

But I never thought I’d see the day when you’d fall for the fatties.

Is it purely masturbatory? I realize that 67% of American adults are overweight or obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control. But really, America, you’re so vain! I bet you think this article is about you. And it is.

It’s readily apparent that as a nation we have gone head over heels for those to whom the phrase “head over heels” sounds just plain exhausting—and physically impossible. There is a veritable feeding trough of new reality television shows that have waddled their way onto the airways. Shows with rather rotund stars, who, as it turns out, aren’t always jolly (who knew?). Shows like More to Love and Dance Your Ass Off shamelessly showcase and exploit a blubbery bunch.

For those of you unfamiliar with the format of these shows, More to Love is a Bachelor-style show—one chunky monkey’s search for his big bride. None of the women on the show are thin, but the flabbiest are the first to go. But you can be sure that attractive female news anchors will love to call all of them “real women.”

So what are you, Barbie teleprompter reader? As real as your hair color?

Dance Your Ass Off borrows heavily (sorry—I just can’t help myself) from So You Think You Can Dance and Dancing with the Stars, but the main ingredient is The Biggest Loser, the first successful reality show with a fat format. On The Biggest Loser, contestants were helped to lose enough weight to only need one seatbelt on an airplane. But they were still eliminated for not dropping enough (and still being fat).

While watching a sweaty, elephantine man struggle on a treadmill is apparently good for your self-esteem, the envelope needed to be pushed. Do we have to actually help our pudgy participants? This season’s Dance Your Ass Off provided an answer: a resounding no. Although a selection of roly-pollies were told they’d be getting jiggy with it to get less jiggly with it, the contestant who lost the most weight, Reuben, who is hilariously named after a sandwich, was the only one to lose a significant amount: 74.4 pounds. He went from a bust-the-chair 314.3 pounds to a still-not-invited-to-the-orgy 239.9. Someone should make him a cake with his name on it or something.

Meanwhile, all anyone else on the program got, other than taking off a few pounds (which probably would have been easier if they just hit the gym a few times), was a chance to shake their colossal derrières in embarrassingly flamboyant and unflattering attire in front of a panel of judges and anyone who’s hormonal enough to watch Oxygen. One of them actually danced to the song “Milkshake.” And while I certainly believe this whale of a woman could whip up a tasty milkshake better than I could, I don’t believe she could hold on to it long enough to taunt me with a song before she herself inhaled it. Slurp.

The question remains, America, why do you like watching obese people flubber and flail across stage? Does it give you hope? If a fleshy man with a reality show can get women to squabble over his affection like it’s the last Milano cookie in the bag, why can’t you get a date to your company’s team-building picnic?

This much is discernable—we’ve got an appetite for television that debases overweight people. And, like overweight people, I doubt we’ll know when to put down the fork.