Celebrity Fit Club: Can Someone Please Define “Celebrity”?
Yet another season of overweight has-beens has come upon us, and we will be watching. We won’t be proud of it, but we will be watching. This season—as with the others—we will turn on VH1, watch the intro to the show, and think: “Who?”
This season’s “famous people” are a Who’s Who of ‘Who?’, in fact.
Sebastian Bach (not to be confused with composer Johann Sebastian Bach, who is unavailable this season) was in a famous band in the 80s. He’s still wearing the tight leather pants, but it isn’t nearly so titillating as it used to be when he was screaming out his vocals on “18 and Life” for the hair band Skid Row. He has been on a bunch of other reality TV shows, and his waistline seemed to grow a bit with each one. It happens.
We Will Be Watching His Man-Boobs Bounce Their Way Into Fame.
Kevin Federline, who is famous for giving a wedding ring to Britney Spears, will be there. So will Shar Jackson, who is famous mostly for not getting a wedding ring from Kevin Federline. Bobby Brown was famous as a part of the 80s boy band New Edition, but is best known for exchanging wedding rings with Whitney Houston. They had their own reality show, but it was too gross and tragic for most people to watch. Whitney was forced to put down the pipe, leave Bobby Brown, and learn to sing again. Bobby was forced to, well, do nothing, really, until he got chubby enough to qualify for Celebrity Fit Club.
A few other reality TV alumni will be joining the corpulent cast. Jay McCarroll of Project Runway will be there in all his unathletic-yet-fabulous glory (while Heidi Klum cringes and responds “Jay WHO?”), as will Tanisha Thomas of Bad Girls Club.
Nicole Eggert, who used to proudly wear the same revealing red swimsuit as Pamela Anderson on Baywatch, has, apparently, gone from fantasy to fleshy, and will huff and puff her way to fitness in front of cameras. Someone called Kaycee Stroh of High School Musical will be there as well.
Of course people watch. The question is: why do the once-famous subject themselves to the humiliation of exercising in front of millions? The only people who enjoy being watched while they sweat like herd animals are those people at the gym strutting around in little shorts and tiny tank tops, flexing at themselves in the mirror, waiting for some outside validation.
These contestants are joining the glorious ranks once occupied by the likes of Dustin Diamond (the Saved by the Bell guy), Biz Markie, the Snapple Lady, Jeff Conaway, Bruce Vilanch, Ted Lange, etc., etc., and so on.
It’s okay if you’re asking yourself who these people are. They were once famous. For some of them, it was a really, really long time ago. Is a stint on Celebrity Fit Club going to bring them some sort of comeback, or will they compete and then fade into obscurity again? You can almost understand regular people going on reality TV shows to either get famous or try to earn a large cash prize. But the phenomenon of semi-celebrities sweating and complaining and fighting in front of the world is mystifying. It seemed sad to see the sassy bartender Isaac from Love Boat degrade himself so (FYI: that’s who Ted Lange is).
Either way, we’ll be there, waiting for them to step on that demeaning giant scale at the end of the show, when diminutive comedian Ant says, “and remember: the scales don’t lie.”
The shame of knowing that is killing me.