Gainers???

Okay, so last night I was watching this TV show called "Le Droit de Savoir" or something similar (translation: "The Right to Know"). It's one of those pseudo-serious-intellectual news-y type show, if you know what I mean.

So last night's subject was eating disorders, and they talked about and interviewed all these anorexic and bulimic girls and did the requisite segment about models and model agencies (you know, with the mandatory former model who quit because she was making herself anorexic, etc etc etc) and then they finished the show with a segment about "gainers".

Apparently gainers are people who, instead of wanting to lose weight and becoming anorexic/bulimic, actually want to gain weight and lots of it too, with the idea that bigger is better. Of course, this scandalous new trend is exclusive to the U.S. and they spent the segment hanging around with 2 very large women and 1 not so large woman who is trying to become very large. It was hard to hear what the women were actually saying because they were being dubbed over in French as they were talking, but supposedly these people will eat everything with no restraint whatsoever, in order to become as fat as possible. The camera showed the ladies having breakfast - pancakes, bacon, eggs, and LOTS of butter.

Could someone please tell me if this trend ACTUALLY exists? I'm almost positive that if it does, it is really only a very small percentage of the population. This is because the other day, I was watching the news on TV here, and they did this segment about some new museum of natural history or evolution that had recently opened somewhere in the Midwest or the South. And somehow the French news crew managed to round up a couple that was SO stereotypically American - like the stupid Southerner/Midwestener that all French people think we are like - and naturally the couple had these crazy exaggerated accents and were all "Evolution? Naw, we don't believe in no evolution. Like, that's crazy, 'cause we don't "evolve" Naw, we was created bah God the Almighty". Then there was the voiceover afterwards in French: "Indeed, an entire 40% of ALL AMERICANS think evolution doesn't exist."

I think I understand now why the French have developed their crazy myths and stereotypes of Americans - the French news manages to grasp a hold of that one stereotypically "stupid American" type and then they exaggerate the way they say the numbers so everyone here thinks that ALL Americans are like that.

This is why I am almost convinced that they exaggerated the whole gainers trend. I'm willing to bet $100 that the large ladies were just all harmlessly "I'm curvy and proud of my big ass and if no one likes me this way, then too bad for them." (By the way, when they interviewed their "Expert Nutritionist/Doctors" the experts seemed much more outraged about people WANTING to gain weight than they did about the anorexics).