It's now officially OK to gawk at and make fun of fat people. At least that's the message we're getting from TV.

The season opener of the liposuction-obsessed FX drama "Nip/Tuck" featured a plot about a massively obese woman who was confined to her sofa for so long her skin grew onto it. The gross-out factor buzzed for days.

There's a dark suspicion, supported by anecdotal evidence, that weight-loss reality series such as NBC's "The Biggest Loser" and VH1's "Celebrity Fit Club" attract viewers who just want to ogle and laugh.

On FX's summer sitcom "Starved," about four friends with eating disorders ranging from eating too much to not eating at all to eating and throwing up, the group leader referred to them as "a community of shame." A fat guy ate dozens of donuts to the ridicule of friends and the delight of an ear-splitting laughtrack.

And coming soon is "Thick & Thin," an NBC sitcom about a young divorcee who has lost 60 pounds and struggles to fit in with her chubby family and overweight friends. In the opening scene, we see the woman's mother topping a mountain of cheese with butter as she makes nachos.

"Mexicans invented butter," explains the mom, played by real-life weight-battler Sharon Gless of "Cagney & Lacey" fame, to raucous guffaws.

At a weight-loss group meeting on the same show, one fat woman laments that she used to be "the thin one" in her circle of friends.

"Well, you're fat now, so sit down and shut up!" barks a pal played by plus-sized-and-proud standup comic Loni Love.

The fat jokes and blubber exhibitions are gobbling up prime time.

Michelle McCarthy, a 35-year-old Austin substitute teacher and mother, has battled her own weight problem since high school and isn't amused.

"I'm concerned with the media's apparent trivialization of weight issues," McCarthy said. "TV shows and reality series like 'The Biggest Loser' do nothing to strengthen our inner resolve to lose weight for ourselves and for our health. It seems to me that most of the shows focus solely on improving appearance so people aren't viewed as being fat."

When the nation's TV critics met in Los Angeles in July to survey the new fall programming, "The Biggest Loser's" trio of executive producers proudly proclaimed that "150,000 unhappy fat people applied to participate" this season. They boasted that "unlike the surgery shows, we work from the inside out."

Coincidentally, "Thick & Thin" creator Paula Pell makes the same claim: "Weight humor has to be honest, from the inside out." Pell, whose show is autobiographical, said she has "lost and gained back hundreds of pounds" over the years.

The contestants on "The Biggest Loser" work out like Marines while fending off cruel temptations such as platters of pies, pastries, milkshakes, etc. The "losers" share their woes and insecurities with trainers, and their emotions can be raw. Some viewers are undoubtedly moved and might even be inspired.

"But the freak show element is probably stronger than the inspiration element," says Stuart Fischoff, emeritus professor of media psychology at California State University in Los Angeles. "Anything that radically departs from the norm is going to get attention and often ridicule."

Most contestants on "The Biggest Loser" are morbidly obese, not just a few pounds overweight. They are routinely filmed in ways that highlight their corpulence. For weigh-ins, the men take off their shirts to expose sagging tummies and drooping chests.

"It's about two steps above Jerry Springer," says Allen Steadham, a high-tech worker who is also director of the Austin-based International Size Acceptance Association. "It's a spectacle with no constructive purpose."

Steadham, 36, has experienced a 50-pound weight fluctuation in his life, although he is not obese. Nevertheless, he's a crusader on behalf of large people everywhere. His organization disperses information about discrimination and strives to help fat people "be more fit for whatever size you happen to be."

On TV, he says, losing weight is all about looking fabulous.

Fat people and fat jokes are hardly new to television. Jackie Gleason was dubbed "The Great One" not just because he was one of the funniest guys in show business. He was also great big.

Homer Simpson has made overeating such a part of his character that he once turned himself into a doughnut and began eating himself.

Roseanne broke the mold for overweight women on TV. Before her sitcom arrived in 1988, fat women weren't seen as headliners — best friends and maids, maybe, but not show stars.

Kathy Kinney's Mimi Bobeck (she of the horrendous blue eye shadow and billowing muumuus) was the butt of a million jokes on "The Drew Carey Show."

Jabs against fat women tend to be especially cruel, even if they are levied by women against women.

"I tend to cringe when I hear them," Steadham says. "It's skewed because they'll have John Goodman types, and they're lovable so it doesn't matter. With female characters, it's completely different. It's about self-destructive comments, ripping on themselves or each other."

So why is fat such a big joke these days? Are fat people the last minority deemed acceptable to ridicule? We've gone through racial and ethnic jokes, gender jokes, gay jokes . . . even jokes about the handicapped. Fat is our final frontier.

But with studies showing that as many as 65 percent of Americans are clinically obese — and obesity is now recognized as an official disease — why is this suddenly fair game and funny?

"Medicine has said there's something wrong with these people, and that allows people to cluck," Fischoff says. "To the extent that people believe obesity is a self-chosen lifestyle, that people are fat because they're slovenly or lazy, it's easier to condemn them. Those of us who are on the cusp are going to be especially hostile to these people — and most of America is on the cusp. We're hurtling toward universal obesity."

Maybe it's better to be able to laugh at ourselves. Maybe it's better to laugh than to worry and mope.

"Humor is a great tool to have in your life," concurs Jennifer Dunham, a licensed professional counselor in Austin who specializes in habit control issues, including weight problems. "But humor can also minimize the importance of the issue and be very destructive."

So are we bad people if we laugh at a fat joke or groan when we see an obese guy step on the scale on "The Biggest Loser"? Maybe, but probably not. The underlying sentiment in this ever-widening but thin-obsessed nation is probably more like nervous foreboding.

dholloway@statesman.com; 445-3608