'Hot and Heavy's Kristin and Rusty would be living a perfectly happy and harmonious life — was it not for just one problem. Read on to find out more.
"Yeah, it was a classic story, Prince checks out Princess' backside, and here we are, happily ever after," jokes Rusty Keadle in the trailer of Hot and Heavy.
Rusty and his wife, Kristin Keadle, are one of the three couples participating in the latest TLC reality show about "overweight" women who enter into relationships with "normal-size" men.
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Meet Kristin and Rusty from Hot and Heavy.
Kristin and Rusty met while waiting in line for the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney World, and the rest was history.
The two fell for each other straight away, and in no time, Kristin decided to quit her highly-successful bridal shop in New York just to spend more time with her chosen one.
They got married in 2017 and moved to Orlando, Fla. shortly afterward.
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While Kristin and Rusty were confident in each other from the very beginning, the same can't be said about Kristin's family. As the Hot and Heavy star explained in an interview with New York Post, it took some time for her brother to start trusting Rusty.
"He couldn’t get past that Rusty had, like, a fetish [about my size] or ill intentions toward my income," she described one of the first obstacles they had to overcome during the early days of their relationship.
Kristin and Rusty are the only couple participating on the show who are hoping to start a family very soon. As the couple told the New York Post, their problems revolve lesser about societal misconceptions and more about biological issues.
"I am over 300 pounds," told Kristin the news outlet, before adding that "my hormones and my ability to ovulate are very much affected by my weight."
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The first episode of Hot and Heavy will offer rare insight into Kristin and Rusty's battle with the healthcare system, shedding light on the difficulties they have to face as she tries to become pregnant.
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Hot and Heavy is one of the most controversial shows on TLC.
"I don’t feel exploited at all," emphasized Kristin in the interview with New York Post.
"I feel empowered, I feel like I have a voice now in this world," she added.
The star is among the few who welcome the new show with open arms, claiming that it provides much-needed representation for couples in a similar situation to theirs.
However, many feel otherwise.
Fatventure magazine's Samantha Puc has openly criticized the show for its framing of these relationships.
"We're not anymore uniquely challenging as romantic partners than straight-size people. We're not fetish material. We're not freak shows. We're not PROBLEMS. Stop treating fatness as if it's a plague until it suits your needs to treat it as entertainment. It's neither," she tweeted.
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As Samantha explains, Hot and Heavy turns overweight women into a source of entertainment, casting them as a sensational phenomena worthy of public attention for their weight alone.
Other commenters were even less generous in their assessment of the program.
"Of course, only the women are heavier. Let's retitle, "How Can Men Possibly Love Fat Women?" remarked an individual on Twitter.
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"So... a show exclusively about "men who love plus-size women" but not women who love plus-size men. Why not both ways, TLC?" opined another person on Twitter.
Catch new episodes of Hot and Heavy every Tuesday at 10 p.m. on TLC.
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