Forget "Joe Millionaire" and "The Bachelor." Below-average-looking people need love, too.
That's the message Fox wants to send with its new reality series, "More to Love."
Billed as a dating show for the rest of us, the show will feature "normal" (read: plus-sized) women competing for the affections of a bachelor with "a big waist and an even bigger heart."
"For six years, it's been skinny-minis and good-looking bachelors, and that's not what the dating world looks like," Fox executive Mike Darnell said. "Why don't real women -- the women who watch these shows, for the most part -- have a chance to find love too?"
Darnell is developing the project with Mike Fleiss, producer of ABC's "The Bachelor."
He said the new show is inspired by the success of "The Bachelor" and NBC's "The Biggest Loser," and credits the latter with shattering the assumption that audiences only want to see attractive people on television, he told The Hollywood Reporter.
"Most of the country isn't a Size 2. We want to send the message that you can be the size you are and still be lovable," Fleiss told the newspaper. "We aren't going to thin these girls down so they can find love -- that's a backwards message."
The show will be a mash-up of other reality series, incorporating the sort of activities seen on "The Bachelor" and makeover aspects of other shows. But the main focus will be on finding love -- not on physical improvement, Fleiss said.
Producers are currently casting for the show, but no airdate has yet been set.
