puddingcat | Looking good naked is easy if you already do.

Skip to Main Content

Current Mood: grumpy
Current Music: Sisters of Mercy - When You Don't See Me

Entry tags:

tv

Looking good naked is easy if you already do.

Hmm.

How To Look Good Naked is a lovely idea, and I really like Gok Wan. The thing is (which I can't write / read without thinking of Aziraphale...), all the people so far look good anyway. Sure, they need a haircut and professional makeup, and the clothes make a difference, but they're all attractive at the start.

What about people with scars? With eczema? Who aren't in proportion? Who are more than a stone overweight?

Bah.

Threaded | Flat

The lass last week was definitely more than a stone overweight.

I like the women who do the filler shots - they're in a very wide range of shapes and sizes. but yes, I would like to see Gok Wan work his bossy-yet-kind magic on someone who, say, doesn't have good legs. But maybe a whole lot of the thing is that, just like the people stopped on the street, the viewers can say Woman X is attractive, but she herself thinks she's the worst ever - so if a much larger woman was on, maybe she wouldn't actually look so big to the viewers anyway?

there were definitely some ladies last season with teeny boobs and large bums, I think the really important message in the programme is that it's about self-image, which is the thing we are all bad at...

Damn, I knew there was something I meant to watch on telly tonight! (We were watching Heroes instead.)

I haven't seen the programme, but the women featured in the book most definitely aren't all in proportion. I've only had a quick flick through it, but it struck me as much more positive than the dreaded Trinny & Suzannah.

How do you react when you are provided with evidence that at least some men consider you fabulous already?

--
Tim Harris
The Seeker
Time Lord

Ah - but isn't that what Gok Wan is trying to get women to see? That other people don't see the "buts" at all?

(Note that I am just as bad as anyone else, and pretty much detest my shape, size, hair, feet . . .)

Everybody looks good naked. I haven't seen the show, but from the page you linked to the first thing I would advise that woman would be to take off the underwear that is two sizes too small! For heaven's sake, it makes her look like a trussed ham!

I could certainly do with losing a stone (well stone and a half if I'm honest) in weight and toning up those muscles (they're hiding somewhere, I'm sure - down the back of the sofa I believe).

Eczema? Check! Although not too bad unless it's cold weather.

Scars? Check! (No, I'm not saying where...)

I've been told I look good naked and I bet you do too! A lot of how you look (naked or otherwise) is down to self-confidence; if you feel good in yourself, other people around you will notice the difference. Attitude is just as much a factor in how sexy/gorgeous/stunning/beddable you are as your physique is.

all the people so far look good anyway. Sure, they need a haircut and professional makeup, and the clothes make a difference, but they're all attractive at the start.

They may be gorgeous to begin with, but the point is that they don't see it, and need to go through Gok's however-many-step program to be convinced. People who feel that their reasons for not looking fantastic naked are more physical and much harder to scrub, squeeze, blend, or whatever away, are going to take far longer to see their own beauty, and if they're that much entrenched in their belief of ugliness, then they probably need hefty mental makeovers more urgently than image ones, and that's not quite within the reach of the show.

The people with scars and eczema, who are disproportionate and over a stone in weight are just as damn gorgeous as the ones you think are "all attractive at the start". But let's face it, almost every woman I know is going to think that all the girls on the show are beautiful pre-makeover, "not like me, no, my bum/boobs/hip/great slabs of lard are way bigger than hers, my skin's in worse condition, I've had more kids and it shows, blah, blah, blah..."

When the fuck did it become normal for women to detest themselves for these wretched, bullshit reasons? Who told us that an extra stone or five was so ugly, and why did we believe them? Who said that blemishes and scars and stretch marks and the remnants of inescapable, biological processes that are etched in our skin make us so undesirable, and why did we put so much stock into their opinions? Are we so gullible that we'll tick off a list of physical flaws and accept that these defects make us unwanted as lovers, define us as substandard women? Most importantly, how did we allow women to become each other's biggest enemies regarding body image, perpetuating these negative obsessions?

Of course, saying this sort of thing is going to make me sound like some holier-than-thou bitch who's perfect, physically and mentally, and I'm really not. But I don't hate myself for it.

When I was a kid, and up to my early teens when I was becoming more conscious of my body image, I thought I was fat. Huge. Enormous, monstrous, blubber-toting, pie-munching, lard-bucket. The truth is, I was an early developer and slightly overweight. Boobs at age seven, mortification during swimming lessons, that sort of thing. The fact that I was very unfit fed that view of being fatfatfat, though it never occurred to me that people of all sizes can be unfit. The one girl who'd do worse than I did in PE was rather slender, but I was a blinkered fat schoolkid who was obviously going to ignore anything rational.

And so I gradually formed eating patterns that a fat person would have because - hey! I'm already fat, right, this is just how I eat! I gained and gained and gained without quite realising it, because to me I had always been fat and therefore wretched and hideous.

It was only in perhaps the past four years I've come to recognise what I did to myself. I convinced myself I was fat, so I did become fat. From within my perfectly normal and healthy BMI range at age 13 to medically obese as I hit my twenties. I have continued to put on weight because those eating patterns have proved incredibly hard to change. So much harder than quitting smoking cold turkey, this is deeply ingrained stuff. That I taught myself.

I'm trying to get my head wrapped around the fact there's a TV programme that's trying to convince women to be happy with themselves FOR themselves... And it's a TV programme.

TV. Programme.

Broadcast to millions.

And that's where it swallows its own tail, because then it becomes a show about convincing women to be happy with themselves for the benefit of a dozen TV cameras and a passive audience of private critics.

Umm, yeah. *scratches head*

Hell, the sad fact is that most real people don't look good naked.

This is presumably one of the reasons we invented clothes.

Threaded | Flat