I have spent much of the past week locked in a mausoleum of my own inadequacy. This is becuase I have spent most of my new found free time watching shows such as ten years younger and extreme makeover. I now realise that any unfullfilled aspirations or ambitions I have remain unfulfilled and not fully realised, tangable elements of my life because of how I look. And only Trinny and Susannah can help me.
The problem with these kind of lifestyle makeover shows is precisely that, they are not lifestyle shows, but makeover shows and are as shallow and superficial as that entails. They are dressed up as psychologically healing, when all they really do is give members of the public a nice shirt and a new hat. It's a symptom of our heat magazine obsessed, celebrity culture that we now believe that any problems you hve can be solved simply by the edradication of cellulite, well they cant. But these shows will make a damn good effort to make you believe that.
The most grating aspect about this is not the fact they are makeover shows, as no one can deny that by improving a persons percieved physical inadequacy you can help improve their quality of life- it's the voyeuristic way in which they go about it. They take an almost sadisdic pleasure in pointing out the contestants flaws, while people at home look on smugly, commenting how awful they all look- you thought you had bingo wings grandma well take a look at this fatty. The contestants, while getting a complete physical makeover, will probably remain the simmering ball of resentment and self loathing they were before, while theres no telling what the trauma of having their greatest physical imperfections pointed out on a beach of chuckling holiday makers on national T.V will have done to their all ready fragile psyche. The likes of Gillian Mckeeth and Trinny and Susannah have turned British day time T.V into a hellish carnival of perpetual resentment and are applauded for it. Really, they should be made pariahs and treated with the same moral outrage we reserve for rapists, peadophiles an the elderly, but instead they are treated like samaritans. We should string their carcasses up and spit on them like Mussolini, but even if their popularity did take an alarming nose dive to the level of a fascist dictator all they would have to do is appear on ITV's next celebrity sing a along and all would be forgiven. And they would make the cover of heat magazine.
