Lifetime recently gave us the opportunity to watch a sneak peak of their upcoming show, “How to Look Good Naked.” Let me state up front: they didn’t ask for a review (although I suspect that was their hope, to stir up buzz for the show), they didn’t pay for a review, and I have no incentive to give a review, positive or negative. But I’ve been curious to see if this show, which purports to teach women who aren’t size zero to love the way they look, would deliver.
Short answer: it does. I’m not sure if what I saw online will be precisely what’s shown on TV, But speaking as a woman who has a lot in common with the candidate on this episode, I came away from it with a positive feeling.
The host, Carson Kressley, spends five days with a thirty-two year old woman named Lela who’s been dieting since she was twelve. She’s convinced that in order to feel beautiful, she must lose forty pounds. Without losing that weight, she sees no point in attempting to find herself beautiful. It’s an absolute requirement in her mind. (I know the feeling.)
Carson confronts this belief by projecting a headless image of Lela’s body onto a building in Santa Monica and asking people what they think of it. Men notice her “great rack”, her shapely legs, her curves. Women talk about how she looks gorgeous and “that’s how real women look.” And they sound sincere (and why not? We all know real people are a lot less picky than fashion gurus). Carson points out that she’s spent twenty years trying to be someone else – twenty years she could’ve spent being herself.
Message #1: She doesn’t look as bad as she thinks. Her weight is not unhealthy, and it’s not ugly.
He begins by teaching her some dressing tips. First, she needs the right size and style of bra to support her breasts and avoid creating rolls on her back. Then she needs to avoid fashion trends and find styles and cuts and prints that suit her. She goes from looking “fine” to looking “hot” in the time it takes to put on a different outfit.
Message #2: The clothes should be tailored to the woman, not the woman to the clothes. Lela’s lived twenty years thinking the reason clothes didn’t flatter her was her fault, not the fault of some useless lazy fashion designer (who probably employs children in third-world countries to cut fabric).
Next comes a new haircut and makeup job. Then it’s time for a photo shoot in the nude (in which she’s never really exposed). She lays on her stomach, breasts and hips hidden from the camera. The idea is to get her posing unapologetically without clothes on, without darkness to hide her.
I did not see the show as reinforcing the idea that women need to be beautiful (while men can look quite unattractive and become national leaders). I saw it as suggesting we are entitled to feel beautiful, whether or not we meet arbitrary fashion standards. I also didn’t see the show as pandering to the male gaze; I saw it as empowering a woman to have her own gaze, to see the beauty in herself and project it through her attitude.
One caveat: the only thing “wrong” (from the fashion industry’s perspective) with Lela was her size. She was white, with great skin and nice hair. Will the show do as well with a woman of color? A woman with bad acne? From the commercials, it looks like at least one woman of color will be featured; we’ll just have to wait and see how that goes. Whether or not they’ll address issues other than size, I don’t know. Still, I thought I’d die before anyone acknowledged “fat” does not equal “ugly and undeserving of success or love”, so even if it’s just one step in the right direction, it’s a start.
t’ll take more than one episode, but I think there’s potential here to put a dent in the message that women who fail to meet arbitrary size standards are not entitled to self-confidence about how they look.
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Beta: Basically. I mean, if you think about the shows, there is a component which is ‘feel good about how you look’, but there is ALSO a component which is ‘make it so that others can figure out that you look good.’ I mean, I feel fine about myself, mostly? But do I think that other people think I look good? No chance in hell. That’s what I mean by objective. I realize that it is all subjective to a point, but if you accept that someone can generally look good, then there has to be some sort of objective set of criteria that you can use to get into that box, or at least close. As opposed to on the other side of the street.
What Jay was talking about gets at that. Clearly, everyone is subjective about their standards, formed by society or no. There’s no seeming real absolute objective standard, but there’s trends and standards that generally work. From colors to what sort of shirt or pants or skirt to wear for your body type. Etc, etc, etc.
The colors example is a good one. I don’t remember anyone telling me what colors go together. If it weren’t for people commenting on it explicitly and everywhere, I’d probably never know, but even then they don’t say what colors go together. That is the case with pretty much everything. There are clearly rules and standards and things that work, and nobody tells you about them. And looking them up is not always easy.
Also, the Kathy Sierra thing is very, very sick. I’m imagining you (Beta) missed the Jade Raymond thing recently (which is not quite the same but still a nasty example of people being horrible in the gaming realm. ) People. Che.
-Mecha
Mecha(Quote) (Reply)
Personally, I’ve never thought so. I get what Mecha is saying about there being rules of fashion and so on. But even those change. Even theories of what colors go together can change.
But as for faces and body types, I’ve never understood the idea that there’s a real standard. I mean, let’s look at men. I don’t like the pretty boy look, but some women do. The very thing they crave, I pull away from. If there’s a “standard”, then which woman is behaving in a “non-standard” fashion?
Or do you mean something else?
Mecha, I did miss Jade Raymond. I’m finding links that say “I don’t know what all the hubbub was” but can’t seem to find the original hubbub. If you have a link or feel like summarizing it here for me, I’d like to hear.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
I definitely don’t feel there’s an objective standard of beauty; there’s far too much variation across time and culture, not to mention within a single group for us to be able to point at any particular trait and say “Lo, attractiveness!”. I’m also not fond of the bullshit popular evo-psych just-so stories about how our measures of attractiveness developed; they always seem based more on current standards of beauty (as defined by a media that refuses to present anyone who doesn’t fit the right cookie-cutter ideal) than on what people actually are/have been attracted to.
Tessa(Quote) (Reply)
I’m personally talking about something at the more basic level. For example, the discussions that people had above about the wrong bra making people look bad (and also uncomfortable)? Who tells you that? How do you figure that out? What if you don’t care yourself about the looks part, or don’t think it looks bad, but everyone else in the world pretty much does? Shouldn’t that be information that’s worth knowing? Or at least that someone can tell you so you can make a rational decision on it?
The extreme case of this is someone who seems slovenly or ugly not because of anything they really are, but simply because they don’t understand what other people could find attractive about them, or what could be done to make them be attractive. It’s very similar to the show in concept, but as I said, there’s the ‘self’ concept, and the ‘others’ concept. When ‘self looks good’ and ‘others think self looks good’ are heavily linked (usually in the case of women, where they internalize society’s judgemnets upon them and others) then it’s easier to get at them. When they’re not, you get a lot of freedom, but you also might not comprehend that people really do think you look like crap, and react to you in that way. I’m sorta feeling this out, so if it’s rambling, well, you know me, aheh.
As to the Jade thing, I can summarize, although even I missed it by a few days. Revena may have a better bead on it (I haven’t read the Iris forums in a while, I can’t imagine it didn’t get discussed there.)
The short of it is that Jade, who was the lead developer for a high budget high profile (and therefore highly promoted) game, is a woman who happens to be attractive. Her game also had a lot of people say it was really great, and others say it was really awful. So someone of the second opinion made a flash webcomic in which she was depicted giving blowjobs for good reviews. Ubisoft reacted against the website that linked it, and cue the free speech vs sexism wars (as per the Kathy discussion but without the death threats.) Also people talking about how ‘clearly she was putting herself out there and trying to use sex appeal to sell the game, so she brought this upon herself.’
Ah, here’s the Iris Forums link: http://forums.theirisnetwork.org/viewtopic.php?t=835
-Mecha
Mecha(Quote) (Reply)
For me the “uncomfortable” trumps the “not attractive” concern. The fact that a bra that fits properly tends to also create a line that many people in our culture would consider more attractive as well as feeling much, much better is something I would think of more as a bonus than a necessity. If bras that most people thought didn’t look good were comfortable/supportive/etc., and bras that people thought were attractive were painful, then I’d wear the former, and to hell with the beauty standard.
Most people would prefer to wear clothing that fits them properly, because it also feels better; in my experience, the reason that many people don’t wear clothing (particularly bras) that fits properly isn’t because they simply don’t care to, but because they’ve been taught that things like bras can’t be comfortable (my Mum, for one, was convinced that all bras were pinch-y/constrict-y, etc., until I took her in for a proper fitting and got her to try on pretty much every style in the store until we found one that she actually found more comfortable than not wearing one at all).
I think it’s very important to make sure that people know that their clothing shouldn’t cause them discomfort, and that if it is, it’s the fault of the clothing and not their bodies. This at least in part comes back to what betacandy was saying about fittings; women should be able to expect the same level of service when they buy clothing as men do, and in many cases that includes careful fittings by trained staff familiar with a variety of body-types, and alterations to ensure the best possible fit.
Tessa(Quote) (Reply)
Again, I may be missing what you’re talking about, Mecha, but.
On “What Not to Wear”, they often take women who just sort of don’t get that clothes can be used to flatter one’s figure or face or skin tone and teach them what works for their body. But it’s still based on transient fashion rules. For example, they’re always telling short women to wear heels (one of my few gripes with the show) so their legs will look longer. This presupposes that everyone prefers longer legs. While men have certainly been conditioned to do so, I dunno if it’s true. I’m quite short, used to never ever wear heels, and I consistently seem to attract attention from tall, cute men as if, you know, I’m attractive and stuff, which I can’t possibly be since I didn’t wear heels so I’d meet the height standard.
HOWEVER… while I don’t think there’s ONE objective right answer to what clothes would look best on Mecha and why, I totally can see the value in getting several opinions from people who seem qualified. It’s kind of like, there’s no single answer to what color scheme you should paint your house, but if 16 interior designers who don’t all agree with each other on everything DO agree that painting the bedroom red is a bad idea, then I’d go with that.
Myself, I’d love to have some film costumers work with me on my wardrobe, because I think some of them have the most incredible sense of precisely how to flatter various body types.
Re: Jade Raymond. Yeesh. Thanks. I struggled to find something constructive to say here, but in vain.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
No kidding! And they always just happen to be racist and classist, too.
I just found this:
http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/13226/
Which neatly sums up the trouble with the beauty standard the media sets for us. (Which may not yet be what Jay means, precisely – we’ll see.)
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
I dislike ill fitting bras. However, I haven’t been able to find a fitting one in years. Due to material sensitivities I really need to find a tailor/seamstress to make my bras from scratch. Even if I have to pay $100 a bra.
As far as ill fitting clothes go, those are unacceptable to me. I have always ignored what is fashionable and gone with what looks good on me. Due to my curves, my best look is an A-line dress with zero frills and a slight V-neck. I can stop traffic in an outfit like that.
Even if I am wearing tennis shoes under the dress. 
When I feel that I look good in the mirror that day, I walk more confidently.
Miriam(Quote) (Reply)
And they always just happen to be racist and classist, too.
Oh lord, yeah. Isn’t it funny how it always turns out that skinny blonde white women with volley-ball boobs are just “naturally” more attractive (regardless of the fact that that’s a body type that would have been virtually if not literally non-existent for much of human development, not to mention the fact that some 95% of people in the world wouldn’t even have had a concept of blonde hair for millenia, and yet somehow were attracted to each other). *Eyeroll*
However, I haven’t been able to find a fitting one in years.
You know, I’ve been finding bra fits worse and worse – it used to be that I could order a nice one in my size from the internet, it would arrive, and the fit would be perfect. Now the sizings seem to have gone completely random; I’ll order several, all from the same bloody company – a couple will fit, and the rest will be too big/too small/too completely odd fitting. It’s getting pretty damn frustrating! We need some sort of underwear revolution; maybe if I decide this whole philosophy thing isn’t for me I’ll start a lingerie company.
Tessa(Quote) (Reply)
I caught this show on Friday, and I really appreciated it. I’d like for it to be longer than 1/2 hour, though – due to the time constraints and editing, the impact this process made on the woman wasn’t as powerful as it could have been, I think.
sbg(Quote) (Reply)
I saw it on Friday too (it looks like they’re re-showing it late enough that I can catch it) and what Beta said sounds right. From my point of view, it was the large number of interesting perception exercises was interesting. Having her place herself in a row of women, and having her place it 6 inches larger than it was, showing how the same woman, wearing 3 different outfits, was considered by her to be more or less attractive. I recognized it very clearly as a ‘break the mental conditioning’ thing.
There were a lot of women in underwear on that show (from the main makeoveree to the various comparison models), but there really wasn’t particularly much pandering. Most of it was… I want to say clinical, but I’m not sure that’s the right word. Detached, I guess. The fact that the man they’re using is so flaming that he makes OOC Takei look straight also can be a bit disarming.
The editing thing SBG brought up seems like a big deal too. I’m wondering if they have enough content for an hour, but I’m also thinking they have more than for a half hour. There were a number of montage sequences to try to get the impression of things done (like the shopping, or the makevoers), maybe they’ll scale down a bit on those once the thing’s established. As well as scaling down on the reality-show like ‘And I think you should do this photo shoot naked’ *dun dun dun* cuts at the commercials. Or maybe not. I don’t watch enough makeover shows to know if that fades away.
-Mecha
Mecha(Quote) (Reply)
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