When was the last time you sat on the couch, squealing in delight because you were so impressed with the programming? I know. Us neither. We’re not even all that into TV. That’s why we’re so excited about “How to Look Good Naked,†a new Lifetime reality series.
The weekly show is hosted by Carson Kressley from “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,†and features a new woman each week who learns to love her body as it is. (Yes, really.) Each week, the show culminates in a photo shoot where the woman poses naked, flaunting her new-found confidence. The show is structured in much the same way as a typical makeover show, but the goal is one of self-acceptance, instead of diet and plastic surgery.
The title of the show may evoke something straight out of seedy late-night cable, but this show genuinely strives to counter pre-conceived images of beauty to which women compare themselves. Carson repeatedly comes back to the idea of loving one’s body, and seeing it as others perceive it, instead of as our own skewed version.
The first episode featured Layla from Santa Monica, CA, and put Layla through a program to allow her to see her body as it really is. In the show, Layla takes a good look at herself in several full-length mirrors and lists off every part of her body that she dislikes, while Carson emphasizes her positive attributes. Shortly afterward, Layla sees interviews with people on the street as they speak about a huge, projected image of her body. Instead of highlighting so-called problem areas, many individuals found Layla’s body beautiful and refreshing. After going bra and underwear shopping, clothing shopping, having a spa treatment, haircut, and makeup restyling, Layla poses naked for a photo shoot.
We find this show delightfully subversive, as it uses the typical makeover show paradigm to promote a positive message about loving oneself. Not once are diet or cosmetic surgery mentioned as possible avenues for self-improvement. There’s still the predictable corporate shilling, in not-so-subtle moments of product placement, and we saw at least one diet pill advertisement during the commercial breaks (et tu, Dexatrim?). Also, too much emphasis was put on making Layla look and feel “sexy†and desirable to men. However, we are impressed with Carson’s compassionate and unorthodox contributions to this reality series, which makes the show watchable and entertaining.
Numerouscritics have cited the show for promoting obesity/unhealthy lifestyles (their words, not ours) and glossing over the benefits of healthy eating and exercise. Apparently these critics assume that the show’s viewers have never heard those suggestions before. Apparently these critics have not been paying attention to the corporate sponsors. Ads aside, “How to Look Good Naked†stands out by not taking part in that rhetoric. We are not given information about Layla’s medical profile, her eating habits or her exercise patterns, because that is simply irrelevant.
These same critics have touched upon their own impulse to judge the women featured in the episode as being too lazy to change their bodies, and finding acceptance as a sort of defeat. What do you think? Did you find yourself pointing out Layla’s flaws along with her?
We’ve heard this sort of argument a lot, blaming and bullying women who do not work day and night to achieve a cookie-cutter goal for their bodies. The show has something to say about that: Carson explains that in the 20 years Layla had been dieting, she could have been having fun, being good at her job, dating more. She had been putting her life on pause, waiting until she was worthy to go out and be proactive. That was one of the most poignant moments of the show, and one that will most likely hit home for many of the show’s viewers.
You can watch the whole first episode in three segments on the Lifetime website here. It’s also available for free download from the iTunes Store.
So if you love this show too, take action!
1) Let Lifetime know how much you appreciate its programming by writing Lifetime Television / 309 W. 49th Street / New York, NY 10019.
3) Support the show by tuning in and encouraging your friends to watch it.
As always, we welcome any comments you might have about the show. Let us know what you think!
The details:
“How to Look Good Naked,†Lifetime, Fridays at 9PM/8PM Central.
– Avital Isaacs and Hilary Burgin
Avital is a sophomore at Oberlin College, where she majors in Cinema Studies. After many years of quiet admiration for About-Face, she is thrilled to be joining the ranks.
Hilary is also a sophomore at Oberlin College in the great state of Ohio, studying Environmental Studies and Latin American Studies. She was raised in a female-positive family that loves to have event gatherings based upon food. She could most likely live off of garlic, chocolate, spinach, cheese, and grapefruit.
This series of ads recasts three iconic film images (Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct, Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch, and Mena Suvari in American Beauty) as full-bodied women. The accompanying words translate as: “Forget about it. Men’s preference will never change. Fit Light Yogurt.â€
It took me a few minutes of staring incredulously at my computer screen, eyebrows threatening to rise off my face entirely, before I could even figure out where to start.
Clearly, those of us who profess that every body is beautiful have been deluding ourselves. Can plus-sized be pretty? Can you be fat and still be happy? Will anyone who’s not thin (and extensively airbrushed) ever be celebrated as an iconic representation of beauty? Apparently we shouldn’t get our hopes up.
I don’t know what’s more offensive: that the ads have such a homogenous and absolute perception of beauty (it is attained, exclusively, through having a fit/thin body, which is attained, also exclusively, through eating their yogurt) or that this perception stems from a definition of beauty as that which is attractive to men. Men, they warn us, will never like big women. No man wants to see up the skirt of a fat bisexual serial killer. No one will ever say, “Isn’t it delicious?†when the passing of a subway train raises a fat woman’s dress. And certainly no man will ever fantasize about his high school daughter’s fat best friend.
The worst part of the ads’ interpretations of male desire is the message that appealing to it should be at the forefront of female concerns. Even the most mundane aspects of daily life, such as grocery shopping, are to be approached with men in mind. The suggestion that we should choose yogurt based on how it makes us look to men essentially reflects an archaic idea that is remains all too potent in the structure of our everyday lives: a woman’s value lies in what she does for men.
Margot Brooks is a rising junior at Stanford University. She is thinking of majoring in psychology and/or sociology, but will probably change her mind several more times henceforth. In the meantime, she is excited to contribute to About-Face and can be reached at margot09@stanford.edu.
This is my diabetes kit. Dealing with the blood-sugar testing, hypoglycemic episodes, insulin-pump management and/or insulin injections is no party. But the consequences of NOT dealing with them are severe.
A couple years ago, I got a dreadful sinus infection, found myself trotting to the bathroom several times an hour, and dropped about 15 pounds in six weeks. I had developed Type 1 diabetes (a.k.a. insulin-dependent or juvenile diabetes). It felt weird to tell friends about my new disease. But the conversations kept bumping to an awkward halt, right around the time the other person said—and I am not making this up—”You lost 15 pounds? God, you’re lucky.” After I’d just explained that I have a chronic disease.
Not long after that, my sister called me and asked, “It’s really bad if you don’t take your insulin, right?” I launched into an explanation of the disastrous things that can result if a Type 1 diabetic doesn’t take insulin. She had a new friend, a woman in her 30s, who was diabetic and systematically did not treat it. The friend was obsessed with being skinny, my sister told me. It was the first time I even contemplated deliberately abusing this disease in the pursuit of the waifish figure I’d recently acquired.
Evidently there’s a name being (informally) used to describe the practice: diabulimia.
I have often said that I can’t imagine what it would be like to have this disease as a teenager. The urge to treat it like a new variety of eating disorder would be so tempting, especially in light of the compromised self-confidence that can be a side effect of a chronic disease.
But stop and think about the reason an insulin-dependent diabetic loses weight if she doesn’t take her insulin: The body doesn’t have a way to convert sugar into energy, so the body instead devours muscle and fat, in the process drastically weakening itself and kicking a large amount of toxins called ketones into the bloodstream. Meanwhile, the sugar that’s left adrift in the bloodstream is merrily wreaking havoc on as many organs and systems as it can.
The side effects of uncontrolled diabetes—aside from ketoacidosis, slow starvation, coma, and death—include nerve damage, kidney failure, heart disease, and blindness. As a woman, it’s dangerous to conceive a baby if you have high blood sugar because the fetus can develop severe birth defects; the rate of miscarriage is also higher than in the general population.
Being thin could never be worth any of that. I’ve said that in some ways I feel lucky to have Type 1 diabetes, because an enormous component of the treatment is simply leading a healthy lifestyle: eating mindfully, staying active, being aware of what’s going on with my body and asking questions when I have them. I realize that those people who said I was lucky to have a disease whose side effect was uncontrolled weight loss were just toeing the party line of our expectations of our bodies. Shouldn’t the main expectation be health?
-A.A.
Alison Aves is a professional writer, editor, and diabetes handler living in the San Francisco Bay Area. She can be contacted at alavessf@gmail.com.
Last week I saw something that horrified me . . . vicariously, that is. The Today Show held a swimsuit fashion show on its April 26th episode, complete with a runway, cute bikinis, and beautiful models. That’s not the scary part. What sent panic through my bones was that these “models” were not part of the exclusive club of long and lean ladies that grace the pages of Vogue and Elle magazines. These models were “regular” women like you and me.
Two weeks earlier, Malia Mills, owner of a designer swimsuit boutique by the same name based in New York City, hand-picked women from the audience outside The Today Show studios who were there to watch the show’s live taping.
Can you imagine that? One day you’re minding your own business, anonymously crammed into a crowd of a hundred or so strangers, and the next thing you know, you are donning a swimsuit on your size 12 frame in front of millions of people across the country! These women went from civilians to swimsuit models in two weeks! That means that as far as getting “swimsuit-ready,” there was barely enough time for a decent bikini wax. A personal trainer, crash diets, or even colonics couldn’t even make a noticeable difference in two weeks. That is what makes this jump into the public eye so impressive to me. These ladies were confident enough to boldly strut their beautiful, true selves. They looked fantastic!
I watched them on the TV incredulously. Could I be that brave?
Malia Mills’ motto is “Love Thy Differences” and that is what she does. She designs suits that are meant to flatter all figures. She achieves this by emphasizing the beauty of every body type, whether curvaceous or slim, size 2 or 16, tall or short. Mills’ approach is not to use industrial-strength Lycra that pinches so hard at the waist that breathing — let alone swimming — becomes a challenging feat; She allows customers to mix and match tops and bottoms that complement each part of the body. She doesn’t try to hide anything or force us to pretend we are something that we are not.
Now that swimsuit season is upon us, I am going to remember these models when I am in the department-store dressing room. Instead of fretting about what I could have done to make my body swimsuit-ready, I will patiently look for a suit that was designed to fit my body. I know that the right suit is out there.
If you want to check out these brave and beautiful women and these great swimsuits, you can visit the Malia Mills website.
–J.K.
Jennifer Kinzelberg is a freelance public relations consultant who works with non-profit organizations. She is proud to be associated with organizations like About-Face that are dedicated to helping young people realize their true potential through knowledge and positive self-esteem.
