"Even if I got rid of all my problems, I'd just go out and get new ones..."

Does beauty lie in what you see?
8:37 p.m. on 2004-08-22

Last night I was trapped at home, kitten-sitting. I had the house to myself, and was curled up on the sofa channel hopping, trying to something that fulfilled two criteria: 1) was something I had not seen before and 2) was not going to scare me.

My finger got stuck on channel '111', LivingTV, and a horrible show called "America's Top Model," yet another show in the vein of Pop Idol that searched, unsurprisingly, for the prettiest American girl they could find. I'd flipped on into the middle of the final, between two equally gorgeous girls, Yoanna and Mercedes.

They were both beautiful. In that classic model way. Impossibly tall, towering over every man they encountered, all legs and ankles. Thin, with tapering arms and slender necks. And, um... well, they had no breasts. Yoanna particularly. Any child of hers would need a map and a a compass to find their way to the maternal feeding ground.

You wouldn't want to look like either of them, of course. Perfect as models, not so perfect in real life. I prefer the FHM look - thin, but not skinny, with hips and thighs and breasts which may or may not be mythical.

Despite hating the morals behind the show, I watched to the end, and felt genuinely sorry for Mercedes, who was second best. Beautifully rejected. "You're pretty, you're just not Top Model pretty."

As if this wasn't bad enough, LivingTV followed up on the moral wasteland with "Extreme Makeovers." This starts off in the same old familiar format. "Hi, I'm Bob, I'm Luanne's best friend, and I'm so close to her that rather than except her for all her faults and encourage her to feel better about herself, I'm going to surprise her with a camera crew and a group of strangers who will take turns to criticise her wardrobe, face care, and hairstyle. And then we'll all cheer when she returns as a better person, someone we'd all feel less ashamed about being with."

Except this was even worse. In this show, the contestants were given surgery.

Not just any surgery. One of the candidates, a rather lovely barmaid, had a genuine malformation of her lips which you couldn't help but notice. Fair enough, I thought, if I had that problem I would probably go for surgery too, since I can sympathise with the feelings of self-consciousness and insecurity.

But once seated in the surgeon's chair, the show didn't stop there. "Yes, we'll fix your lips! We'll also give you some lipo, a forehead lift, new teeth, laser eye surgery and eye surgery." Because if we're cutting you open, we may as well correct all those other ugly, terrible conditions you're suffering, such as the natural aging process and *gasp* *shock* *horror* weak eyesight and plaque.

It was hard to hate the show's contestants, since they all seemed so genuinely happy about the end result. That over-the-top, self-indulgent, American style of happiness, with friends and family shrieking and bursting into tears.

But I could hate the show's producers, and the network executives who commissioned the damn thing. And LivingTV schedulers, who decided to neighbour one show featuring beautiful women having their dreams crushed because they weren't perfect, with another show which featured your average ugly person having invasive surgery to look less ugly. After two hours of this, as well as desiring something more intelligent, such as Newsnight or Panorama, I couldn't help but wonder what has happened to a society in which perfection is defined as an impossible goal, and yet we should be considered worthless if we can't achieve it.

It's all rather Logan's Run, isn't it?

Listening to: The Simpsons

Quote: "Well, he's kind of had it in for me ever since I accidentally ran over his dog. Actually, replace "accidentally" with "repeatedly," and replace "dog" with "son."

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