How To Look Good Naked

Television is a morbid wasteland of shows that are either implying that you look awful (90210), telling you how to look better (adverts in general) or directly telling you that you look awful (The Swan).

The latter show I refer to is a hideous programme whereby contestants undergo a horrifying amount of plastic surgery, wardrobe adjustment and hair extensions over a period of weeks in order to change the way they look completely.

The best part of all? If they look at a mirror at any point in the course of the show, they get disqualified.

How disgustingly shallow. It's a genuinely reprehensible idea and I'd like to think that it would never get made in Britain.

How you can show something like that on American TV but a penis is too much to ask anywhere outside of HBO is beyond me.

Which brings me to a television show I'm genuinely positive about and want to encourage people to watch.

Despite my pal Charlie Brooker's apparent hatred of him I genuinely like Gok Wan, and his show How To Look Good Naked is the antithesis of The Swan. For this it should be applauded.

Gok Wan doesn't tell you to lose one hundred pounds, cut your face off and and dye your hair. He tells you that you are lovely just the way you are and gives you the confidence to show it off.

Admittedly, he is a touch misguided at times. In at least one episode he has shown an individual a long lineup of variously sized individuals and asked her what size she thinks she is.

It's meant to indicate how misguided her opinion of herself is. Instead it just kind of insults the overweight individual she compares herself to.

He also managed to completely startle a poor blind woman last night by making a joke at her before introducing himself. He meant well but she clearly didn't reocgnise his voice and the fact that they left it in the show was fairly amusing.

But however stupid some of his decisions may be, Gok's heart is in the right place. Too many women are down on how they look, undeservedly so.

And if this show goes a little way to helping people feel better about themselves without needing to suck stuff out of their body before injecting it back into other areas, I'm all for it.

Photo from flickr.com courtesy of Ugg Boy (have fun doing it)