Miss Naked Beauty, channel 4’s new series presented by Gok Wan, styles itself as reintroducing feminism to a new audience “by stealth”. Wondering how a beauty contest could possibly be feminist, I decided to watch an episode last night.
The programme aimed to make women of all shapes and sizes feel beautiful without piles of make-up, fake tan, hair extensions and cosmetic surgery. Yet, the problem is, the message is still that women must be beautiful. The contestants continue to be judged on their appearance rather than their achievements or ideas, and are still encouraged to use make-up, (as long as it is mineral-based of course!). The role of the programmes’ judges (including James Brown, the founder of Loaded magazine – ahem feminist????) amounted to telling the contestants how photogenic and naturally beautiful they were, and criticizing their speeches on why they wanted to be “beauty ambassadors”. Oh, and next week the remaining contestants are performing in a “natural”, “revolutionary” naked glamour model shoot.
How can we encourage women to take on the baton for feminist causes and re-ignite the women’s movement? Not with programmes like this, I hope.
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