Cutting up women for fun and profit

[davidn]

While Whitney's been away I've been watching loads of British television, and one of the things I'm catching up on is a TV discussion programme called You Have Been Watching - it's a panel quiz in name only, being the most free-form excuse for an actual quiz I've yet seen in the genre, and is really a vehicle for grumpy old Charlie Brooker and his chums to mock the world's ready supply of particularly awful television. And it's very funny, but there was one section that I felt horribly uncomfortable watching even within the additional frame of satire. I think you'll probably know by now that it takes a lot to prompt me to react like... oh, I don't know - this, for example:

Jesus Christ, this is absolutely fucking hideous

Having been beaten into being a cynical misery-guts from late school age, I've always had great discontent with the idea of purely cosmetic surgery, but my dislike of it started well before I could fully realize how hateful it was - it's used as a gateway to further objectify women, a process to turn people into what they think the world wants them to look like, simply to cut them apart and put them back together in a way that instantly cures them of the ugliness that they perceive themselves to have thanks to the pressure that we put on to them. As said later on in the video, what this televisual atrocity is doing is saying that they're absolutely right - that they shouldn't have any self-esteem for who they are, but that we can save them by drawing up a plan to change them, adding to or slicing out the pieces of their faces and their bodies, reassembling them bit by artificial bit to make them look acceptable and replace their old selves with this universal pre-packaged silicone grimacing standard in a primitive form of roboticization.

Normally at this point I would blame America for being the only society remotely capable of giving this to the world, but this is really on a whole new level - I can't unload the blame on to one country this time, I'm just ashamed that it existed. Besides, the television that is vomited on to me daily here is so appalling that this programme unfortunately didn't come as any great surprise. Listen to the comments from the three panellists as the nightmarish vision goes on, and especially the little interjection at 6:55 - Frankie Boyle is disgusted with it. That's how wrong this is. If that doesn't tell you about the sheer scale of the problem, then nothing will (apart from the blunter conclusion at 8:35).

Actually I've decided it's America's fault after all. Thanks a lot. (It's worth mentioning that even their press was revolted by it - they've got to have some standards.)

Comments

[crassadon.livejournal.com]

All the women who see their new selves cover their face.

Then they look at themselves in awe. And, on the alternative show covering the first show, people laugh at them. Which is really the most disgusting thing, to me. I understand they're making fun of the concept of the show, and how society views beauty, but those are real people that they're making fun of.

Obviously The Swan is horrible, as it modifies these women, and then pits them against one another in competition for an artificial prize, when the prize should be that each woman is happy with their lives. But the woman "who hasn't had a date in ten years" I expect can certainly get a date now. I think it's difficult to argue their lives have not been improved.

As a further comment, I'll say that anyone who gets on TV has to look above average. And that I'm sure everyone on Have You Been Watching had make-up applied, and was given attention by stylists before the show. They are all part of the system of artificial beauty which they are insulting on the show.

[kjorteo]

See, this is why the only reality show I watch (and even then it's a guilty pleasure sort of thing, but it's at least better than all the others!) is The Biggest Loser. Actually, that and The Swan make for an interesting compare/contrast in a roughly similar vague premise of "trying to improve people's lives"--except that one does it by plastic surgery-ing up average women (thank you for linking me to this literally minutes after I beat Trauma Center 2 and sat through Dr. Hoffman's blatant moral of the story speech about how doctors should only be responsible for the burden of saving lives and not for preserving youth/effortless performance enhancement/etc., by the way) and the other is about turning morbidly obese people healthy via exercise, healthier eating habits, and the occasional Dr. Phil-like working through whatever was wrong with them for them to have dug themselves that deep in the first place. With one, you get (as this clip helpfully pointed out) women turned into the same person with different hair color. With the other, you get results like this and this, which can actually conceivably help someone live a healthier and more fulfilling life.

[kytheraen.livejournal.com]

This video contains content from Channel 4, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds.

o.O

[diarytypething.livejournal.com]

I really enjoyed the programme, in particular because this episode was also a vehicle for Josie Long, who is one of a the few moderately well-known young female comedians, and probably the most openly feminist (although this was the first time I'd ever seen JL wearing obvious make-up; not sure if this was inadvertent, or if it was a pre-emptive strike against being called a scruffy hag). In this context, she and Frankie Boyle were a good combination because they are so different from one another, especially when it turned out that there are some levels of misogyny that shock even Frankie Boyle. The exchange about women plumbers will probably stay with me for a while.

[e-to-the-ipi.livejournal.com]

I was in the audience for the recording of that episode of You Have Been Watching, and started a round of applause which everyone joined in for after Josie Long said some things about why The Swan is so bad.

[Also: Richard Bacon had a lot of very wrong guesses about bad things Jeremy Kyle had done, which they couldn't broadcast.] And I absolutely loved Long's top.

Frankie Boyle's improvisations while we were all bored and they were reshooting the episode were amazingly good - it actually gave me a measure of respect for the guy.

And The Swan is horrible, horrible, horrible.