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What do a bottle of gin and Gok Wan have in common?
Both are easy
to love and both will have you sobbing on the floor.
Yet while the
rest of the world has fallen for Gok, at
least I'll be sober in the morning.
At the risk of sounding like that judge who once called Mary Archer “fragrant”, I'm at a bit of a loss as to all the controversy surrounding Miss England finalist Chloe Marshall.
What has she done to invite so much vitriol? For all the uproar anyone would think she'd abolished the 10 p tax threshold.
You'd be either blind or mean-spirited not to think her attractive. Fully-clothed, Chloe's figure looks no different from that of any woman you'd see anywhere.
Since she unveiled it, however, posing in a bikini, face-on, unashamed, unapologetic, responses have been unsettling. What's more, some of the most venomous comments have been from women.
She's not thin enough! they say. How dare she stand there in her pants? She should be curled up at Gok Wan's feet, a cowering, snivelling ball of snot, tears and self-loathing on How to Look Good Naked.
Women can only parade in their smalls after they've undergone the ritual humiliation of a mini nervous breakdown in public. Only then will Gok dispense his usual prescription of hugs and magic knickers.
For beauty, it seems, is not only skin-deep but lies somewhere between sizes 0 and 10. My size 12 is positively obese in comparison. Chloe Marshall is a 16 – at least.
For a woman of any size to unveil her body, however tastefully, she has to suffer, either to get herself skinny in the first place, or by surrendering herself to the inevitable playground bullying that will follow.
In our victim-obsessed culture she must become a victim. For “victim” read “ideal woman”: emaciated, trussed, meek, compliant.
This in the same week Carla Bruni-Sarkozy was held up as the epitome of female beauty to which we should all aspire. Yet for someone so tall and slim she cut a frumpy figure in her designer sackcloth and flat shoes, which did nothing to serve her inoffensive attractiveness.
As she smiled benignly, belted and buckled behind her gnome-faced Rumpelstiltskin of a husband, there was something slightly kinky and S&M about the whole performance, almost as if he was leading her by a chain on her high collar. Her canonisation by the press is baffling. If this is style, give me Cherie Blair's amusing, free-spirited aesthetic any day.
Each woman on How to Look Good Naked has a pretty body if they did but know it, as too does Chloe Marshall. The difference is she's not crippled with self-loathing. And therein lies the rub: a woman happy in her own skin is a rare and powerful thing, and we can't have that.
The gorgeous “plus-size” models appearing on the How to Look Good Naked catwalk wear clothes which actually fit, and which suit and flatter their shapes. They know how to smile, walk and hold themselves with confidence and poise – skills much under-rated and often lost on most of the rest of us. They are sensual, graceful figures but we barely get to see them.
So used are we to seeing emaciated waifs in every aspect of the media, that the sight of a happy larger woman, unashamedly enjoying her body, comes as a disconcerting surprise, and we don't know how to deal with it. Like Pavlov's Dog we fall back on default responses: disgust, hysteria – laughter at best. Justifying our reactions with phony concerns about health and role models we presume that on some level she must be deeply unhappy, ignorant about food and exercise, lazy and stupid.
Larger women are stereotyped as victims, losers, mother hens, honorary men or the butt of jokes (pun intended), the comedy side-kick who makes the thin girl look prettier. Anyone with the audacity to break the stereotype must be made to conform. She must be rendered frail, incapable, preoccupied with fear and insecurity. Those curves must be flattened.
Fear inspires fear, and fear of female flesh continues. A woman at ease with her body is potentially threatening because she is free of distraction. And a woman free of bodily hang-ups and insecurities is much more likely to enjoy sex.
Everybody knows our capacity for sexual fulfilment infinitely surpasses that of men. The superiority of the clitoris to the penis in terms of erotic enjoyment has been well-documented.
In addition, unlike ejaculation, our dark, loud, powerful screaming orgasms appear to serve no obvious purpose other than to provide all-consuming pleasure. Yet just as Christianity has brought a sledgehammer to female sexuality and motherhood, the separation of the Madonna from the Magdalene, so too has secular society succeeded in ostracising women from their sexual selves.
Better to keep women under control, in their place, consuming as much as possible, taking up as little room as possible: little girls in mind as well as body, ultimately dependant on men to tell us what to do, what to buy, how to think and feel.
It's almost as if we've colluded with this. We've fallen for it so deeply that we can't see what's staring us in the face.
On How To Look Good Naked, the woman is Gok's plaything, his doll. Passively accepting the remedy he dispenses, she lets him dress and undress her, play with her hair, paint her face. Any initial coy resistance to his request she get her kit off in a shop window is part of the game. In the end she inevitably submits.
For a supposedly non-threatening male he wields enormous power. Pygmalion lives on.
Gok's advice can be boiled down to the same three principles each week: wear the right underwear; wear clothes which actually fit and embrace your curves; walk tall, hold your head high and smile. Uh... that's it.
Yet we watch this programme and others like it as if they'll tell us something we don't already know, some long-held secret only the stars know about. You'd think we'd learn but we fall for it time after time. Is it time to redefine beauty? Can it be defined? Perhaps we need to have a shot, if only to liberate ourselves from small-minded over-emphasis on appearances, for the sake of acknowledging what it isn't: that which can fit into a size 8 bikini.
Instead of forever looking without, it may pay to look where it's uncool and unfashionable: within. And I don't mean gynaecological paparazzi shots of knicker-less slebs getting out of cars. There's a lot to be said for inner cosmetics - grace, elegance, dignity, integrity. Once highly valued, nowadays they're old-fashioned little-old-lady words, yet they cost nothing.
In a line-up of identikit size 0 “beauties”, Chloe Marshall shows that these qualities aren't yet dead, but with the Miss England finals in July the ridicule she has already endured may prove only the beginning. We should beware of using her weight as an excuse to project our own insecurities. We'd also do well to avoid presuming it's OK to look good naked on a catwalk with a man holding your hand, but not if you do it on your own.
Who'd have guessed it, though: far from being outdated, this year the beauty competition is as relevant as ever. If you thought it couldn't get any worse, it has. Stripping women to their comfy M&S undies and asking them to insert themselves in a line-up according to size shows it's just been tastelessly repackaged.
With his warm, non-threatening persona Gok Wan is easy to love. But so is gin, and both will have you sobbing on the floor. Yet while the rest of the world has fallen for his charms, at least I'll be sober in the morning.
And for the record, I look bloody marvellous naked. And not just through a camera lens or the bottom of a spirit glass.
© Agnetha 2008
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