TVScope: How to look good naked, Channel 4, Tuesdays, 8.30pm
"I saw her yesterday on the side of the street. She was a large woman in no way petite. She shook her hips in a daunting way With as much impertinence as she could display" - (Merriman, The Midnight Court, 18th Century)
This, the first in a new eight-part series from the makers of Ten Years Younger, promised more than it delivered - on the naked bit anyway. The big surprise was its 'big is beautiful' stand in relation to women's body size, rare in the pseudo world of makeover shows, as is its insistence on "body beautiful without the knife".
Each week, Gok Wan, the flamboyant camp stylist of the stars, will persuade women to shed their baggy clothes and to start, not just to like their bodies, but to "love it, use it, flaunt it".
Gok's first recruit was 46-year-old Susan, who hated her size 16 body so much she had not undressed in front of anyone, even her husband, for years.
What she did not know as she cringed in front of three enormous mirrors with Gok, was that strangers in central London were admiring a blown-up picture of her wearing only her baggy smalls.
After this shock tactic, Gok made the rest seem easy. He flounced and fluttered around her, proffering advice as to how large ladies can control their "wobbly" bits. Properly fitted underwear is the first essential "in smoothing out the wobbly bits without overspill". Susan was certainly transformed when she swapped her 38C bra for a 32G one.
Once women have sorted out the "droopy boobs and saggy butts" with properly fitting underwear, (preferably in luscious lace!), clothes that suit their particular body shape are the next key to success. The results were certainly impressive with Susan, as she replaced her baggy clothes with a sleek stylish wardrobe which accentuated rather than concealed her attractive ample curves. Gok next persuaded the newly confident Susan to pose for a very discreet, soft focus, naked photo shoot.
Her new-found confidence was then put to a final test when she had to stand beside this picture and ask passersby if they thought she looked good naked - as if they were going to say no!
While this series can be seen as yet another variation on the make-over format, there was a serious message behind all the froth and high drama. Apparently nine out of 10 British women hate their body size, a loathing which is exploited by the lucrative diet and surgery industries. Susan's size 16 body is in fact the average for a British woman and she represented the insecurity felt by larger women as a result of being ignored by the fashion and beauty industries. There is relentless pressure to be, as Susan put it, "thinner and straighter".
So while some of the advice given as to how to look good naked, such as to keep hair long and wear high heels, was daft, let's hope the message that women can look good without any "nip, tuck, crunch or starve" is heard. It may well provoke the long overdue backlash by large ladies against the long reign of those stick insects best and most accurately labelled by Tom Wolfe as society's "social X-rays".
Olive Travers is a clinical psychologist