The show has been hailed as an antidote to the WAG culture which dominates so many women’s aspirations and lifestyle choices, helping them instead find their ‘natural beauty’, which of course makes them far more endearing to men. But there is something fundamentally wrong with the reduction of their self-worth to whether some random blokes on the street want to get off with them. It embodies a kind of collective ownership and objectification. Why is it okay for men (and women) to make disparaging remarks about a woman’s appearance, regardless of whether she wears false eyelashes? ‘Snog Marry Avoid?’ sends out the message that it doesn’t matter what’s on the inside as long as a woman looks attractive to men. While there is a valid argument that some of the women who go out in short skirts and stilettos are simply reacting to a different kind of expectations laid out by the patriarchy, this programme doesn’t even attempt to free them from it because it is based entirely on men’s expectations.
Of course there is the inevitable element of ‘slut shaming’ in most ‘make-under’ shows: the women are told that they attract the wrong kind of attention from men in their current state and their new looks always cover more of their bodies. And they are tainted by classism: whilst dressing like Katie Price isn’t restricted to working class women by any means, there is certainly an association between certain ‘looks’ and ‘chaviness’, which is in turn associated with the working class (Owen Jones’s ‘Chavs’ is an excellent read for those who are interested). And we are invited to laugh at these women and their supposedly monstrous beauty ideals.
If things couldn’t get any worse, a woman going by the name of Lindsay commented on an F-Word article about the programme, claiming that she was featured on it with her friends after being approached by the producers and was not told what it was actually about. She was informed that the working title was ‘Filthy Gorgeous’ and that it was a “celebration of a style”. She had no idea that the general public would be asked to rate her. If this is true, it is testament to the unpleasant nature of this show and everything it stands for.
What is especially ironic is the fact that the ‘make-under’ itself requires the female participants to spend just as much time on their appearance as they did before; the results are simply more subtle. Rather than being given a low-maintenance haircut and no make-up, they are instead introduced to a new taxing beauty régime. ‘Natural beauty’ requires just enough carefully blended make-up to make it seem like we’re wearing nothing on our faces. It is just another aesthetic category. Men think that women look good au naturel because more often than not they are wearing well-applied foundation. As Shona McCombes so eloquently explains:
“A dress that doesn’t flatter her, an uneven streak of foundation, a dodgy hair dye job: signs of failure, mocked because they signal ineptness at mastering our image – the ultimate sin of womanhood.”‘Snog Marry Avoid?’ is not a war against fake beauty. It is a war against overt fakery; women are still supposed to appear naturally soft-skinned and blemish free, but we’re not allowed to be bold about it. It tells women that they should wear make-up not for the way it makes them feel about themselves but for the approval of the general public. McComes argues that, in a world bombarded with images airbrushed to perfection, we are expected to be “photorealist portraits of femininity, not expressionist canvasses”. And it is this which exposes ‘make-under’ programmes as simply another way of controlling women’s style and beauty choices. Above all, the shameless judging of women and the implication that, as long as a man wants to snog you, you’re on the right track needs to stop.
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