What I like best about this show is the gentle and artful way that Carson demonstrates to his guest how her perception of her own body has been so skewed that she has become her own worst enemy. By means of a series of "reality checks", proper foundation garments, flattering clothing choices, and a movie star hair and make-up treatment, her outer beauty is joined to her inner beauty. My favorite reality check has the guest position herself in a line-up of half a dozen other women, based on her least favorite body part. Invariably, her fun house view of herself is revealed. Of course, as on every show of this kind, as soon as a woman gets a proper brassiere fitting, it changes her life! Like Veronica Webb says on "Tim Gunn's Guide to Style", she gets that "beautiful bra face." Then, Carson gives his guest a quicker and more efficient lesson in "What Not to Wear" by showing her moving videos of two or three women with bodies like hers, but with faces masked, wearing different clothing, one wrongly emphasizing the body part the guest most dislikes, one flattering it. Then the faces are unmasked, revealing that they are the same woman wearing different clothing. The point is affirmed that there is something beautiful about every woman, both inside and out, and it is a shame to hide beauty.
Review of How to Look Good Naked
How to Look Good Naked
(2008)
I end up crying and cheering at the same time.
20 January 2008
Warning: Spoilers