Archive: The reality Star's Guide to Beauty

With 'Made in Chelsea' returning for it's third series on Monday, I present the reality star's guide to beauty. Taken from an article written for ‘The Muse.tv’ on 13th May 2011

I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling my weird love/hate relationship with my television taking on more of the ‘hate’ at the moment. ‘The only way is Essex’ has been followed by ‘Made in Chelsea’, which is soon to be followed by what I can only describe as an embarrassment to our fair isle; ‘Geordie shore’. Oh dear. 

Don’t get me wrong, I am guilty in indulging once in a while in the kind of American vacuous ‘scripted reality’ that have spawned these region based British counterparts; first there was ‘Laguna Beach- the real orange county’ (inspired by the hugely successful fictional drama ‘the OC’), then there was ‘The Hills’ (following the young life of Lauren 

Conrad; a woman that started as a girl on Laguna Beach), then there was ‘The City’ (another spin-off featuring Whitney Port; the one that was slightly more edgy) Then there were a million others, and my IQ was halved. 

Laguna beach started in 2004, and I became aware of it via MTV, probably around 2005, so that gives me a solid dose of 6 years of rubbish swilling around my head, and although I wasn’t ever the biggest fan, I found it a funny kind of escapism, middle ground between a sitcom and a documentary but now that’s all changed. Why is it that this type of TV only now is starting to really bother me? I think the answer is pretty clear. All these programmes have been up until now very far removed. 

I I don’t live in LA or on a Californian beach, nor do I conduct my life around long lunches with girlfriends to gossip/snipe/catfight about the night before and then storm off to my waiting white BMW/Range rover. Its not real life, its just something to laugh at and turn your brain off to and I’m very happy with that. But Essex isn’t LA, neither is 

Chelsea, or for that matter Newcastle. Their all within a short travelling distance, they’re not far-removed and they’re all part of the social make-up of Britain. But these people don’t seem to be removing themselves from hollywood, living in a dream world of boob jobs, scandal and fakery that I don’t associate with the Britain I love, but I think others don’t see it that way.

With this weeks episode of The Muse.TV surrounding beauty, I thought I’d take a minute to examine the ‘Scripted reality’ star’s ‘guide to beauty’ (if you will). When I was filming the latest episode, within the beauty industry, I found professionals who were dedicated to artistry, care of the skin, and not drastically changing what you have, but 

highlighting it. The make-up artists were really pushing the idea of a base for your skin, a primer to allow less actual layers of make-up, and care for the skin underneath. But when was the last time you heard of this kind of regime on TV? no. No no no no no. If I was a make-up artist I’d be throwing my eyelash curlers at the screen in frustration.

To achieve the beauty standards of the scripted reality star, one must start not with a rejuvenating primer, or a good moisturiser but it seems invasive surgical procedures. In ‘The Hills’ these procedures were actually totally ignored by producers, and the viewer was just supposed to assume the way its stars filled their bikinis was genuine. But British reality stars have never been known for their subtlety; ‘The Only Way Is Essex’ could probably be defined by the identicat faces of its female characters, and makes no qualms about openly glamorising surgery and other forms of extreme beauty treatments. There is talk of botox parties, boob jobs, and even mention of the tanning injections

‘melanotan’, which has links to cancer, and causes chronic nausea; but as the buxom and bronzed Amy Childs says “you look good all the time!” 

Amy Childs is I would say the UK ambassador of this guide. She jokes about needing boob holes in the massage table of her beauty salon to cater for all the boob jobs in Essex, and when looking for an assistant wants a clone of herself- into fake tan, boob jobs and cheek fillers. She’s recently been photographed outside of the parameters of the programme dressed in a replica outfit to one worn by Katie Price, so this gives an idea of the genre of ‘beauty’ she puts herself in. I’m not for a minute suggesting that Amy Childs and the rest of the cast of ‘The only way is Essex’ are solely to blame for what I see as portraying harmful and invasive procedures as commonplace, but with 1.55 million viewers of the itv2 programme surely its something to question? 

In the end I wouldn’t class my scripted reality star’s guide to beauty as ‘beauty’. The people in the industry I’ve met aren’t promoting a necessity to cut, jab, and inflate to look your best, it should be something fun and experimental, and as much as these programmes promote surgery and other extreme procedures as this, this is obviously not the case. Each to one’s own, and surgery does work for some people, but it is not the same as putting on eyeliner, or using a highlighter product to enhance your assets, no matter how accessible and acceptable it becomes. 

To conclude, I’d like to turn to a woman who has long fascinated me, and is perhaps who I regard as the first glaringly obvious tragedy of scripted reality programmes. If Amy Childs is the princess, she is the queen, and if we can learn anything the portrayal of beauty in these programmes, its from reality veteran Heidi Montag. After starring in MTV’s ‘The Hills’ from 2006-2010, Montag became completely unrecognisable from the fresh faced girl whose naivety and girl next door looks had defined the programme. At the peak of her surgery she underwent ten procedures in one day including brow-lifts, ear-pinnings, a chin reduction, as well as a second rhinoplasty and second breast augmentation. Her surgery wasn’t mentioned on the show until well into its development, but her face and body were changed dramatically for the viewing public, explicitly talked about or not. Montag is just a year older than me (now 24, but 22 when the main bulk of her surgery was carried out) and has been described as being thrown head first into a Barbie factory. 

In 2010 Heidi spoke of her regret of the procedures she underwent. “Parts of my body definitely look worse than they did pre-surgery. This is not what I signed up for.” She adds, “I definitely think I should have been way more informed. I think that doctors should really walk you through all aspects of it, not just the glamorous side of it. Doctors, it’s like they’re selling you cookies or something.I would love to not be ‘plastic girl’ or whatever they call me. Surgery ruined my career and my personal life and just brought a lot of negativity into my world. I wish I could jump into a time machine and take it all back. Instead, I’m always going to feel like Edward Scissorhands”

Maybe its time to turn off.