Miss Naked Beauty
Channel 4

Axe Men
Channel 5

AH, YES, women. Eternally mysterious. What do we really want? Well, not Miss Naked Beauty for a start. If it weren’t for the title I’d swear this show was sponsored by the Taliban, such is its queasy mixture of puritanism and coercion. Camp-as-Christmas presenter Gok Wan has left behind the sloppy humanism of his How To Look Good Naked series, along with its morale-boosting makeovers and remedial use of slap. In his new programme, make-up is now the work of the devil, something to be scrubbed off the faces of these “alternative” beauty show contestants by any means necessary. As they huddled in their underwear inside an empty swimming pool, I half expected to hear the rattle of machine guns from the sidelines, but Gok Wan and co-presenter Mylene Klass turned riot hoses on the girls instead. “I love you all”, he cried, but I now see him for what he really is.

As if the thinly-veiled sadism were not unsavoury enough, there’s a thick sanctimonious fog hanging over the proceedings. Not for these girls the indignity of parading in bikinis while Michael Aspel asks them about their hobbies and hopes for world peace. Instead they are marched out before the judges (the female members of which are resplendent in several inches of make-up) to face an interrogation on the meaning of life and respond to the question: “What makes you beautiful?” One poor girl was so bewildered she couldn’t stop talking, which outraged the celebrity judges. “Oh, shut up, stop talking woman, just get off,” they sneered, like Simon Cowell at the wrong time of the month. “What we are looking for is brains, balls [eh?], personality and natural beauty”, announced Gok Wan, as token male judge James Brown nodded solemnly. From editor of Loaded and king of the boobs to reformed sage and crusading feminist. Yeah, right.

The result of this self-styled search for “real” beauty is oddly familiar, however. Dozens of anxious, needy young women still desperately trying to please, to conform to someone else’s smug expectations. They’ll do anything to impress the judges, win a modelling contract and appear on television. A few of them may be a bit fatter or shorter or whackier than the average beauty queen, but let’s see who actually wins the crown. Or, rather, let’s not. If you’re going to run a cattle market, at least be honest about it.

While women on TV are reverting back to the 50s (that’s the 1850s), men are being urged to become ever more rough and tough. A spate of endurance test shows such as Unbreakable treat viewers to vicarious danger, as if the ability to survive naked in a snowdrift should be the ultimate aim of every modern male.

Then there are the “it’s a man’s job” series like Axe Men, seething with sweat, testosterone and manly banter. Let’s hope most men treat these programmes like cookery shows – just glad it’s someone else who has to do it. But deary me. What is it with all this galloping gender polarisation, I wonder. Are we really turning into a nation of Barbie and Action Man dolls?

Helen Chappell