The Week on the Telly: September 09 2011 by Hannah

Sky Living Special!
This week I decided to watch nothing but Sky Living. Now you can watch as the feminist in me shrivels and dies and is replaced by a horrified orange husk, too afraid to wear a bikini.

Pushy and Proud, Sky Living

Allegedly, the British obsession with looking good has never been stronger. This mostly seems to be the case in Essex, where Mum of two Michelle has opened the first pamper parlour exclusively for kids. Since the salon opened, the press have accused her of sexualising children with fake tans and make up. Personally, I don’t see how anyone can find an orange child remotely sexual. Perhaps it is they who have the problem.

We join Michelle and her children for a family day out to the Polo, which is apparently a big thing in Essex. Everyone must look their best, as the cast of ‘The Only Way is Essex’ will be there.

‘Look.’ shouts Michelle at her five year old daughter, ‘you’ve got shot all over your face. That’s not attractive.’

The child bursts into tears but Michelle is too busy to notice, as she reminds celebrity magazine favourite Alex Reid that they met ‘years and years ago’ and got drunk together in Thailand. Then she wanders off to shriek at TOWIE regular Chloe Simms for disrespecting her salon: ‘Go put some more filler in your lips,’ screams Michelle, as Chloe totters off, ‘it must be affecting your brain.’

Back to ESSEX now, where another terrible mother is letting her twelve year old daughter, Natalie, have her eyebrows waxed. Surely, I ponder, this is all harmless fun. After all, no one likes a mono-brow. Then the voice-over informs me that it takes £200 a month to keep Natalie looking this good, despite the fact that she’s only just been born, ’You don’t want really old clothes to go out in,’ Natalie informs us. Where is she going? She’s twelve.

Michelle is still battling fierce opposition and a storm of criticism over her kid’s beauty salon. She is responding to this by appearing on The Wright Stuff, debating with TV psychologist Emma Kenny, who was recently seen on Peaches Geldof’s disastrous show, being critical and horrible to everyone. The Wright Stuff is not exactly the home of reasoned debate, and I have an impending sense of doom about the whole thing.

The mystery of where Natalie is going is solved, and her and her friends plan their big night out to what I sincerely hope is a fake under 18 club night. The theme is ‘Geeks’, the point of which they completely miss as they team giant fake glasses with tiny Lycra outfits. Sadly, the night is a disappointment, due to a lack of boys.

They’re twelve. I want to cry.

Claire Richards: Slave to Food, Sky Living (All the proof you’ve ever needed that women’s magazine Closer is a force for evil and must be destroyed)

Remember Claire Richards, from Smash Hits’ favourites Steps?

Yes!

Did you know that Claire’s main employment since leaving the band has been getting really fat, then getting thin, then fat again, and being photographed in those various states by Closer, and that she is Britain’s most famous yo-yo dieter?

Err…

It’s true! Now she’s letting Sky Living follow her around as well, while she tries to understand her obsession with food.
Claire’s quest begins in late 2010. She is upset because she is 13.5 stone, and has agreed to pose in Closer magazine in a size 12 bikini in a few months time. She responds to being upset about this by eating a pie. Closer is paying her to lose the weight, like it’s some kind of job, and have provided her with a personal trainer. So that she can lose three stone in three months in a healthy way, the trainer is forcing her to eat nothing but meat, like a caveman. Claire’s husband Rhys hides in the garage with his bike, to avoid the constant talk of diets. He wants to be fat and happy.

In a desperate attempt to find something else to blame other than all the food, Claire goes to her GP to discover why she gets so fat and thin all time. Remember all that stuff earlier about Claire eating nothing but meat and trying to lose three stone in three months? Well, apparently that’s killing her, and yo-yoing back and forth means she will get cancer or heart disease. Oh well, there are worse jobs.

It’s the morning of the photo shoot, and Claire has done it! Unfortunately, she still feels really fat, and is worried that she won’t have lost enough weight for the magazine (these photos are part of a ‘before’ and ‘after’ set that Claire is contracted to do). Luckily Assistant Editor Ally is on hand to offer no encouragement whatsoever:

‘Last year Claire posed in the purple bikini, and we put it on our cover. We were quite nervous about doing it because, not to be funny, we don’t usually put oversized people in bikinis on photo shoots because we think readers will be a bit horrified by it.’
*irony-meter explosion*

In the end Claire manages to get away with just wearing a swimsuit. In a corner of the studio there is a pile of complimentary cream cakes. Is this more irony than I can handle, or is Closer trying to persuade Claire to yoyo back up again?

The magazine has come out, and the story has been picked by the Daily Mail, who source most of their stories from Closer. I watch in horror as Claire scrolls down towards the comments…no Claire, please don’t read them. NOOOOO!

I can’t watch anymore.

Comments

1. goldmember says:

   February 10, 2012 at 2:55 pm

   I’d still tap that fatty

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