I recently saw an advert about the new ‘Beauty Season’ on BBC3 and was intrigued. The new programmes introduced this summer aim to look at people’s definition of ‘beautiful’.
The season will begin with the programme ’Britain’s Missing Top model’. There are great expectations for the show, that it might open their eyes to ‘different’ being beautiful despite the notions of what is ‘normal’ surrounding us every day; whether its in the high street or in the media.
The six part series aims to “raise awareness about disability and increase the profile of disabled people in the media. The competition explores the reasons why disabled people appear not to have a role to play in the beauty and fashion industries.”
Other programmes during the season will look at the excessive use of re-touching and air-brushing in the media and beauty treatments that have gone wrong.
In my opinion the exposure of the issues in these programmes has to be a positive. Having been born with a disability I have never known any different but the perception of ‘others’ has been one issue that has caused me to lose confidence over the years; it has been said that ‘any publicity is good publicity’ and in the case of broadening people’s awareness about disabilities and questioning today’s definition of beauty can only lead to a wider acceptance of the ‘different’ and question today’s definition of ‘normal’.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/missingmodel/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2008/06_june/20/beauty.shtml
