I’ve recently become uncomfortably familiar with a particular brand of partner abuse. Maybe you know it? Talk to them like skivvies, knock them down and then … thank you my saviour! … lift them from the depths of bemusement, emotional exhaustion and crumbling confidence to assure them that you do still really want them even though they’re not sparrow-legged fifteen-year-old silicone models.
Unsure of that of which I speak? Take a look at DSTV TLC channel’s ‘Your Style in His Hands’. I’m halfway through a third episode and can’t quite believe that TLC and DSTV have descended to this level. I amaze myself at my ability to type while my blood boils. And still can’t quite believe that it took me one-point-five episodes to twig.
It goes like this: A male partner nominates his shockingly tasteless wife/girlfriend for a him-directed makeover. She’s recently had your kids, you see; or given up her life to follow you to the country/city; and somehow, despite all your expectations, she’s not living up to them. What a miserable bitch. How dare she not dress like a stoned model on a rooftop shoot. How dare she succumb to life in the slow lane, surrounded by the unfamiliar and terrifying while you go off to work? Is this really what you get for giving up the pub and internet dating! Shame on the slag.
But all is not lost. By simply relinquishing her private life; by putting her insecurities – and body – on display, and by making a bit of a tit of yourself, you get 5 000 GBP to spend on recreating that babe you plied with Bacardi Breezers way back in the day. You don’t have to shift your mindset or ask her what you can do to make her life easier, or help out a bit more, or put your blobby bod on display (or get it in shape), or respect her as a frikken equal, you doos. Nope, all you have to do is get her a makeover while you remain your doosish, self-involved self. And you get to do it on global television.
[vomit break]
And boy oh boy do you then get to pat yourself on the back. Because you are the hero, my man. You are lauded, applauded and televised as the man who cares; who gets back the woman ‘I first fell in love with’. Of course, this makeover will revolutionise your life: you get the hot girl revisited and she gets pretty frocks and fuck-me shoes. My god, that’s really going to change everything. She now knows what pleases you; what turns you on; what’s been turning you on while she’s been breeding your children; changing her life while you suffer on, escaping to work and coming home to that dull, exhausted, bewildered woman dressed by the leftovers from the grocery budget. ‘Shopping for your fantasy life, not your real life’ says the mindless stylist as she oohs on with ‘Has she put the spark back into your relationship? Squeal!’
I get makeover shows, I really do. I love seeing Birmingham cesspits recreated as Hilton Heathrow Hotel suites; 45-year-old stripper moms transformed into St. Oprahs; quivering fearful full-fleshed girls and boys emerging from their voluptuous cocoons under the fairy wand of Gok Wan.
But I do not get how even these most patriarchal, self-absorbed misogynists can bring themselves to take their supposed beloved on a hot date and restore ‘intimacy’ only once TCL has agreed to foot the bill and give ‘their’ exhausted women a makeover.
This is wrong, dear hearts. It is as wrong as training your daughters to mould their bodies for future husbands; as wrong as carelessly neglecting yourself while expecting perfection from your beleaguered partner; or as neglecting your partner while seeking perfection elsewhere.
‘Your Style in His Hands’ is a symptom of that which is most rotten in our world. I can smell it from here.
Pah.