Is our telly filling up with Oompa Loompas??

I cannot watch this new show, The Living Room.  Mostly because its overflowing with pointless dross that no ordinary person can achieve (build your own holiday home in a weekend - anyone?), but also because its presenters are all tinged Orange.  I keep thinking there's something wrong with our TV, but then I change channels and no... its them, they're all just a wee bit Orange.

The Living Room

Ten Breakfast

There's another show called Snog, Marry, Avoid. It takes deluded young ladies (and a few gents) from the North of England, who like to go out nightclubbing in their undies covered in nothing but an inch thick layer of dark brown foundation and fake tan.

She may look hilarious
But in her heart
She thinks she looks hot

It strips the make-up off these girls and shows them how beautiful they are with minimal make-up and a dress on.  Sometimes the girls see the light and tone it down, but often they don't.

And though it is meant as a light-hearted exercise, the sub-text of how these girls are rarely able to see themselves as beautiful without thick make-up, hair extensions and breast implants, is heart-breaking.  If their skin is not brown they don't feel pretty.

In most cases family, friends and boyfriends are telling them they look ridiculous. But they don't see it, they cannot understand that they are naturally beautiful.

Is this happening in Australia? Yes. Of course it is.  The ongoing trend to looked 'tanned,' and the inability of people to put their own health before their own so-called beauty, has lead to sun beds being banned in NSW from 2014 onwards.

Yet in the media, on these vapid shows that are shoved at us 24/7, the presenters are going darker and darker.  And looking tackier and tackier.

What has happened to natural beauty? Why is the definition of beauty becoming so desperately fake?  How have we become so shallow that vanity is now a multi-million dollar industry?

Well, I dont have the answers.
But, I do think we all need to be stauch advocates for natural beauty. Object to fakery, point it out, argue against it, educate our children about it, especially our girls. If we can build them up and make them believe that they are beautiful, by telling them Every Single Day, then it will make a difference.

I'm also thinking we should get the Snog, Marry, Avoid team out here to give our bourgeoning population of TV presenters who are just starting to verge on the Oompa Loompa end of the colour spectrum, a 'make under'.