Gok & Goth – Beauty Revolution & Revelation

No amount of styling is going to help if you aren’t happy in your own skin (The word according to Gok -allegedly).

Gok - style god or devil in disguise?

Go Gok!  And so I was really keen about the whole Miss Naked Beauty thing. No, not a naturist pageant.  It’s a “search for a modern-day Eve” …  “a woman who embodies … confidence, spirit, sex appeal, brains and beauty (inside and out).”  The winner will be crowned beauty ambassador to the masses, writing industry exposes for Glamour magazine.  I liked the idea, just not so sure about the execution. The Times’ TV critic, Andrew Billen, wrote:

“Gok lured a herd of wannabe beauty queens to Blackpool pier and thence to an old-fashioned municipal swimming baths from which the water had been emptied. With just 15 seconds warning the women, already stripped to their underwear, were then hosed down until every trace of make-up was exterminated.

“Girlfriends, I love you!” shrilled Gok, perhaps to prevent aberrant images of the Holocaust popping into viewers’ minds.” 

Yep, my initial reaction was ‘cattle’, ‘slaughter’ and ‘holocaust’, however having watched subsequent episodes I’ve come to think that ‘the pool scene’ was not so much massively misjudged as an uber cool calculation – it got people talking.  And perhaps it was a symbolic death for those women.  Or for the seaside beauty pageant.  In a way it could be seen as a ritual marking a transition, a phoenix rising from the ashes, that sort of thing – or is that just my Classical education rearing its ugly head?

Death of the beauty queen

It wasn’t until I was doing a bit of digging behind the scenes for this here piece, that I realised how Gok is loved and loathed in pretty much equal measure across the press.  Hadley Freeman writing for The Guardian quoted one paper as dubbing the stylist “the saviour of modern womanhood”; whilst goddess of morning TV Lorraine Kelly calls him “the messiah”.  Oooh, ‘Eve’, ‘saviour’, ‘messiah’, the Biblical references abound!  There’s nothing like building someone up so you can watch them fall… consider other positive high profile campaigns: Jamie Oliver’s School Dinners – now the Ministry of Food – or the Anya Hindmarch / We Are What We Do ‘I’m Not a Plastic Bag’, for example, both of which received some overly hostile responses in the media and sometimes by the public.  The problem: no-one likes a smart arse telling them what to do – especially if there’s a whiff of hypocrisy to be found (M&S poster girl, Mylene Klass, crusading for women to go au naturel whilst herself daubed in war paint, for instance). And I’d question the unbiased nature of any report this Miss Naked Beauty ambassador may ‘write up’ in Glamour magazine – won’t their advertising sponsors have something to say about that? 

Theda Bara - the vamp

The “essential beauty kit” the contestants were given in the third episode really intrigued me though – capsule beauty, great!  I have to say, nothing overwhelms me more than the vast array of beauty products available nowadays, and the idea that there were just five essentials calmed my overloaded, advertising weary mind.  I wish they hadn’t included Vaseline though.  My mum, long time beauty therapist and former owner of a health & beauty salon, swears by the stuff;  but as a petroleum by product it ain’t that eco friendly or that great for your skin; and it’s not so much a moisturiser as a barrier – I use it when tinting my eyelashes, to protect the surrounding skin and thus avoiding the Theda Bara look. Wouldn’t shea butter have been a more appropriate ‘all-round good guy’ product?

Talking of vampires, the revelation that the goth goddess girl had the best skin, age-wise, was a great advocate for keeping outta the sun… and being a goth, I guess.  Most the other contestants had skin aged 5 – 9 years older than their actual age, whereas goth goddess’s was about 8 years younger! Mum, a bit of a tanorexic in her heyday saw a lot of ladies who lunched and lounged in the sun suffering with skin cancer, so advised my sister and I to keep out of the sun, or at least slap on the sun block and shades.  Although she did complain about the resulting obsession with black and boots on the beach – if we ever ventured into daylight.  So, maybe it’s ‘Go Goths!’ And being nocturnal and thus ‘pale and interesting’ is the answer to eternal youth – rather than drinking the blood of virgins a la Elizabeth Bathory (think Ingrid Pitt in Countess Dracula!).   

Perhaps Addams Family style will become the norm and Goth Lolitas will haunt high streets everywhere.  Posh and Kate will be ousted and fashion icons will be Kirsten Dunst in Interview with a Vampire; or Winona Ryder in Beetle Juice as we encounter not so much a Gok revelation, as a Goth revolution…

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