Recently I’ve seen all these commercials for the “over 35 modeling competition” television show, “She’s Got the Look.”

The commercials claim that the show will “transform your idea of beauty.”

You’ve got to be kidding me.

First of all, a television show could never transform what I personally think of as beauty. But “She’s Got the Look” doesn’t even really try.

Besides including participants who are over 35-years-old, the show doesn’t take any new approaches to modern modeling or beauty standards.

Whether you’re 25, 35, or 45, society’s current standards say that in order to be thought of as beautiful you must be thin and at least look young. And “She’s Got the Look” doesn’t seek to transform those standards, but rather to perpetuate them and to perpetuate the pressure to meet those standards even when you’re 72, which is the age of one of the contestants.

The women selected to be part of “She’s Got the Look” may not be quite as stick thin as supermodels, but they are also not like the women featured in the Dove beauty commercials, which include women of all shapes and sizes.

The women were also all selected precisely because they don’t look their age. In fact, when one commercial displays the clip of the 72-year-old contestant revealing her age, one of the judges throws down his notepad in apparent disbelief.

But the show’s promise to “transform your idea of beauty” is just one promise that it fails to deliver on.

In another commercial, one of the judges claims that the show is looking for women with a unique sense of style. But then the judge and the commercial goes on to poke fun at those applicants whose style were “too unique.”

As if it were possible to be too unique. Either something’s unique or it isn’t, just like a woman is pregnant or she isn’t. You can’t be too pregnant, unless maybe you’re Octomom, but that’s a different column.

But rather than celebrating unique style, it seems that it is precisely those applicants who present truly different styles that the judges reject as contestants for the show.

Other commercials show the women participating in the same types of photo shoots that other models participate in, particularly swimsuit shoots featuring the women in bikinis.

Just like those weight loss commercials that ask who is going to win, you or the swimsuit, “She’s Got the Look” perpetuates the idea that to be beautiful you must be able to look good in a bikini. Because if you have to wear a one-piece, well you must be fat and ugly.

I personally don’t agree that bikini=beauty.

But maybe that’s just because I don’t “got the look.”



Rowynn Ricks is the Sunday Editor for the News.