Naked Education on TV

 Naked Education.

This is a new series on British tv, channel 4, presented by Anna Richardson, she of the ridiculous ‘naked attraction’ program where people  choose a date from looking at someone’s naked body and discussing their genitals.

Now this new idea seems a bit better - aiming to help people accept themselves.
The first week concentrated on body hair. The present generation are often used to watching pornography showing  hairless bodies so this seemed to be revelatory to the four young adults looking at the four hairy naked older adults and it was encouraging more naturalness and choice.

We don’t see many naked people so it was interesting and enjoyable to that extent.
(I remember aged 16 being allowed out of school to go to Derby art college life drawing. I was presented with what was to me a very old very large woman who seemed a different species from my then svelte self)

However the two women showing one another their Caesarian birth scars was done more feebly, so we were not shown the scars at first.
How can you encourage shamelessness whilst the camera is so tentative and  wary and the shots are of slow motion discarding of dressing gowns?
Eventually the scars were shown and were reassuringly acceptably not at all horrific and were fading. The presenter joined in with hers.


Then we met a tall woman who had for years wished she was smaller and hated being called ‘big’.
Four other people who were ok about their bodies joined in. Strangely the insults they had endured were written on their bodies and they were posed together. They were repeatedly called beautiful.
I wasn’t happy with this as it did not come from the woman with the problem but seemed imposed by the presenter. The four naked helpers were evidently very keen to pose naked and so the woman who hitherto had not liked her body now was drawn into revelling in it. This was very surprising but showed the compelling effects other people can have on a person - would this be a lasting effect? Will she be forever glad she was shown naked on tv with insults written on her flesh?

I feel sorry for Anna Richardson. I think she is  trying to rescue herself from the inane crudity of  ‘ naked attraction’  and do something more worthwhile - and maybe it is - or at least parts of it are?

Nakedness remains a rare event for most of us.
Anna has a niche that can be explored or exploited for a while.

Mary Fletcher