I just finished watching this – BB3 – Glamour Models, Mum and Me – interesting thread of discussion below

http://lightupvirginmary.blogspot.com/2010/08/bbc3-glamour-models-mum-and-me.html

It basically follows a few months or so of the lives of some Kiss- and tell glamour model, who makes her cash by hanging out with celebs and taking her top off, and her daughter – who is extremely level headed and wants to study her GCSEs and eventually become a ‘serious actress’ – the mother has other plans and is encouraging her to get a boob job, get into topless modelling and become famous.

One thing that stuck in my mind is that the GM mum, who is addicted to plastic surgery and seams to have  a mental age younger than her daughter, thinks that ‘the body is power’ and it is a way for women to get what they want in life. Given that this is her analysis of glamour modelling, one can forgive her for only trying to pass this on to her daughter.

However, the problem is that her analysis of the ‘body as power’ is incredibly shallow – and it is only by good fortune, and maybe the influence of the privte boarding schoo the daughter attends, that she has grown up being able to see through her mother’s lack of insight.

What I mean by shallow is that this is clearly an example of a selfish woman – her idea of a vocation, glamour modelling, has no real useful social function – other than to prey on the weaknesses of men in order to sell products, sometimes the product being the image of the topless women herself. Devoid of any real usefulenss, what are the likely consequences of pursuing a vocation such as this? – We end up with the Beauty Myth perpetuted, young boys growing up thinking that it is acceptable to view women as sex objects, and, for the models themselves who have bought into this nonsense, an identity crisis once their looks start fading by their 30s.

So as well as illustrating the bizarre diversity of modern family life, Alicia Douval (or wahtever her name is) is a solid example of someone with the kind of post-feminist perspective on life that contemporary feminism hopes to rescue young women from. Although the daughter already seams well guarded against her mothers shallowness,  I still think she might enjoy reading some good Feminist literature, so if any of you bump into her – she boards in Kent and lives in London, so you never know – recommend her a copy of The Equality Illussion by Kat Banyard.