Making a Difference.

I went to the dentist today and found that the place had been given a facelift, with new ceilings, light fittings and so on. What horrified me was the sight of a big, widescreen, plasma TV installed on one wall of the only waiting room, and in a position that made it hard to avoid. When I got there it was showing one of those daft makeover shows beloved of brain dead TV producers and couch potato audiences. Today’s delight was the making of a dowdy, middle aged woman into an irresistible femme fatale.

OK, let me say at the outset that I don’t judge beauty in purely physical terms. But show like this do, and so it’s perfectly reasonable in this context for me to describe the woman as fat and ugly. That was why she was there.

So, in trip the experts: the make up artist, the fashion guru, and the ‘hairdresser to the stars’ (seriously, that was how he was billed.) They set to work and they set to talking about the importance of it all, the tricks of the trade, and how we wouldn’t know this woman once they’d worked their magic on her. ‘Turgid’ would be an understatement; ‘mind-bogglingly crass’ would be closer. At that point I couldn’t stand it any longer and went out into the corridor to await my call.

The hygienist was running late and I was getting in people’s way, so eventually I re-took my seat in the waiting room just as the magic was complete and the femme fatale revealed. The experts had, indeed, made a difference. The woman who had been merely fat and ugly was now fat, ugly and painted.

Is it me?