Hosted by Carson Kressley (from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy) How To Look Good Naked is a new program on Lifetime that attempts to help women get over their body image issues.

Without using extreme dieting or surgery, Kressley helps women recognize their true beauty. In addition to a good ol’ fashion makeover, the show uses other self-esteem boosting methods including posting a billboard photo of the women in their swimsuit on a building in LA and getting passerby’s to give her positive physical appearance feedback. The show ends with a tasteful semi-nude photo shoot because, as Kessley states in the shows intro, “My ultimate goal is to not only get her to not only love her body but to flaunt it “” naked.”

How to Look Good Naked is getting mixed reviews. While the programs feel-good intentions are praised, the formulaic production can seem a bite contrived (as is the case with many make-over shows). Also there is the fear that deeper issues may not be addressed by simply providing guests a new hair-do and wardrobe.

The New York Times points out how

the show places predictable blame on the news media for causing women to dislike their physical appearance even as it offers further indication that such an argument is harder to make. Tabloids demonize celebrity anorexics now, photographing them as if they belonged to the ranks of the criminally insane, while reveling in beach portraits of stars looking flabbily just like us.

Basically is a show like How to Look Good Naked fighting against poor body image or is it falling into the image trap by trying to make women with poor self-esteem content by just making them over to look like sexpots? And while a compliment from others surely makes anyone feel good, shouldn’t the focus be on feeling good without needing confirmation from others?

Maybe I’m asking a lot. I just with there were a sure-fire, healthy, way to solve the issue of poor self-image in women. I suppose How to Look Good Naked could be a start. The show does offer some excellent insight into just how bad the poor self-esteem issue is by running shocking stats along the bottom of screen like “Four out of five women say they are dissatisfied with their bodies.”

If anything the program is creating awareness as well as inspiring women to change the way they see themselves (just take a peek at the How to Look Good Naked message board) and I feel good about that.

For info on body dysmorphic disorder click here
For info on self-esteem building visit http://www.self-esteem-nase.org/