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I’m not gonna lie. I haven’t laughed this hard since the first time I shut my eyes and listened to that Rene guy try to spit out a whole sentence at once. Bravo’s Shear Genius has unequivocally the best unintentional comedy on television, bar none. Maybe you have to either be a girl or or a gay stylist to appreciate it, but it’s definitely there. And this week’s episode was the best of the worst as far as I’m concerned.

If you’ve missed all the hair love, here’s more than you need to know. Shear Genius is one of the multiple Bravo shows spawned by the success of Project Runway, which also rarely disappoints…or perhaps that should be regularly disappoints. Point being, they take a bunch of designers/stylists/hairdressers/whatever, throw them into a bunch of silly challenges and have the whole thing hosted by some icon in the industry. Shear Genius, the hair version, is hosted by ex-Charlie’s Angel Jaclyn Smith, presumably because they couldn’t get Farrah Fawcett.

On this week’s episode, they brought in former Angel Kate Jackson to guest judge (again presumably because they couldn’t get Farrah Fawcett). After the world’s most heinous hair color challenge (proof - the chick on the left was the winner), they gave all the stylists the “challenge” of re-creating and updating the classic Charlie’s Angels hairstyles. Hilarity ensued. Kate Jackson (the smart Angel) lived up to her moniker by telling stories on the other two Angels with the cameras rolling! (My favorite moment - when Kate recalled telling the stage crew to calm down and “let the money brush its hair” when the whole set had to stop so Farrah and Jaclyn could throw their heads upside down and brush their wavy wave waves out. Jaclyn was predictably unthrilled).

But better by far was the judging. You can imagine how the self-impressed ex-angels felt about the new “updated” styles. Pretty much it boiled down to: None of you are as pretty as we were. We were so hot. I mean, we were the hottest hotties on the block and you don’t have a chance at ever being as hot as we were. Hot hot hot. Did we mention that we were ABSOLUTELY fabulous? I mean we were fantastic. Really.

My kudos to Bravo. Escapism at its best. Really.

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Models Jen (size 12) and Marianne (size 0) squared off across the pond…and Jen’s the last woman standing. Probably because Jen ate breakfast.

As you might guess, I’m not a huge fan of those Who Wants To Make Me America’s Most Smartest Supermodel shows which pit skinny self-impressed morons against other skinny self-impressed morons, and which are judged by petty, sarcastic, self-enamored has-beens who hate every single contestant for being younger than they are.

I was, however, recently induced to watch season 2 of England’s Make Me A Supermodel, which featured model Jen Hunter, a gorgeous young mother who happens to hover somewhere around a size 12. The show’s producers (whose IQ’s are at least a standard deviation above any of the judges) let the judging panel, led by hosebeast Rachel Hunter, have their heads as far as insulting the “fat, lazy and greedy” Jen. The judges completely melted down as the popular vote put Jen through round after round, and English audiences got a front row view into the icy, hollow insides of Ms. Hunter and her evil minions. The result was that Jen’s size became her kryptonite to the weak, pasty horror of all the size 00 female contestants, who dropped like flies. Jen, eliminated after the swimsuit round, was nevertheless the last woman standing, as well as the first woman to walk into the lookbooks of Cape Model - a major modeling agency - in size 12 couture. While she continues to face prejudice in the industry regarding her size, she maintains both her her dignity and her bodyweight in stunning form.

Skinny wasn’t always the rage; the general preference has historically been for the women considered most beautiful to be voloptuous as an indication of good health and fertility. The fashion industry, which is in the business of selling clothes, not beauty or health, moved away from regular sized models to super skinny waifism in an effort to reduce the amount of attention that the models were diverting from the clothing. In other words, they didn’t look enough like hangers. Kate Moss resulted.

Even original supermodel Twiggy, known for impersonating a giraffe, is speaking up in defense of larger models.

“It’s very worrying,” Twiggy said in Los Angeles.
The 57-year-old pop icon has called on fashion magazines to ban unhealthily skinny models and for the modelling [sic] industry to be regulated.
Born Lesley Hornby, but given the nickname Twiggy for her reed-thin body, said she was naturally skinny when she revolutionised [sic] the fashion world in the late 1960s.
“When I was modelling through 16 to 20, when I got blamed for making kids want to be thin, I ate absolutely everything, but I was naturally skinny,” she said.
“I ate, but I had a really high metabolism.”
Today, many models, actresses and women in the public eye have lost large amounts of weight and Twiggy, without naming names, says it is easy to spot them.
“You get what I call the lollypop look,” she said.
“If somebody is not naturally slender, if their head is too big for their body, the chances are they are dieting too much.”
It is not just Hollywood’s young women that concern her, with Twiggy pointing to well-known actresses beyond their 20s who appear to be starving themselves.
“A lot of them aren’t girls,” Twiggy continued.
“They are women. You can’t believe somebody in their 30s and 40s would want to do that or go there.
“It’s incredible really.”

Europe has begun to reclaim fashion by insisting that clothing be designed for a larger range of sizes. As recently as last month, three models were fired during Milan’s fashion week for being too thin. This move needs to hop the pond and descend like a ton of bricks on the sort of people who would call Liv Tyler fat, post-haste.

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prettyontheoutside.com tackles the Millionaire Matchmaker

We can thank the WGA strike for the recent upwelling of heinously unwatchable reality TV series, the king (or queen) of which just has to be the BRAVO network’s Millionaire Matchmaker. If you’ve been fortunate enough to miss this series despite its obvious trainwreck potential, please allow us to catch you up.

The Ditz:

Patti Stanger, former director of marketing for the formative matchmaking company Great Expectations, brings the cameras into her psycho-dramatic, elitist little business of matching surgically “enhanced” golddiggers with horny but socially inept millionaires. Patti, who will go so far as to pimp out her own staff if she thinks she’ll make a buck, has rules: no curly hair (men won’t want to run their fingers through it), no short hair (not sexy enough), wear low-rise jeans or short dresses with high heels, AND no sex while dating (you gotta’ make them pay for it honey, just ask Anne Boleyn). If Patti’s victims, uh, clients are lucky, they’ll escape her harpie-like clutches altogether. If they are pragmatic, they might create a mutually satisfactory business arrangement and call it a marriage. If they are unlucky, she’ll hook ‘em up with a potential serial killer. But hey, the money’s right!!

The Date:

Case in point - Cidney meets Paul. Paul is a Las Vegas businessman. Cidney is a well-educated Bev Hills idiot (who incidentally was also the Playboy cyber-girl of the week for October 16, 2006 - Patti swears she doesn’t match ex-strippers, but I guess Playboy doesn’t count). When Cidney met Paul she mentioned that she lives with her mom and helps care for her aging grandmother (and would therefore not want to leave LA). So of course Paul insisted that she call her mother on the phone so he could “meet” her and assure her that he is “a good guy.” Once he got them on the phone he talked himself up to Dad and Grandma too. Paul then took Cidney on a date to Vegas, where he discerned that she is afraid of heights and promptly took her on a helicopter tour. Later at dinner, when Cidney facetiously mentioned how thrilled her family would be to get rid of her, and that her grandma is actually knitting baby clothes out of sheer hope, Paul did what every reasonable, common-sensed American male would do. He proposed to Cidney. She said “Um.” He called mom and grandma to tell them the good news. I swear to you it happened.

The Danger:

I’m not going to come right out and call Paul a vicious, malevolent woman-beating son of a motherless goat, mostly because he probably has enough money to dip me in molten gold and display me on his mantle in response. What I will say is that any woman who finds herself in Cidney’s situation should run screaming through the forest of red flags that should have been raised by the dude’s bizarro behavior in the first place.

Because here’s the problem - that kind of behavior just ain’t so bizarre if you can discern the method behind the madness. These are the trick of the trade for an abuser of the domestic violence ilk. I’ll explain:

• First trick - Keep your target off guard by constantly pushing. “You’re afraid of heights? Oh, look, a helicopter! Come on, it’ll be fun.” “You think it’s silly that your grandma is already knitting baby clothes? Here’s my ring! TAKE it! Aren’t I spontaneous and romantic? Don’t be a square. Say YES! Make your family happy!”
• Second trick - Get the family on your side immediately. “Hi, my name’s Paul. Let’s call your parents! Hi ‘rents, I’m rich and I’m a great guy and all I want in the whole world is to take care of your beautiful daughter! See, she likes me so much she made me call you! I must be the one!”
• Third trick - Force a commitment at a ridiculously early moment. “Now that you’ve spent the last two hours in mortal terror on that helicopter ride you didn’t want to take (and may I remind you I was a perfect gentleman the whole time), this seems like a perfect moment to propose. Oh, you’d need a ring? Here, take my frat ring, it’s Sigma Chi you know. I just happen to have it on me.”
• Fourth trick - If you can’t convince ‘em, confuse ‘em. “But you were the one who said your family would be so happy to see you married. You were the one who called them on our very first date. You were the one who mentioned that your friends got married on a helicopter once. You did sign up for the millionaire matching service. What else was I to think? This was obviously all your idea”
• Fifth trick - Isolate, isolate, isolate. Cidney is now dating Paul by default. I’ll give you two guesses whether he changed his life one iota so she could continue to live near her close knit family, or whether he insisted that she move to Las Vegas, where she has no connections, to be with him full time.

Sure, Cidney could have said “no” to all of these things. Oh wait, she did. Paul just went right along with his plans anyway. Now Cidney is in a position where she has to come up with a reason why she won’t date this great guy who she introduced to her parents on their first date, who is rich, tall, reasonably attractive and wants to marry her and make rich, tall, reasonably attractive babies. Good Beverly Hills girls just don’t say no to a chance like that. And don’t think Paul, uh, or some guy who isn’t Paul, doesn’t know it.

The Downside:

So that’s the scoop. Patti got her payday, Paul has whatever he wants, and Cidney somehow finds herself living in Vegas with no family and no friends, just wonderful Paul. Dollars to donuts he knocks her up in a matter of weeks… because he can’t start smacking her around until she’s good and committed. How embarrassing would it be for her to call Grandma then? So we say good luck, Cid, you’re gonna’ need it. By the way, the National Domestic Violence Hotline number is 1-800-799-SAFE. And from now on, stay away from people who hock toys to millionaires and refer to themselves as “The Mother Theresa Of Matchmaking.” She might have someone’s best interests at heart, but it sure as shitake ain’t yours.

More About Domestic Violence:

Domestic Violence (DV) is so common in the U.S. that the National Center for Disease Control (CDC) tracks it. The CDC estimates DV costs the U.S. nearly $8.3 billion per year

Experts estimate that somewhere between one million - three million women in the U.S. experience DV each year.

Separate Myth from Fact

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