Alesha Dixon of Mis-Teeq fame’s documentary about the perils of retouching in the media and its influence on contemporary perceptions of beauty aired as part of BBC3’s Beauty Season this Monday. Her persistence in investigating the increasingly narrow ‘acceptable’ norms of ideal female beauty highlighted just how artificial the images we see every day the media are. Declaring it as her ‘mission’ to convince a glossy magazine to put her on the cover without a single Photoshop trick, I couldn’t help thinking that discussion of female beauty needs a ruthless debate that exceeds Alesha’s focus on the industry’s airbrushing of pimples and skimming of thighs and bingo arms. Take a look at most television shows and magazines and you will see a wave of identikit female presenters and models who are often hard to distinguish between.

How many TV shows aimed at young women can you think of that are hosted by women size12+ and that challenge conventional norms of beauty? The females in the public eye that appear to excel in their careers are mostly blonde-haired, waif-like and do very little to represent more than 5% of the female population… While documentaries such as Look But Don’t Touch should be commended in their exploration of representations of female beauty, there are several points about the show that reveal the British audience are once again crying out for a show that truly delves into this issue.