On my younger self wanting bigger breasts and the long slog to growing old naturally
A sad, weird reminder that what we watch can negatively affect our own self image
Credit: Channel 4
Historically, I don’t tend to watch much reality TV. I started strong in the early years of Big Brother but tapered off due to boredom. We all have soothing, brainless watching we like to do, but for me this tends to be watching repeats of old comedy shows. I got tempted with Love Island a few years ago, only because the discourse on Twitter was so funny, it made me wonder whether the show was worth watching. I lasted about five minutes.
In the last year however, something has changed a little. First, I started off with Love Is Blind after seeing clips on TikTok and binged whatever was there on Netflix. Then, a friend got me hooked on Below Deck, the show about staff working on super yachts – which is still my favourite reality TV show.
Neither of these shows made me feel terrible about how I looked, though. Until now – when I binge-watched Married At First Sight UK (MAFS) for the first time ever. Maybe if I’d eked the episodes out over weeks it wouldn’t be too bad, but consuming 20 episodes in six days meant that I almost felt as if I lived in that world. It was similar to when I worked in an office and was so immersed in Vikings that I kept bringing pillage-energy into breakfast meetings until my boss asked: “Why are you so angry all the time?”
MAFS is a reality show where couples are matched by experts and start their ‘journey’ with a wedding, but it’s not actually about the show. A significant percentage of the female cast, as well their friends, have visibly had cosmetic work or tweakments (non-surgical procedures) done, and my general stance on anyone wanting to do this is that it’s their business. We all have different upbringings that shape our sense of self, and are exposed to different aspects of society.
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