Was “10 Years Younger in 10 Days” Truly Awful?
Defamer Australia readers, I need your reviews. Because I am a busy lady, I have made the decision to follow only one reality television show this year and it’s MasterChef. Watching Julie nervously sweat into her culinary creations (or “dishes of flesh”, as one vegetarian letter writer to the Green Guide today referred to them) makes me extremely happy/nauseous. So I haven’t actually watched a single episode of BFF Sonia Kruger’s show 10 Years Younger In 10 Days. But a couple of my favourite lady-writers managed to catch it before it finished last week, and the reviews were not kind.
Firstly, the words of The Devenator:
… as soon as I heard about Ten Years Younger In Ten Days I could smell the wrongness and taste this was going to be another case of me wishing I’d been born without eyes, ears and an insatiable curiosity to find the most sick and offensive television program ever made.
Ten Years Younger In Ten Days should be called You’re Old And Ugly. We’re Not. “We can make you look a little less ugly and old for a moment, with a mammoth effort and humiliation, then as soon as you get back to your tragic suburban homes, your diet of takeaways, fags and instant coffee, your tracky dacks and your jobs in pizza shops, mines and pet shops, you’ll snap back to your former ugliness and you’ll know, for sure, there is no happily ever after. You’re ugly. And so’s your family. Get over it. And you know what makes it worse? Your mates have seen you on telly all dressed up like the pox doctor’s clerk and now you’re back to Slobsville. Population you.”
Pretending to be fairy godmothers making dreams come true when they are making a freak show to sell advertising, are host Sonia Kruger and assorted grooming experts, hair stylists, fashion consultants, make-up artists, dental architects and celebrity cosmetic surgeons. They renovate the tired, poor and overweight. It’s like Backyard Blitz for ugly people.
…
Moral bankruptcy aside, the transformation between the before shot and after shot is extraordinary; the uglies are unrecognisable. Give ‘em a week and they’ll be sad and broken again. Ten Years Younger In Ten Days is another reminder people should have a licence to operate a remote control. And people who make television should have a conscience.
Ouch!
And now, ladies and gentlemen, Ms Marieke Hardy:
Watching television generally doesn’t make me feel particularly beautiful or vibrant or younger and it’s fair to say that sitting through something as poisonous as 10 Years Younger in 10 Days actually ended up ageing me in the long run.
I don’t want to chase the elusive dream of youth and the superficial idea that to be beautiful one must resemble Gwyneth Paltrow immediately after a team of professional frighteners has leapt up behind her and screamed BOO. I want to be happy with my tongue in someone’s ear and the thought that I may one day read James Joyce’s Ulysses from cover to cover. I’m glad 10 Years Younger is over, no longer spreading the Gospel According to Shallow Arseholes to anyone dumb enough to listen.
I hope it never comes back, guilty secret or no. The car-crash-TV brigade will have to find some other cheap thrill to occupy their time.
Double ouch.
So I ask you, television watchers of the nation… are they right? Because this morning Sonia Kruger told me she loves me and I am beginning to feel like the kid in Kramer vs Kramer.
MORE:
Kissing off year’s most vile show – Marieke Hardy
You can’t gloss over the ugly truth – Catherine Deveny
Comments
They are right. The show is poisonous – exploitatative, humiliating and unethical. I tried to watch it several times and found it extremely difficult to sit through an entire episode, it was so distressing. The people are enclosed in a perspex cage for public humiliation. Then they are reduced to painted botoxed manniquins who don’t resemble real people in the slightest. Finally they are sent back to their lives for the inevitable ‘decline’ back to reality. Everyone involved in this show should be ashamed. I used to like Sonia Kruger – lord knows Aus tv needs clever, funny women like her, but this show has entirely changed my opinion of her.
…err, ‘exploitative’. Went a bit overboard.
It’s deplorable – the couple usually look like they need nothing more than a haircut and a week in Noosa. They get skin-peeled, botoxed, bleached and basically have any character removed from their faces. If they are reluctant – too bad. They are then thrown into clothes they wouldn’t normally wear and given back to their friends – and they fit in like a Les Girls revue on ANZAC Day. And what is it with the cosmetic surgeons’ receptionists? They are FULL of botox – can nothing above the mouth – like ventriloquist’s dolls. It’s a part of the push for cosmetic surgery to be seen as being as normal as going to the gym.
Sonia wasn’t the worst thing about it. The female fashion stylist was pretty awful and condescending. A haircut and moisturiser would have done wonders for most people.
For some reason all the men came out looking like toothy investment bankers.
It was all very disturbing and not heartwarming at all.
I agree with the previous posts. I only managed a couple of episodes but was sickened by the whole process. I usually enjoy Sonia but was not impressed with her involvement with a show that just should not be considered entertainment. It was cold and sad. The only heartwarming thing about it was that the few couples I saw obviously really adored each other just as they were prior to becoming the victims of face freezing botox and botched eye lifts.
This show (I can barely name name it) should really be called ‘From bogan to shiney bogan’. It’s vile and feeds society with the toxic notion that ageing is wrong and that we must control (and reverese) it by poisening ourselves. Is this what people really want to see? Another dumbing down offer clearly sponsored by the plastic surgery ‘community’. We also must ask ourselves, how is it that 99.9% of the victims on this show are bogans? Think about that!
I agree with most of the above, and I watched three/four of the episodes (hooked right to the end of each one). However, other than the ’surface plastic’ of it all, I enjoyed getting underneath to watch the couples who already adored each other, being excited about enjoying and sharing a ‘new look’ together – no matter how long it was going to last. I think, even if there was the bogan element, those few comfortable couples knew what they were in for and – hell – they got a lot. So what about what was going to happen. BUT! I did cringe when there was a hint that it wasn’t ever going to be a happily shared experience – there was a vested interest on one side. That was awful. Really awful. And I think the demographic of the couples is no different to the Big Brothers or anything else lowest common denominator … aimed at the biggest rating audience. Would YOU put your hand up? Poor Sonia. I haven’t watched a lot of her stuff, but I think if I was in her profession I would have found it difficult to be dealing with people’s self-esteem so publicly … which is really what it was all about. Don’t get me started.
First I must declare a conflict of interest. I want Ms Marieke Hardy to be the mother of my children, but don’t tell the wife. That said, a television show that insults sad people and sends out a message that happiness can be bought relects poorly on those all involved. I can assure you, I refuse to purchase anything from companies who sponsor this sort of rubbish.