GIVE ME A BREAK:I HATE GOK WAN. Well, I don't actually hate him in the sense that I'd like to see him die a slow death by having his intestines squeezed by a high-top thigh-length panty girdle. I suspect he wears one of those already. It's more the sort of hate that would have him suffering the constant ache of arthritic toe joints as a result of stiletto-wearing.
He's judgmental, oppressive, manipulative - your worst nightmare. He's a man that no sensible woman would invite to a party because he'd be following you upstairs on your potty-break, sitting on the side of the tub, telling you that your trousers are the wrong cut for your thighs. Then he'd go through your closet, toss your clothes onto the bed with a wry comment about each, then go back downstairs to dominate the party without even offering to help you hang all the clothes back up in the closet.
How vulnerable are we that we're watching his TV show and buying his book? As for the women who actually agree to strip to their underwear for him in front of the camera, how incredibly insecure and shame-based are we to believe that getting naked for Gok will lead to us to self-image nirvana (as in, better job, better boyfriend, better life)? In a recent show, one of the women was so distressed about baring herself that she refused to do it - she was eventually convinced by Gok to go naked anyway. From the expression on her face as she did, it wasn't a life-transforming moment.
At least Trinny and Susannah exposed their own bodies - even if that meant Susannah flashing her boobs and tummy flab in increasingly pathetic demands for attention. Gok shows as little skin as possible like a buttoned-up, black-suited New Age priest on holiday. He hides his faced with mask-like spectacles - like Yves St Laurent on a bad day.
Gok's only trying to make a living. It's what he represents that I loathe - the mewling slavery of women who still believe that they need a man to tell them how to dress.
When men go to work, funerals, weddings and other places where they have make an impression, they wear well-cut suits. The suit, shirt and tie combo is a classic that men haven't veered from for about a hundred years. Their dry cleaning and shirt-ironing bills are doubtlessly large, but they spend about two seconds every morning deciding what to wear. Well-cut suit, clean pressed shirt, tie, polished shoes, done.
We women make what should be simple so much more complicated. There is nothing in our fashion symbolism that translates into "pressed shirt, tailored suit, discreet tie, polished shoes". Instead, we buy fashion magazines and wake up every morning wondering what we can choose out of the closet (or, more likely, the discarded pile on the bedroom floor) that will transform us into powerful, managerial, creative, adorable, in control.
Dressing for work, for women, is a nightmare. If you wear the classic suit, you're boring. If you wear your weekend clothes, you're feeling comfortable but you're still wondering whether the boardroom will ever accept you as a member.
Women are expected to express their power, creativity and efficiency through a complex puzzle of fashion semaphores that only other women understand. Wearing a power suit means "I'm headed for management". Wearing an arty skirt and top means "I'm content to work 9 to 5 but I have to be home to help my children with their homework". Which brings me back to Gok and why I hate him.
He has no idea how real women actually live - trying to succeed rather than seduce. There is always an implication with Gok that for women to succeed they must seduce, and he teaches women that they are holding themselves back from success until they flaunt their bodies and receive his approval. He assumes that we women are universally ashamed of how we look and that we need a man to affirm us. And women buy into it - that's the scary part. And even when they do what he wants, Gok punishes them. When Gok asks his "girls" to organise their own photoshoots showing themselves at their liberated, most powerful best, they do what they think he wants. They have themselves photographed naked or nearly - and then Gok tells them that they are wrong, wrong, wrong! The whole point of being naked for Gok was to show the world that you could dress like a slob and not care! You weren't supposed to be naked at all!
We real girls, who work and manage and try to mix caring for our families with being authoritative at work, will not promote our careers by getting naked. We need the school uniform of success dressing. Because our success has nothing to do with being sexy and we don't want to look that way. We just want clothes that last. The sort men have.
