The Truth About Size Zero

IMDb have this labeled as 'The Truth About Size Zero' however its really called 'The Truth About Size Zero WITH LOUISE REDNAPP', Whats the difference, well let me tell you. If it was only about people wanting to emulate 'Heat Magazine' celebrities or what ever publication that there is that seems to think that men find seeing every bone in a womens body appealing then fine, rant away, in fact let me have a few words to say. However this show is once again an ITV cliché, you know, those shows with topics that are in The Sun Newspaper mixed with celebrity presenter, and I got the feeling that the program was all about the 'singer, presenter, wife, mother, lads-mag favorite' (The Narrators Words Not Mind) Louise Rednapp and not about why (mostly) women seem to want to slim down so much.

As 'Bob The Moo' pointed out (brilliant review by the way) the show starts of with Louise having her picture taken in front of a white backdrop to show her what her starting weight was. When she sees her size 8 figure then acts out shock at seeing herself I kinda got the feeling that she a little more vein then she is making out, and to act like being size 8 is a normal size is some what of a joke as well, OK I know a lot women who are size 8 but they can by no means say they are over or underweight, so why dose this show take someone who is slim to begin with and make them become even slimmer? It would have been a lot more fascinating to have Louise put on weight to show people that you don't have to be catwalk slim to be somewhat of a sex symbol. If its not Louise explaining what its like to be 'Normal Weight' and its hard to say that with my tongue so far in my cheek then we have a cameo from air head Denise Van Outen, explaining her disappointment of a photo in the tabloids some years ago showing Denise on a sun lounge bending over slightly giving her some what of a stomach fold belly, "If my daughter sees that she will think that it wrong to be normal weight". Please give me a break, you have got to be out of you mind. If this isn't bad enough then we also get Van Outen having a dig at easy target Nicole Richie, "I saw her and just wanted to force feed her", yeah well I heard you DVO and just wanted to try and educate ya.

What makes this show worse is how much Louise complains all the time about 'why people would want to do this to their bodies' or 'how hard it is for a mother or singer or presenter or blah, blah, blah'. For someone who is air brushed to hell in every photo shoot she dose then maybe thats why young girls want to do this to themselves, as Bob The Moo said its just as bad to allow photographers to air brush you down to size 0 then it is to slim down the hard way.

The only thing that really came out of this program was the fact that a woman can drop to size zero in about a month... Good Job Guys. What they really should have done was say 'Don't feel the need to drop 5 dress sizes, your beautiful as you are!'

Louise Redknapp is a pop singer and television presenter but is probably best known recently for being the darling of men's magazines, with her curvy size 8 figure always hailed as what makes her sexy. Here though, Louise decides to spend 30 days on a crash diet to get down to the infamous size zero (UK size 4). Her aim is to be able to talk with first hand knowledge of the effect that extreme dieting and being skinny has on your health. With medical care on hand, and family members worried but supportive Louise flies to LA in search of the best diet methods.

A strange film this one. Very much a crash diet spin on Super Size Me, it did worry me that it was from ITV because they are know for their crap celeb specials and such. The approach is a worthy one because the trend in the world of celebs and models is for tiny, skinny women is constantly in the media and the effects on young women is worrying. So Louise goes on an intense regime to drop the weight, meets girls who suffer from eating disorders, talks to other celebs with experience in this area and starts to suffer from mental and physical problems as she goes. In regards seeing the first hand impact of extreme dieting the film is worth seeing however it is no Super Size Me. The difference is in how it fills the time between Louise struggling and talking to camera. Some parts of it are good and a honest contribution from Mel C is a highlight, but sections with Van Outen, at a stage school and with a group of girls with eating disorders aren't really that well used and are pretty weak. Super Size used Spurlock's experiment as a foundation to build a wider educational film on; here the film seems to take Redknapp as the focus and therefore the bigger picture is not that well done.

I wondered about the mixed message that Louise herself was giving out. On one hand we had Louise worrying about the trend for skinny role models and talking about her desire for having a daughter one day in a society where she can be comfortable whatever size she wants to be. But then contrast that with Louise's reaction seeing herself photographed without a professional stylist and without computer touching up – she is genuinely shocked and says she hates being shown this way. Sort of a confused message from her there – does she not see that the magazine stretching and slimming models by computer so they look like a size zero is the same as a photograph of a celeb being a size zero. I'm not sure who she is to criticise others for contributing to the peer pressure put on young woman to be skinny while having that attitude. Maybe it is easier for her to look down her nose at them, while she achieves the same effect with computer effects because they are unhealthy and she is not – bit short-sighted perhaps. I would have liked to have seen her pushed a bit more – not to blame her but to see if she recognises her part in it all.

A mixed film then. On one hand it takes Louise and lets us see the impact of her crash dieting on her emotions and body and it is worthy for doing this on primetime. However it does tend to throw out platitudes about "why can't we all just be healthy" etc and fails to use this experiment to examine the bigger picture. A worthy film then but one that is too "celeb" and packaged (lots of cool music on the soundtrack) but fails to build on the foundation. Super Size Me is the aim, but it falls a long way short of that mark.