Portrait

I have always hated Oprah. No OK, wait. There was a time, once a long time ago, when I did watch her show with great admiration. But then I grew up enough to realise that she is actually a talentless hack who is not funny, not smart, not interesting, and not any of the things that it takes to be mildly worth watching. Worse, she is self- righteous, sanctimonious and all she does is judge people and judge people and judge people. And I cannot believe that Americans put themselves on her show day after day, to have their self-worth and self-respect stripped to shreds on national TV. Her fame and fortune rides on the pathetic, basic human instinct we all have which gives us great pleasure in watching someone else be told off in public for something they did wrong, and smugly thinking ‘Hah. I’m better than that’. We love watching someone else’s tragedy unfold in public. We sit glued to it in some kind of morbid fascination. She has made her millions selling the suffering of others. She’s vile, moronic, offensive and frankly, really politically incorrect. I don’t understand how she is still even on TV and that people haven’t realised the fact that watching that show is downright unhealthy.

I have a friend staying with me right now, and one day recently I walked into our living room and she was watching Oprah on TV. I didn’t want to impose, so I just sat and watched for 5 minutes, also mildly curious as I haven’t watched an Oprah show in a long time.

On this episode, they’d gotten together a bunch of single mothers who were on an average between 40-50 years old. These women are working 2, sometimes 3 jobs at the same, taking care of 3-4 children and keeping it all together, entirely on their own. Some have come out of destructive relationships, some have even experienced abuse. These women are heroes. They’re your real-life heroes. Was their selflessness and their exemplary lifestyles of hard work and sacrifice for their loved ones the focus of the story? NOPE. It was the fact they looked ten years older than they actually were.

Oprah proceeds to take these women out of their ordinary, honest lives and puts them each in the ‘truth box’: a transparent yet sound-proof booth which sits on the middle of a crowded American street. While they’re standing in there oblivious to the noise outside, people are encouraged to stop, take a look, and hazard a guess at the woman’s age. Passers-by comment on the unkempt nature of each of the women, in quite harsh and blunt terms, saying their teeth are bad, their hair is bad, their skin is bad, blah blah blah, and everyone pegs the woman at being (drum roll) ten years older than she actually is. That’s the crux of the show.

OK. You could take them out, buy them some new clothes, get them a decent hair cut and that would still be a nice thing to do for these women, most of whom don’t have the time, or the money to treat themselves. Give them a cash prize in recognition of how hard they work. Give them an award on National TV for being brave women. I would have been OK with that. But no, Oprah, unsatisfied with the triumphant nature of the story as it is, goes the extra mile. Many of them burst into tears, discussing why they have fallen into such negligence. They say between abusive relationships, children and keeping a real life in the real world together, they have ‘forgotten to care for themselves’. Sounds fair to me. So they are taken by Oprah to receive a full make over. And this full make over doesn’t entail new clothes and a nice manicure. No, it goes into all the horribly, intrinsically sexist and politically incorrect creations of our time: things that were created to make money by telling women that they simply are not good enough, or young enough, or pretty enough. These women receive Botox injections, other forms of plastic surgery, Lasik treatment, new teeth, on top of new hair cuts (which include colouring etc.), make up styled by a professional and new clothes, which are more likely than not completely uncharacteristic of her.

And then they’re brought on the show, and made to believe that now because they look better, they’re supposed to ‘feel’ better about themselves. Now I don’t doubt that these women did in fact feel a lot better about themselves after this makeover. I’m certain they gained a lot of self confidence and became more assured and secure. But this is exactly the point: the fact that we need to look good to feel good is a age-old notion that has been stuffed down the throats of women over centuries. Oprah should be telling them exactly the opposite; she should be telling them it’s OK to look a little scruffy because they work so hard, that it’s OK to not have a haircut every two weeks because they need to do more important stuff. Why doesn’t Oprah give them the right to feel confident anyway? Why doesn’t she make them feel good about themselves, just as they are? Why not make the show about how great they are, which would have undoubtedly made them feel worthy and that what they’re doing is acknowledged? Why are they not worthy of being given a pat on the back and put on Oprah without being completely changed?

Oprah should be brought to justice and told that she has no right to judge anyone. Who is she to tell anyone that they need to look better or work harder or do anything differently? She has it alright, it seems. What does she know about working 3 jobs or indeed about being the single mother of more than one child?

I know she is a great philanthropist and I am always glad when the willing help the needy. But she should get off TV and stop polluting the minds of those who just don’t know better and treat her words as the gospel truth. She is just a marketing robot set up to make money and influence millions of people to buy stuff that they don’t need and do stuff that they don’t need to do and to feel things that they don’t need to be made to feel by a television show host.

It is the ultimate power, having the power to influence the way people think, the way they feel. And a lot of dangerous people yield that power in today’s world, and Oprah is topping that list.