Gok Wan (Miss Naked Beauty) Interview
As a stylist to the stars, Gok Wan is used to showing people how to make the best use of clothes, make-up, hair extensions, the works. But Gok also believes that all the styling in the world won't help if you're not happy in your own skin. Make-up and styling should be an aid to beauty, not a mask to hide behind. As such, he's presenting a new six-part series on Channel 4, Miss Naked Beauty, searching for a strong, confident role model for women - someone who is beautiful inside and out.
Your new series is called Miss Naked Beauty. What’s it all about?
Miss Naked Beauty is about reclaiming the 1950s beauty pageant. In bygone years, women were judged entirely on their aesthetic. We’ve updated that, and have launched a competition to find a woman who can truly embrace her natural beauty, her natural state, and will go out there and empower every single woman out there. She’ll be judged not just on what she looks like, but also on her brains, her spirit, her attitude and her intelligence. So we’re on the hunt to find someone who truly enjoys and embodies being a natural woman.
What kind of a person personifies a natural woman, then? What are the qualities you’re after?
I’m looking for someone who’s intelligent, who’s comfortable in her own skin, who believes in her female peers, someone who embraces her natural beauty, who doesn’t depend on the cosmetic industry to feel womanly and sexy and gorgeous, and somebody who is not necessarily anti-cosmetic surgery, but doesn’t see it as necessary to make her feel more like a woman.
As you say, it’s not your bog-standard beauty pageant. For a start, they’ve got to work pretty hard to get the title, don’t they?
Absolutely, they’ve really been put through their paces. They’ve done so many different tasks and challenges, and each one will ask them to deal with their insecurities or test them intellectually, or assess their opinions and their campaigning skills and all that side of their personalities.
So what kind of challenges do you set for them?
I don’t want to give away too much, but they’ve had to pitch something to one of the largest high street stores in the UK, they have tried to change the shape of the high street, and they’ve been set tasks to prove that they can cope with the prize they win at the very end. The collection of prizes the winner will receive will test their brains and capabilities, too.
Without revealing too much, the prizes are multi-faceted and pretty spectacular, aren’t they?
Absolutely. What they’ll be given is basically a brand new job, with lots of different avenues to follow. They will become Miss Naked Beauty, and that role will involve being the beauty ambassador for Channel 4, as well as helping me out on my show, and also they’ll receive a number of other prizes that will offer exciting opportunities and test them intellectually as well.
In the first programme, you take the 200 finalists to Blackpool. How did you get from 7,000 applicants down to a final 200?
Every applicant sent in details and was then spoken to on the telephone. A final 2,000 were chosen, and then the show’s casting department met them and whittled them down to the final 200, which was when I met them for the first time.
The first thing you got them to do was to walk along Blackpool Pier in their bikinis. How did they cope with that?
It was really good fun, but really nerve-wracking, and it wasn’t done for any gratuitous reasons either. It was because Miss Naked Beauty needs to be comfortable in her own skin, 100 per cent. Except instead of this time being judged just on their looks alone, they’re being judged on their brains as well.
It didn’t look like a terribly hot day.
It wasn’t, it was absolutely bloody freezing. But you know what? They all did it with gusto and good humour as well, it was remarkable.
You’ve got a fine line to tread, haven’t you? Because while it’s about people’s personalities and intelligence and attitudes, there’s an aesthetic element to Miss Naked Beauty as well, right?
Absolutely, I think there’s an aesthetic element to all of it. What we’re aiming to do is find a woman who is comfortable in her own skin. Everyone has the ability to look beautiful and fabulous, and it often comes down to a really good grooming regime and looking after yourself, and also feeling confident. All of that combined will then give you inner and outer beauty, which is what we’re looking for.
What’s Myleene’s role in all of this?
Myleene is my beauty angel! She co-hosts with me. Each week I do a challenge with the girls, setting them a task, and Myleene is involved in all of that. She helps me and the girls.
Was part of the reason for choosing her the fact that she’s got a very natural look herself?
She is your absolute natural beauty, isn’t she? She’s totally natural, she’s absolutely gorgeous - like the best looking girl next door you’ve ever seen in your entire life. She’s living what the girls want to live. And she’s intelligent, she’s able to draw upon all of her experiences being in the media, the pop band, the model, the full works. Her experience really helps empower the girls, it gives them an insight into what their life would be like if they won the competition.
As part of the whole natural look, you get all the girls to take off their make up, any piercing, any hair products and so-on. They found that incredibly difficult, didn’t they?
Absolutely. I think women have lived behind their camouflage for many years. What the female community has done is taught themselves that they can deal with day-to-day challenges as long as they’ve got the tools - which is clothes, hair, make-up and stuff. Which is fine, there’s no problem with doing that, but it shouldn’t always be about depending on that. So we deconstruct that, take them back to their natural state where they only really have their intelligence and communication skills and their personality to get through the tasks. It was about them coming to terms with who they are as people.
In a sense, the fact that so many of them found being without their products so difficult is exactly why a programme like this needs to be made, to emphasise the importance of their other assets.
Exactly. We’re not turning around and saying hair and make up and nice clothes are bad, what we’re saying is it’s important to understand the person you are beneath the camouflage first, and then you can find your inner beauty, and then after that you can dress it up as much as you want to, once you’ve got to know yourself.
The contestants all seemed to bond together very well. Was that the case?
Very much so, they all completely fell in love with each other.
Did you get close to them?
Well, as much as I could. Unlike How to Look Good Naked, where I really get into the ,mind of the woman I’m working with over an amount of time, with this show it was quite different. The girls are in competition, so while I could mentor and guide them,. I couldn’t give them all the answers, because then the challenge wouldn’t be fair. So I had to be slightly more stand-offish than I would have liked.
The final 12 lived together for five weeks, while competing against each other. Even though they all got on, there must have been some catty incidents, surely?
There were a few little squabbles and arguments, but you’ll have to wait and see. It does get a bit hairy.
Ultimately, what would you hope to achieve through all of this?
I think what I’d like to do is to prove to every single woman watching the programme that they have the capability to enjoy being themselves. By stripping away all the façade, and getting rid of the make-up and all the bows and bangles, what’s left is women standing united and together and confident.
What did you yourself learn during the filming of the series?
Even though I’m a fashion stylist, and I’ve been giving people the tools of hair and make up and clothing for a long time, I was really surprised by how much the girls didn’t know who they were beneath all of it. I think I took it for granted that people do know themselves, and people are aware of what they’re like without all of that stuff. It did surprise me a lot.
It’s a surprisingly moving subject. Did you find yourself moved?
Oh God yeah, absolutely. It was a huge test of my emotions - you get close to the girls, then you see them get knocked out, or you want to help them because you see them struggling, but you can’t give them too much support. At times I had to be like a very strict schoolteacher, and I didn’t like that aspect of it at all. It’s part of the job in this process, but I much prefer being nice.
Miss Naked Beauty is on Channel 4 on Tuesdays at 8pm from 21st October 2008.
