Are Jessica Simpson & her friends ‘ugly Americans’ on ‘The Price of Beauty’?
I watched Jessica Simpson’s new travel docu-reality show, The Price of Beauty, on VH1 last night and was struck by how superficial and frankly dumb it was. Simpson is travelling around the world with her two best friends, hairstylist Ken Paves and her former assistant Cacee Cobb, ostensibly to learn about and document the way that beauty is perceived and practiced in different cultures. Instead, they look like a bunch of fools making fun of different cultures and sticking out like sore manicured thumbs. It doesn’t help that Jessica is so dim that she’s amazed by simple cultural differences, like the fact that Thai women want pale skin as opposed to American’s striving for an orange tan. The show is also very fast-paced and slick, with background music and beautiful visuals. It’s entertaining for a while, but it fails to impart a lesson beyond the basic concept that beauty is culturally influenced. I learned more about the way that young people can act like idiots in foreign countries.
