Bleach, Nip, Tuck: The White Beauty Myth

Channel 4

In Arthur C. Clarke's 1997 novel 3001: The Final Odyssey (there, you didn't know I was a science-fiction fan, did you, and nor am I, but I did once interview Clarke) the human race had interbred so much in the thousand years since his Space Odyssey that everyone had the same skin tone. Distinguishing race by facial feature was impossible. It might be a boring future, but think of the millions it would save on cosmetic surgery and skin whitening. The “globalisation” of looks is how some medical practitioners describe this cultural trend; deracialisation was the eerier term preferred by Bleach, Nip, Tuck: The White Beauty Myth, the second part of whose investigation was stronger than last week's simply because it dug deeper into why dark people want to become whiter and thinner lipped (even as white people want deeper tans and fuller lips).

Its most striking, in every sense, case history was a stunning black model born in the East End of London called Jet, who, as one of her critics put it, had bought into not only white culture but “Essex culture”. Her obsession was her nose, objectively a perfectly nice object but for her “a poor nose” that did not go with her glamorous, gated-estate “lifestyle”. It was certainly no match for that of Barbie, the doll she kept in her bathroom apparently as a reproach to her own face. The obvious word for Jet's attitude to her nose would be “stupid”, but her psychological motivations were complex. It transpired that she had once been attacked by a gang of black girls and the attack had left her nose “wonky”. It became a constant reminder of that assault by a subset of her original community, the one she had escaped by moving to 97 per cent white Essex.

The motives of the programme's other subjects were equally telling. A rather beautiful Bangladeshi mother called Tahira blamed the racism of her own local Asian community who confused her skin pigmentation, which was darker than most Bangladeshis, for ugliness. Mun, an aspiring model who was spending his surveyor's wages on a smaller nose and a more chiselled, less “chubby” chin, had been the victim of racial attacks as a schoolboy in northwest Kent; his remodelling, in the gym and in the operating theatre, as a Western superhero, was his Clark Kentish revenge on his white persecutors (who are still there: during filming a drive-by abuser shouted “Paki!” at him).

We caught up with Jet post-operatively in the midst of a very dark night of the nose. “Ugh, I have cut my nose off,” she cried, leaving us to complete the sentence. “Why the f*** have I got to change my nose ... just to fit in with a European society?” When her bandages were removed, however, Jet felt instantly “wealthier”. Within weeks she claimed she was getting more respect. She could hold her head up in Waitrose. I'd like to say I was pleased things worked out for her, but at least she helped to make one thing clear: while some considered Michael Jackson's increasingly Caucasian face an aspect of his tragedy, for many it was another good reason he was a role model.

Black Widow Granny?

BBC One

And so, in the worst segue I hope ever to write, from black faces to black widows. Black Widow Granny? was a clumsily titled documentary about Betty Neumar, an all-American grandma who had married five men, each of whom had ended up dead. To take them in sequence: Clarence, a motor mechanic, was shot dead after he remarried; James, like him “a little on the rowdy side”, was either shot dead or froze to death in his truck (her accounts differed); Richard, a navy veteran, supposedly shot himself while rowing with her; Harold was the victim of a hitman; while John, the only husband that she spoke of with any warmth, died from natural causes. Maybe. As Oscar Wilde might say, it looked like carelessness. At best.

Betty was arrested last year for Harold's murder, after a new sheriff took over in Stanly County, North Carolina, and realised that Harold's brother Al's grim 22-year campaign for justice against Betty, had something in it. Al Gently's theory that Betty had been mixed up in a drugs ring and put out a hit on Harold after he asked for a divorce seemed outlandish. But when the film-maker Norman Hull finally got to meet Betty - she is out on bail - you began to wonder. Thumbing through photo albums of her dead exes, she seemed irritated rather than outraged at being accused of murder. She looked like a 76-year-old granny; she sounded like a sociopath. Norman Hull retreated, as confused, I suspect, as he left us.

Horizon

BBC Two

I have denied myself the embarrassment of linking black holes either to black faces or black widows, but only out of respect to Horizon. Stephen Cooter's incredible documentary was clear, artistically composed, humorous without being silly, and may just have told us how the Universe was created. What more could one ask of Horizon - except more editions like this please?

andrew.billen@thetimes.co.uk

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