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To be honest, I don't spend a lot of time watching Lifetime. To counter that statement, I don't spend much time watching Spike TV either (which has set itself up as the anti-Lifetime, which is why I bring it up). The other night, however, after dinner at a friend's house, we were flipping channels looking for background noise for our conversation. The TV landed on Lifetime and we spent a while watching back to back episodes of "How to Look Good Naked".

"How to Look Good Naked" is another in a long line of British improvement shows that have been translated for America. Two other notables in this list are "What Not to Wear" and "Trading Spaces". I was worried from the title that this was going to be another exercise and eat right pep talk show. You know the kind "take that fixer-upper with 15 extra pounds and sweat it to beauty." Well, I'm happy to say I was wrong.

"HTLGN" is hosted by Queer Eye's most noticeable cast member, Carson Kressley. In this show he has set himself up as a latter-day Richard Simmons, helping real women with real women curves feel beautiful. And honestly, he's great at it. These are women who begin the episode with body images ruined by Hollywood and advertising and it ends with them confident enough to participate in a provocative photoshoot.

So how does he get them there?

The episodes open with Carson on the streets and a picture of the woman's body (sans face) projected on the side of a huge building. Carson then records the reactions of passersby. After this, we meet the woman. Carson takes her into a room where she is surrounded by mirrors and has her undress down to her skivvies. The whole time he is comforting her and telling her how great she looks. THEN he takes her into a room with a line up of woman (also in their underthings) who are organized by waist size. The woman is then asked to place herself where she thinks she belongs in the line.

Of course, she's wrong. Both women I watched placed themselves too high on the line and Carson shows them that they are not as big as they think. This did prompt my wife to ask if this process ever backfires. Then Carson shows her the footage he recorded of the strangers on the street talking about her body. They are all positive which prompted one of the women to tearfully ask how many nasty comments they edited out. It was a fair question to which Carson replied "None, really."

So now that they've looked their horrible self-esteem in the face, Carson builds them back up. Of course there's shopping

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