Why are we so repulsed by how these women look?

HAVE you heard Dolly Parton described as looking like a ''melted sex doll'' lately? How about Pamela Anderson as ''a plastic bush pig'' or Cher ''slutty and trashy''?

Nope. Thankfully neither have I, which is strange considering disparaging terms like these are pretty well all I have heard when the topic of two other women who admit to cosmetic surgery, Vernesa and Sophie from Channel Ten's The Shire, comes up.
I had expected to hear disparaging remarks about the show itself, and will happily ''hell yeah'' any and all criticism aimed at its malicious exploiters (sorry, legal just informed me the official term is producers). The way they have edited and scripted a group of fame-ravenous Gen Y-ers into resembling life forms nudging amoebas on the Darwinian scale for our smug amusement is worthy of some spirited debate if not outright scorn.

But, as seems to be the case on social media especially, it has become sport to blame the shiny lure for scaring off the fish, rather than the hand that wields the rod. And, within this fishing analogy, Vernesa and Sophie have come off smelling like last week's bait in a heatwave.

Now, I should probably clarify here that I have not watched a complete episode of The Shire because I have a life, a modicum of taste and even less tolerance. What I did see did left me with the impression that these two women are not very smart - as in George Bush with a lobotomy stupid - or at least have been edited to appear so. And that alone made me queasy enough to reach for the remote.

But I'm not here to debate whether these girls would make it in to Mensa, or to endorse their penchant for plastic surgery, synthetic nails, hair extensions and fake tans the colour of ripe potting mix. I'm actually here to ask why we, as a nation, seem so repulsed by these women's appearance in the first place? Why are these girls pushing people's (especially, it must be said, females') buttons?

Most of us don't have to swallow bile when we see a Goth in their gloomy noir glory. We don't gag at ferals eschewing artifice altogether. People covered in tattoos aren't loathed, nor those who have chosen to resemble pincushions with piercings. We don't spurn all those women in the public eye with shiny foreheads, or run in disgust from Bert Newton's bad rug. Fake boobs are everywhere, as are fake tans and pumped-up lips.

So what is it about the chosen aesthetic of The Shire girls that is causing us to collectively froth at the mouth with contempt?

''The overreaction I'm seeing from these haters indicates something is going on within their subconscious that perhaps should be looked at,'' explains psychologist Meredith Fuller, author of Working with Mean Girls.
''It tells me there could be unresolved material - messages or experiences from long ago - that observing these women are re-triggering somehow. Perhaps it is provoking a part of us that we might secretly long for, and this is how we manage it.''

Fuller says it is not just the girls' appearance that is so provoking, but the message it sends. ''When you think about basic archetypes of women, there's the young girl, the mother, the crone and the more butch warrior. This look is like the beautiful maiden archetype, the most desired and idealised female image with its Barbie-like connotations.

''But I don't believe these girls are changing themselves for men,'' Fuller told me. ''Talk to men and they usually say they don't like that huge made-up look or fake breasts. I think these girls are just delighting in looking how they want. They're saying 'it's my body, my money and my choice'. This sense of liberation can challenge those of us who don't share it or feel they can achieve the same in their own lives.''

Fuller points out it is not so much the fact that these girls have had surgery that is riling so many, but that the procedures are not fitting in with the boundaries approved by popular culture.

''We live in youth-oriented society where we don't like to grow old,'' she says. ''As such, society has come up with a formula for acceptable breasts, lips, bums and noses that all look the same - just look at Hollywood celebrities.

''These overtly feminised girls are consciously making a decision to stand out from the pack. These girls are not being forced to do anything. They are actively involved in choosing how they want to look - which breasts, which nose, what size breasts.

''Isn't that the point of everything women have been fighting for, to know and own all the parts of ourselves we want to? So, when women are so vitriolic about other women making an active choice to do that, are they saying they don't feel they have a choice or are too scared themselves?''

Some surveys suggest that more than 90 per cent of women today would change their bodies if they could afford to. Some women, of course, will never be happy with their body, no matter what they do or how much they diet. But Fuller says the women from The Shire appear ''very happy with what they've done and how they look''.

Confession time here: I'm not personally fond of the Vernesa and Sophie look. In fact, my guiltiest pleasure at the moment is another TV show of dubious merit, Channel 11's Snog, Marry, Avoid?, where women with a love of ''fakery'' are given a make-under. The result is usually remarkable, turning painted ladies back in to natural beauties I can relate to. But I also can't help but feel the girls on Snog, Marry, Avoid? get stripped of individuality in the make-under process, homogenised to fit within the safe, bland and narrow confines of society's acceptable (and let's face it, often unachievable) boundaries du jour.

As another lady with a more-is-more attitude to her appearance, Dolly Parton, proudly declares, ''It takes a lot of money to look this cheap'' - and it seems Vernesa and Sophie sing from Dolly's songbook. And to others who don't, I say, turn down the volume or just stop listening altogether. Some of us are country, some of us are rock'n'roll and others easy listening. Viva la difference!