KEY POINTS:
Philosophers like to wade into the big questions - "Who are we?", "What is evil?", "Why do we exist?" and "What is justice?"
Down at floor level other fears are closer to our daily lives. These are the ones Plato, Kant, Descartes, Socrates and Spinoza drove straight past.
Help is out there. TV3 goes where the great minds did not in facing one of these worries in its clothing-cum-psychology show, Does My Bum Look Big?
Given the philosophers strolled around in all-concealing togas sans belts, they were able to keep these concerns between them and their very close friends. Also, no worries for them about being saturation bombed over correct, and often spectacularly inappropriate, body images.
While Does My Bum Look Big? gives the derriere its due, it is not obsessed by it, instead ranging out over someone's entire look. Last week it was jeans and how to work them into a wardrobe, including choosing the right ones - not as simple as one might think. Next week it is party outfits. Tonight it is straight into one of the places where some real fear lurks.
Swimsuits are a clothing item in which, with underwear, we can run but cannot hide.
Summer's proximity doesn't help. Christmas holidays close in. Demands for sand and surf will be heard. Anxiety levels can rack up. Too often the answer is to pick something concealing as much as possible and let it go at that.
This, it turns out, is an opportunity lost, and little black numbers are not necessarily reliable friends. Against that, the show confirms clothes as the most powerful drug of all, able to instantly change a mood and keep it elevated.
Stylists Jackie O'Fee and Luke Bettesworth help six people; one man and five women. Each arrives with pre-loved beachwear, and is promptly sent shopping for new togs. Then it is a firm steering towards something both flattering and concealing, which is often the same thing.
There is much artful shifting of emphasis from what's wrong to what's right, and the show stops to give tips. Have a pencil handy. This writer learned much about how a chap can soften the impact of a certain generosity around the midsection.
At the other end of the range one woman was not buying the Duchess of Windsor's wisdom that you can "never be too thin", suffering over her "noodle-like" figure. She ends up letting fly with as joyous a grin as any on this year's television.
It is easy to laugh at all this as a pseudo-science milking the vulnerable, but it might be more important than it looks.
The beach is close to every New Zealander. It's free, and an afternoon romping in the surf is as quick and effective a stress relief as any chemical. Being intimidated away from this wonderful resource by others' dictates borders on near-tragedy.
While some of the early observations are a tad astringent, the show's tips and advice keep it away from exploitation while taking its folks on their cheerily productive journey.
* Does My Bum Look Big? TV3 tonight, 7.30.
