Last night's TV: A lesson in insight from young Jess

Published on Monday 30 June 2008 20:46

Jess: My New Face, BBC3 Inside America's Toughest Jail, Sky One

WHAT a difference perspective makes. If Jess: My New Face had been called The Girl With The Weird Head, Help I Look Strange, or one of those other shock titles that BBC3 is supposedly going to phase out (according to its controller recently), it would have been quite another programme. But instead of being an uncomfortable voyeuristic experience, by letting 17-year-old Jess Lee tell her own story it became a nice little insight into how appearance and self-image are connected.

Lee was an engaging narrator. "The bad news for you," she began, "is that you're going to have to watch my ugly mug for an hour." Born with a very rare genetic syndrome which made her skull develop differently and gave her facial deformities, she has had more than 20 operations in her short life. But while they were initially for medical reasons, as she grew up she wanted surgery just to look more 'normal' after years of being stared at by gormless twits.

Yet, while she was delighted with the results so far, she was smart enough to wonder whether by changing her face, she'd played into the hands of the beauty police who can't handle our natural variations. Looking more like everyone else had made her more confident, but she came to realise during the programme that the confidence was almost more of a significant change in making her happy than the physical changes.

A better interviewer than some of the current youth presenters (naming no Little Brother names), Lee met other people with deformities, including one who inspired her by her bolshie attitude and insistence on meeting people's eyes. She also chatted with a model who insisted that it was just as hard being beautiful, though she'd made a career out of it, and that she was never asked out by men intimidated by her looks (I know, it's a curse, believe me).

Eventually, Lee concluded that even if she never looked ordinary, that was OK with her; if she continues to be as bright and lively as she was here, she'll shine regardless. This was an overdue counter to the pernicious skin-deep philosophy of the likes of Ten Years Younger and by letting its subject speak for herself, it avoided seeming exploitative.

Inside America's Toughest Jail suffered from a severe lack of perspective. A bought-in US documentary, it had no real point other than to display the unpleasant, sad world of Maricopa County Jail, Arizona, where Sheriff Joe Arpaio revels in his reputation as tough on crime, tougher on the causers of crime. His methods are controversial – chain gangs, a tent city – but they went unquestioned here: this was simply a chance to stare at the inmates.

Two gangs dominate the prison, rigidly split by race: the Aryan Brotherhood and the New Mexican Mafia. Members are covered in tattoos proclaiming their allegiance and marking them out as unlikely to ever join the local suburban golf club after their sentences. And this goes for women too, like the uncontrollable female prisoner who was facing death row, but still couldn't stop attacking guards – until they threatened her with missing her small son's birthday party.

Arpaio seeks to hark back to an earlier, supposedly safer time by dressing his prisoners in black and white striped uniforms – like cartoon burglars – and, oddly, has dyed all their underwear pink, presumably to embarrass them. But this programme didn't really investigate whether his tactics even work and without an identifiable point of view – as with, for instance, Louis Theroux's recent documentary about San Quentin – it felt like a long stretch.