Beauty & the Beast: The Ugly Face of Prejudice

Sarah claims to be Britain's most cosmetically enhanced woman. She meets Susan, who has had over 60 corrective surgeries due to childhood cancer. Susan and Sarah are two outgoing and passionate people with very different views on beauty and the beauty industry. Fifty-year-old Sarah says she would try any treatment to turn back the body clock. From breast augmentation to rhinoplasty, this self-proclaimed 'vain cow' jokes that the only thing she has not had done is her feet. Sarah freely admits she would like to go to the grave looking 18. She is terrified of ageing and evangelical about the benefits of cosmetic surgery. She even carries cosmetic fillers in her handbag so she can inject herself when ever she feels that her face `needs a top up'. Forty-six-year old Susan from Edinburgh has had over 60 surgeries to correct the damage caused by a cancerous tumour and subsequent radiation treatment when she was a baby. Blind in her left eye and with reduced hearing, Susan is not prepared to sit at home and hide. When told that reconstructive surgery on her face could be either cosmetic or functional, she made the choice that it should be functional, saying there would be nothing worse that not being able to eat or drink. Susan believes in living the life that you have, and living it to the fullest rather than striving for the perfection. She has struggled to combat the prejudice of others throughout her life but feels confident and happy exactly how she is. Susan is keen to show Sarah that beauty is only skin deep, but does Sarah even care? With the help of Dr. Laxmi Kathuria, a psychiatrist who specialises in body image, Sarah and Susan put their many differences aside to explore when and how Sarah's obsession with her appearance started and how Susan has built up her confidence in the face of the prejudice of others. Adam Pearson, who lives with a facial disfigurement caused by his Neurofibromatosis, investigates the world of celebrity and why people like him are virtually invisible on TV, in movies and pop music. Where they do appear it is usually cast as the villain, such as Bond villain Blofeld. Adam meets a casting director to see if the times have changed and the industry is ready for him to play the Hollywood hero. He also meets the man behind the Spice Girls, Chris Herbert, for an opinion on whether his looks are still a barrier to people like him breaking into pop.