Just when you thought you’d seen it all, ‘The Pricey’ does what she does best and throws society a curve ball.
Katie Price, the artist formerly known as Jordan, rarely gets the credit she deserves. She has always been, in many ways, a pioneer. A trail blazer. She had a reality TV show before you knew who the Kardashians were. She was onto fillers before they were safe. She was challenging norms and getting people’s backs up as a glamour model in the traditional sense of the term by being a mother, WAG, shrewd entrepreneur and generally all round DGAF woman, while today’s celebrities were still at Sylvia Young (or wherever people learn how to get famous). Katie Price unapologetically championed big boobs at a time when they were shunned by size zero fashion. TOWIE needed an entire cast to produce enough drama to entertain viewers for a whole series, The Pricey did it all on her own. She is, you might argue, something of a celebrity anti-hero.
For Price self-publicity is a lucrative art form, she had it on lock down long before social media was a promotional vehicle for the fame hungry. She has franchised almost every aspect of her life. There’s been a magazine, multiple books, perfume, jewellery lines, million-pound magazine wedding deals, calendars and clothing collections, specifically an equestrian clothing brand which went by the name KP Equestrian. She’s now a somewhat controversial regular on ITV’s Loose Women.
What else could Katie Price possibly do? An equestrian reality TV show of course! Wait, what?
Yes, that’s right. Katie Price has a new reality TV programme under her belt, her first in four years, and it’s about horses. Katie Price’s Pony Club is here. If you grew up in the 00s and managed to catch her original reality programmes, then you’ll already know what a horse lover she is. At the centre of the show, of course, is Price’s new business venture – a horse riding school.
There’s something rather anarchic about this new endeavour. Pony Clubs, for the uninitiated, are rather establishment places. At pony club you tie your tie properly, follow the rules and behave appropriately. Everything about pony club is ‘proper’ and, I can tell you from experience, it’s snooty suburbia at its finest. Price bemoans snobbery in the horse world and, in a way, her riding school is a direct challenge to it.
Say what you want about Katie Price but, unlike many of the celebrities of our time, she has ever peddled perfection. She is open and honest about the work she has done to herself and the work she puts into her personal brand. What you see truly is what you get. Unlike many celebrities who have subtle fillers, implants and botox on the sly Katie Price does it out in the open. She goes as far as to arrange for the mothers who take part in the show to have botox as part of the show.
As you’d expect the show also features hunting (rushing through the countryside in pursuit of fake foxes), dressage (basically horses dancing), racing (making horses go really fast) and show jumping (bombing around in a giant sand pit and leaping over obstacles). You’ll also be unsurprised to learn that pretty much everything is pink – from the outfits to her fuchsia horsebox.
And finally, as if all of this wasn’t enough, for the press launch of the show Katie, her current husband Kieran and their kids all dressed up as unicorns. Yep, real life, glittery unicorns.
Writer David Foster Wallace pronounced his views on reality TV long before it exploded and became a cornerstone of our culture. He was damning; of scripted shows he said they provide ‘illusions of voyeurism and privileged access’ but are not true observations because they are contrived. ‘The people we’re watching through TV’s framed-glass screen are not really ignorant of the fact that somebody is watching them’ he wrote, ‘…Television does not afford true espial because television is performance, spectacle which by definition requires viewers.’
Katie Price has turned her life into a spectacle and when she performs, people watch. We’ve only seen stills from the show, which starts tonight on TLC but if they’re anything to go by it’s Katie Price at her finest. Here she is covered in glitter sticking two fingers up to the establishment whilst telling the neighsayers to do one, all the while raking it in.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.