Back in the early 1950s, cable television began to progress thanks to the application of… Back in the early 1950s, cable television began to progress thanks to the application of microwave transmission technology. Back then, the three or so normal channels were supplemented with as many as six additional channels, bringing the grand total to almost the number of fingers I have.

In those days, early couch potatoes probably began to realize the same lesson that I now learn as I sit at home, looking to the good old tube for entertainment. Nine whole stations and not a damn thing on.

Today, I have access to all sorts of channels, more than 100. But I still don’t get around to watching much TV — even though there ain’t much else to do in this one-horse town of mine.

Still, the other day I was at my computer in the living room, when my sister walked in and turned on the television. My musings about what a 16-year-old girl watches were quickly answered: crap.

Specifically, she was watching a marathon of a reality show called “America’s Next Top Model.” This show is essentially a female version of “The Contender,” which, from what I understand, follows a number of aspiring boxers.

Boxing is pretty awesome though, but I am sad to report that this model show is quite morally reprehensible. I don’t mind that they put them into revealing clothing or anything, but it is reprehensible because of how the show is turning girls across the country into tools.

A duo, a stereotypical gay guy and this uptight-looking ex-model, judge the contestants. The episode I heard — that is, before I put my earphones on — had the contestants going to a Cover Girl party. They weren’t told that it was one of the tests, and there were representatives around the room watching all the girls to see how they dressed, and how they presented themselves.

At the end, the token gay guy read off the list of observations that spectators had made. He said, in a highly memorable statement that one of the contestants didn’t quite “have all the cuttings of a Cover Girl.”

Now, this is where I get to my moral reprehension. What the hell is a Cover Girl? How can anyone in possession of two ovaries not have the cuttings of one? It was amusing to see that they took the concept of Cover Girl this seriously, but scary because it is probably the only aspect of the show that reflects any reality.

The topic of superficiality and the effect of advertising on women have already been beaten into the ground thoroughly, but it still deserves some mention. Girls read magazines and watch television shows in which models — who weigh less than 99 percent of all women — sell them food products.

The effect of being sold desserts by women who are impossibly thin has been widely criticized as producing a wide range of psychological issues in women, from bulimia to General Bitch Disorder (that is not a real disease, by the way).

I think it is for this reason that many girls will be the first ones to tell you that they don’t get along well with other girls. It is because they are so critical that sometimes they see surrounding girls as better than they are.

Thus, a solution presents itself.

This single reality show has thus managed to get me on board with the radical thinking of some of my conservative counterparts. What we need now, more than at any other time, is to put all girls into uniforms.

I’m a pretty open guy though; we can make it a Catholic schoolgirl uniform or something fun like that. But clearly, girls can no longer be trusted to dress themselves.

I am convinced that this is the step we must take to stop shows like “America’s Next Top Model” from airing. Then we wouldn’t have any of this crap about companies making different styles of uniforms either, because that would only continue the individuality that has initially led us to this problem.

The entire woman’s fashion industry would die painfully at the hands of the chic, black uniform that all females would wear. There would be no need for models, because the only size would be one size fits all. It would end advertising’s grip on the collective psyche of our young, impressionable girls.

Do you think they would be asking for their Barbies and their sugar snacks if there was a fat woman with a nun’s habit on the air telling them to buy it?

I think not.

Well, maybe this isn’t a realistic, or even a particularly good idea for ending reality TV shows, but at least I got the ball rolling. Over the next few days, after I found out that my sister watches this show, I asked a bunch of other girls, aged 14 through 20, whether they watched it or not, and a disturbingly high number did.

What is it about this program that can suck so many hapless young belles into reality television hell? I don’t know, but it’s nothing that a Catholic schoolgirl’s uniform can’t fix.

Sam Morey spent hours online looking at pictures of women dressed like Catholic schoolgirls as research for this column. E-mail him at [email protected].