Dawn Porter is a journalist who is isn’t shy of tackling a subject full-on. She’s been in Balls Of Steel, she’s written a book about internet dating and here, on the rejuvenated BBC Three, she is fronting a series of docs that confronts issues central to the 21st century woman – body image, sexuality and fertility.

In the first of these docs, Dawn has a look at her own body issues, and asks why she feels the way she does about her body. Is it because magazines tell her to look a certain way? Or is it something inherent in every woman’s psyche to be self-critical about their bodies? At the end of this really rather good documentary, I was ready to tear off my own clothes, run down the street and shout: “I love my arse!” Except, y’know, it was quite cold last night and there were ne’er do wells outside.

Dawn is 28, but like most of us (and I mean most if US, not just women) she feels her body is far from perfect. She goes on a mission to see whether her own insecurities can be beaten, and asks why she has these insecurities in the first place.

In a series of challenges, Dawn really put her self-esteem on the line last night. She did a bit of burlesque in front of a crowded audience, she went along to a photo shoot to get the full experience (including an airbrushing session at the hands of a digital artist), she questioned women in a female changing room about how they felt about being naked in front of other women, she asked a a plastic surgeon about implants, she posed nude in front of a life-drawing class and, in her coup de grace, she organised a ‘flashmob’ open-top bus tour of London where women of all ages, shapes and sizes went bare.

It was great stuff. Dawn is a naturally attractive woman, and yet she still has issues with the way she looks. She just wants to be normal, but constant exposure to magazines had knocked her self esteem. She isn’t alone, of course, and I really believe the series of challenges she set herself took courage to perform.

As ever, with these kind of things, it’s all about the journey, and Dawn’s journey last night was entertaining, touching and inspirational. You were with her every step of the way – when she was feeling physically sick immediately before her burlesque performance, and when she felt rubbish after her photo shoot because she knew her final image was being constructed in a computer but still felt she could never achieve that look and that perfect body.

But what is a perfect body? During her look through some fashion mags, Dawn rightly said that real skin has bumps and wrinkles and creases. Damn straight. She was also very right when she surmised that magazines exploit womens’ insecurities (a point that is at the very heart of why so many people have low self-esteem… I mean, look at things like Heat. You’re not aloud to have spots or cellulite because they’d do an exposé on Top Five Body F***-ups or something. What does that teach teenage girls growing up? Or women of all ages? That being normal is wrong?).

We’ve already had some comments saying that Dawn didn’t actually get naked in the programme (she did actually, but the camera tastefully cropped out the bits). That wasn’t the point in my opinion – the point was that this was one woman’s attempt to tackle her own insecurities and find out how mass media targets women like her. By the end of the euphoric bus journey through London (she even stopped off at Vogue publisher Condé Naste to ask whether the journalists – who surround themselves with perfect images every day – wanted to join her. She got throw out), Dawn had achieved what she set out to.

More power to her – the doc was fresh, funny and Dawn was a likeable host. Frankly this was more of about real woman than Coleen McLoughlin‘s laughable attempt at over on ITV2 could ever be.

Go here for Mof’s interview with the lady herself.