Economy and reflexivity in makeover television

This paper examines theories that may help to explain the social rationale of makeover television, viewed as a genre concerned with the evaluation and modification of citizens. It considers the usefulness of models of reflexive modernization to help account for the reflexivity that participants display in the construction of lifestyle projects. However, I argue that a materially grounded notion of reflexivity is necessary to account for the overarching logic of makeover narratives: i.e. the social production of value through consumption. In this respect, makeovers can be seen as consistent with other textual forms of consumer culture that symbolically invest commodities with promises of personal life-improvement. In the spirit of the shows themselves, makeover television is subject to continual modification. Media industry efforts to keep programming fresh mean that new angles and topics appear on our screens continually. At the same time these innovations seem to constitute exercises in creative recycling of what has worked previously (Morris 2007). Accordingly, while the makeover is a specific genre of lifestyle television that emerged in the 1990s (Moseley 2000), it can also be thought of as a kind of meme, an idea that catches on in a given context through its appeal to a wide array of ‘hosts’ that help to replicate it and adapt it successfully (Blackmore 1999). The fact is that after initially being confined to familiar lifestyle concerns of the appearance of body and home, the makeover has proved to be a device that is useful for the portrayal of almost any social practice, from hotel ownership to debt management and toddler taming. Whatever the issue, the core elements of the makeover show centre around what Jack Bratich (2007) refers to as the fairytale-like ‘powers of transformation’ that develop through the narrative. Makeovers are inherently optimistic. They rely upon a clear contrast between before and after, whereby the after is always seen as better than what went before. Ordinary people are presented as beneficiaries of consumer advice about ‘improving practices’ (Bonner 2003, 106). Questions of what to do and how to act are applied to their personal cases by figures who have privileged authority to judge: lifestyle experts (Powell and Prasad 2007). These are not detached talking heads, but advisors determined to solve the problems inherent in one particular life situation. After having broken down the larger problem into its parts and explained each necessary step in the improvement plan, the overall effect is shown in the narrative climax, the ‘reveal’. This is the point where we see the combined effect of all changes for the first time: in the toddler tamed, the post-surgery body, the beautiful home. Despite the great entertainment value often derived from the dramatization of the change process, there is a pedagogic rationale in this. People are represented as learning (whether or not they really do) from experts various skills and items of knowledge that enhance their ability to act in the world. My interest here is that the notion of well-being entailed by all this is a particular contemporary sense that people can do things well by choosing well.