Why we Should be Watching More Trash TV: Exploring the Value of an Analysis of the Makeover Show to Fat Studies Scholars

Abstract

This article serves as a critical introduction to the genre of the “makeover show” as a way of encouraging the growth of a still nascent body of work. The article draws from a wider discourse analysis to argue that the makeover’s story of transformation not only enables but also depends on benevolent, sympathetic representations of fat individuals. Yet, an analysis of the makeover indicates the range and complexity of the cultural labors that continue to render fat a social and moral problem. This article concludes that fat has a current specificity within late capitalism, enabling the fat body to materialize as a key pedagogical site instructing all bodies in somatic, specifically active, citizenship in context of the “obesity epidemic.”

KEYWORDS:

• makeover
• pedagogy
• reality TV
• weight-loss

Notes

1. 1. Many thanks to the reviewers for this point.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jayne Raisborough

Jayne Raisborough is a Principal Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Brighton. She is author of Lifestyle Media and the Formation of the Self (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).