Inner Selves, Outer Selves, and the Commercialization of Congruence: An Audience Study of Makeover Shows.

This paper analyzes audience responses to four makeover shows: The Biggest Loser, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Starting Over, and What Not to Wear. Since fall, 2005, we have collected almost 1,800 survey responses and conducted more than 60 interviews with viewers of at least one of these shows. The data presented here concern audiences' conceptions of the "inner" and "outer" self and the relations between these. Viewers frequently express a reflexive process of transformation, when inner change prompts external change, and vice versa. In most cases, however, viewers assume that there must be congruence between the inner and outer self, and that congruence is evidence of authentic and lasting change. The paper considers how makeover shows encourage candidates to change in line with dominant social norms, and how they interject commercial appeals into the processes of change. It concludes with an engagement with post-structuralist gender, queer, and transgender theory to investigate the usefulness of these approaches to the body for the analysis of makeover audience responses. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]