Abstract
This chapter examines four shows—The Biggest Loser, Queer Eye, Starting Over, and What Not to Wear—as examples of how reality television has reworked existing women's genres. As with other women's genres, these makeover shows are not exclusively about women or for female audiences alone. Rather, they prioritize historically feminine concerns, including self-presentation, consumerism, and an intimate relationship with the self, produced through interiority, affect, authenticity, and the everyday. In contextualizing the audiences' responses to these shows, the chapter considers the normative elements of the shows that privilege sexy, implicitly white, professional modes of self-presentation. It also asserts that within these highly gendered frames, there is some space for what Lauren Berlant calls female complaint.
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