The Makeover: Reality Television and Reflexive Audiences. Katherine Sender. New York: New York University Press, 2012. 246 pp. $23.00.The rise of reality television in the 2000s greatly escalated audience participation, particularly with makeover shows, in which ordinary people volunteered to undergo extensive transformation, as society tuned in to ridicule, sympathize, or identify with the willing subjects. In The Makeover: Reality Television and Reflexive Audiences, Katherine Sender, an associate professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, explores viewer reflexivity within this genre through the programs Starting Over, What Not to Wear, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and The Biggest Loser.In addition to a textual analysis of the shows, Sender and her research team conducted an in-depth audience analysis of surveys and interviews with fans of these programs. Their responses were then compared with a group of non-viewers' reactions to the shows. Through this extensive study, Sender examines how contestants in these programs, and subsequently, the deep investment that fans have with them, provide meaningful insight into the reflexive self, women's culture and the for transformation, and consumer culture fostered through inner transformation, among other topics. This book is far from fluff but provides an insightful look into audience interpretations of makeover reality programs.The strengths of the book exist in the methodology and recruitment. By utilizing a multi-method approach, Sender is able to address not just what she perceives are the dominant messages of this genre, but how and why people become so invested in these programs and then join and regularly post in online communities devoted to them. Because she and the research team used fan sites to recruit participants, the responses reflect those that are truly entrenched in these programs, far more than a random sample would provide.The book is incredibly well researched, with an in-depth look at other reality television studies. Beyond secondary literature of television research, though, each viewer response is thoroughly explained with perspectives from other disciplines, including Foucauldian notions of the self, references to neoliberalism as explanation for the need of reality television as a therapeutic tool, and langue and parole, from Roland Barthes, to address what elements fans accepted and what they chose to criticize. Sender is exceptionally reflexive in her own writing and even includes a chapter addressing participants' awareness of the research process as influential to their responses-a highlight of the book. …