When you were watching Beauty and the Geek, you know that it was really about seeing how much better the geeks looked after they cleaned up a bit. After that it was about inner beauty and beauties using their brains. The public is obsessed with fashion makeovers?the ?beautiful all along? is a common, almost clich? theme in a lot of TV shows and movies, showing us that in the end, it?s hard to say that outer beauty doesn?t matter. Showing that someone supposedly unattractive could actually be sort of attractive once they wore the right clothes, cut their hair and plastered on some makeup is a different message from expressing that what?s on the inside counts more than what meets the eye. Not to say that this is necessarily vapid and shallow. Well, it sort of is and we?re definitely guilty of overemphasizing and objectifying beauty, but inherently, there?s nothing wrong with pleasing the eyes.
So, we admit that we like fashion makeovers. We?re fascinated with before and afters?we like to goggle over how they went from this to that in an ugly duckling to swan kind of way. But why do we goggle so much? It could be the shock factor, or maybe it gives the rest of us hope. Admittedly, it can be pretty inspirational to see someone with low esteem transform into someone confident about themselves with some help from a team of beauticians.
But the flip side of fashion makeovers is that in a way, they?re saying that you?re not okay the way you are. Take ?What Not To Wear,? which basically ambushes people and informs them that the way they dress is so bad that it?s offending their friends and the rest of society, all on live television. By the end of the program you can see that it really was for the better and that the person is really happy with the transformation, but at the same time you?re probably glad it?s them and not you on the show. And you wonder if there were any victims who refused to be on the show and then lashed out at their ?friends.?
It?s possible to say that giving someone a makeover is about bringing inside beauty to the outside rather than changing who they are. To be fair, along with the snarkiness Stacy and Clinton often praise certain physical attributes in their victims and try to emphasize them, showing that the issue here is not the person per se, but how they?re dressing. So you can feel a little better knowing that the problem isn?t you, but your awful fashion sense. But even if radical fashion makeovers are well meaning, we?d often rather see them makeover someone else.
