Big Sister TV: Bossiness, Bullying and Banter in Early Twenty-first Century Make-over Television

Make-over television shows became one of the defining genres of early twenty-first century television across the Western world. From their small beginnings in 15-minute slots on daytime TV in the late 1990s, by the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century they had come to dominate primetime TV and even have their own devoted network and cable channels. A common feature of all of these shows has been the prevalence of female subjects to be ‘made over’. As Rosalind Gill (2007) has observed, the body is promoted as integral to female identity, and thus is a site for postfeminist attention where a woman’s pursuit of beauty engages both her consumer power and her self-governance. If, as Angela McRobbie (2009) attests, postfeminism is linked with vocabulary of ‘freedom’, ‘choice’ and ‘empowerment’, then these shows are underpinned by the assumption that the participants have made the ‘wrong’ choice, and thus are in need of stern guidance if they are ever to achieve the ‘empowerment’ that postfeminism promotes through the female body. What characterized these make-overs is the use of bullying, bossy tactics by the hosts and tears by the subject as they progress on their ‘journey’ to a better, more stylish self. This chapter will suggest that, while the bullying of the earlier shows has diminished, there nevertheless remains an underpinning strategy of humiliation that is accompanied by a more dissipated sense of belligerency throughout such shows as the female body continues to be open to surveillance.