Lifestyle Media and the Formation of the Self

Baudrillard, Postfeminism, and the Image Makeover

“…Though not exclusively confined to English-speaking countries, the rendering of "new femininities" (Gill and Scharff 2011: 2) has been examined predominantly in the context of Western media, which commonly emphasizes individualization, choice, sexualization, and a preoccupation with the body and consumer culture. Perhaps nowhere is this postfeminist sensibility better witnessed than in the reality makeover television genre, a subset of lifestyle media that incorporates the individual quest for self-improvement with the refashioning of bodily appearance and commodity consumption (Raisborough 2011). In McRobbie's words, the makeover format involves "the transformation of self with the help of experts, in the hope, or expectation of improvement of status and life chances through the acquisition of forms of cultural and social capital" (2009: 128).…”

“…If the body is no longer a site of otherness but of identification, then we have urgently to become reconciled with it, repair it, perfect it, turn it into an ideal object" (2008: 125). Zygmunt Bauman's claim in Consuming Life (2007: 98) that the consumer/subject is constantly on the move, endlessly making and remaking the self with no end point in mind (a concept taken up by feminist makeover critics Meredith Jones [2008] and Raisborough [2011]), echoes the endless circulation that characterizes Baudrillard's hyperreal state, where the acceleration and proliferation of signs makes no logical connections, follows no discernible order, and results in no knowable or final outcome. It is in the amplification and acceleration of signs of the body that it comes to be produced and also "disappear."…”

Introducing the Red Tent: A Discursive and Critically Hopeful Exploration of Women’s Circles in a Neoliberal Postfeminist Context

“…Neoliberal structures position the individual as responsible for dealing with their psychic life, character flaws, and social anxiety. This is achieved via therapy or self-help, both of which remain predominantly concerned with a discrete unit of 'self' (Raisborough, 2011). However, RTs are presented as powerful places that help individuals change themselves and their relations with other women.…”

From Makeover Media to Remaking Culture: Four Directions for the Critical Study of Self‐Help Culture

“…While the traditional forms of religious inspiration and spiritual transformation have shaped self-help culture, the relatively recent media invention of reality television has given rise to entirely new iterations of the transformational trope ''I was lost, but now I'm found'' (Ouellette and Hay 2008;Weber, 2009;Raisborough 2011. ) In place of traditional testimonials of religious conversion, more secular transformations have emerged in a whole array of makeover television spectacles.…”