Lookism Role in Reality Shows Prevents Stereotypes

One afternoon I was sitting in front of my TV and flipping the channels. I was shocked when something strange was the common thing between three Channels. There were three different makeovers TV shows across them, they all targeted women only. First of all the term makeover is applied to changing one's appearance, sometimes through cosmetics. Makeovers can range from something as simple as a new haircut, to the use of cosmetic surgery, to the extreme of the implantation of dental veneers. Furthermore, this kind of TV show called “Reality Television” too, which is a genre of television programming.



So I chose to watch one of them, it was called “Ambush Makeover” aired from the US. While I’m watching, I noticed that from the beginning the episode’s title was “From Drab to Fab”. The word choice has a negative impact on me, describing the women as a dull because she has her own style wasn’t a quite decent thing. From this TV show, I’ve realized they try to generalize women in an indirect way. They demanding all women to stop them accidentally and put them in the spot. They force them to makeover them according to their beauty scale, which I noticed it appears in being a blond with straight hair, thin wearing full makeup and showing a lot of skin. By this makeover, the TV show leaves no choice to the contestant to choose her own look. It’s like they aiming to stop the beauty diversity in the US, which is extremely a big issue if you really see every women in the streets look alike. Another clue that supports my argument is that when the hairdresser stated “ Blonder, brighter and more golden”, as if he is defining the hair attractiveness in being a blond!


Another aspect they mentioned is that, a new look equals a new life and a new exciting personality. Well I have to argue this because women will become dull if they were all the same. People shouldn’t suffer from lookism, since America is a more looks-obsessed society than many others, and it is more looks-obsessed today than it was fifty years ago, or even ten; plastic surgery has quadrupled this decade, it started to reach our region and in Qatar specially. For a couple of months I’ve receiving a phone calls from new beauty salons in Qatar to provide me with a new free of charge makeover, which they were depicted from the American makeover shows and they try to apply their approach here in Qatar. However, it won’t work perfectly due to the differences in our body shapes and our darker skin, so they have to refashion their concept of being blonder is prettier. At the end the irony is that a makeunder is based on the opposite principle, removing artificial enhancements to a person's appearance to give a more 'natural' look, which is totally different in this situation. It becomes as a surveillance that monitors the women in our society and a way of preventing stereotypes. On the other hand, Blondes do not seem to have lost any of their popularity since the end of the last ice age. Research suggests that percentage of blondes in each type of magazine exceeds the base rate of blondes in the normal population. This would suggest that the selection pressures that shaped the standards of Western female beauty in the late-Palaeolithic are still the same today.

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Interesting and fun survey!