Last night I was stitching an old T-shirt into a heating pad cover while watching the Daily Show/Colbert Report. When those shows were over, I wasnapos;t quite done sewing, so I flipped to a show called How Do I Look? on the Style channel.
(Mini-rant: The Style channel will soon be airing a show called "Ruby", about a very fat woman who everyone seems to love except for the fact that sheapos;s very fat. The commercials didnapos;t say the show would be about her weight-loss journey, but it had plenty of shots her friends being concern trolls and Ruby being fat at them, including a friend presenting a praline cheesecake and Ruby eating a slice with the worried voiceover "Youapos;re killing her" I havenapos;t decided whether finding more details about this show is worth my outrage.)
So anyway, How Do I Look? is a makeover show, with the twist that two of the targetapos;s friends/family/wev come on the show and help with the transformation. They and a professional designer pick a whole wardrobe, including a new hairstyle, and the target chooses one of the three sets of clothes/hair.
This particular show had a woman named Plum, 31, whoapos;s been doing the goth/punk/club thing for about 10 years and currently works in a club. She had a solid style, a wardrobe full of good pieces (as well as one or two hideous ones), but her friends decided that sheapos;d have to be an adult soon and therefore needed some edgy but interview-appropriate clothes. Plum came on the show for the sake of trying new things, but was totally opposed to changing very much. She talked about her childhood, running away from home after her motherapos;s sudden marriage to a guy Plum didnapos;t get along with, and finding herself through the club scene. After the first day, she was open to the suggestions that people might make for her, but after the second day -- which included the trashing of Plumapos;s existing wardrobe and her friendsapos; "tough love" about having to grow up -- Plum wanted off the show. She even wrote her friends letters ending the friendship. The hostess persuaded her to keep going, but things just got worse, and I have to say I was rooting for her to keep rejecting the makeover.
The clothes that everyone picked out for Plum were very similar to what she already owned, just a notch classier, and they all gave her heels when she specifically refused to wear heels. She tried on the clothes and hated every piece. She cried, she refused to stand in front of the mirror for more than five seconds, and when she said that one outfit didnapos;t totally suck the hostess did a dance of joy. But then Plum had to go and pick hair, and she hated all those options. In fact she walked out on the hairdresser.
At the end the hostess talked to the two friends and the designer, and she said stuff like "Normally weapos;d talk about the transformation process here, but there are more deeper issues," and asked why the friends wanted to put Plum on the show. They talked about how they loved her and wanted the best for her, wanted to prepare her for her future, and the hostess said she didnapos;t even know if Plum would come out on stage for the reveal. After a long couple of seconds, she came out, and talked about how she hated the clothes and hair, and would be keeping a couple pairs of shoes but would be giving the rest to Goodwill or selling it on eBay. The designer laid into her and talked about how her friend of 20 years took off work for a week, made her husband work half days, was missing her godsonapos;s birthday party, etc. To be on the show, and that Plum should be grateful. That really stuck with me, how everyone was pissed that she wasnapos;t going along with it (she was, she did all the steps, she just didnapos;t accept what they put out) and wasnapos;t grateful. The show ended with the hostess saying "Okay, you can leave now," Plum taking off the heels and stomping off set, and no idea whether she was actually keeping any of the clothes. Some makeover shows have a montage of the target back in their life, all made over, and I donapos;t know if this show normally does it but there were no shots of Plum after she left the stage.
It really blew my mind to see someone refuse a makeover -- even the designer said that Plum definitely had her own sense of style, whether or not it was mainstream -- and be so strong in her sense of self that she preferred her rockinapos; club self to whatever her friends wanted her to be. It really highlighted how the base of makeover shows is your friends/family/wev saying "You have made wrong decisions and need to be publicly set straight, JOIN US JOIN US IN THE MAINSTREAM" and especially in this case, Plumapos;s friends deciding what Plum needed to do with her life and calling it "love". I hope she went back to work at the club and kept all her old clothes.
Besides being blown away, the legacy of this show in my mind is that it wonapos;t hurt me to smile and show my teeth. Like Plum, I worry about how yellow my teeth are, so I donapos;t smile a lot in photos or I donapos;t smile enough to show my teeth. I switched to a baking soda toothpaste months ago, youapos;ll pry my coffee from my cold dead hands but Iapos;m trying to quit drinking soda, and when I looked in the mirror today I didnapos;t think my teeth were bad enough to hide anymore. (On the show, they took Plum to a dentist and had her teeth professionally whitened.) I donapos;t know how this fits with my outrage at the patriarchal "Hey, smile" calling-out of women who are not perpetually smiling and happy, or the moving goalpost of white teeth being necessary to fit into a beauty standard that I already fit in some ways (I do think Iapos;m pretty) and donapos;t in others (Iapos;m fat). I donapos;t know that it fits at all. But even before I looked at my teeth in the mirror today, Iapos;ve been trying to smile if I choose to, regardless of how white my teeth are. Hiding myself because I donapos;t fit a beauty standard is an affirmation of that standard, and honestly, anyone who bases their opinion of me on the color of my teeth is too shallow for me to waste my time on. Thanks for the reminder, Plum.
agios gordis, agios gr konstantinos, agios ioannis, agios ioannis beach.
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