Cosmetic surgery reality TV framed body modification as revealing one’s true self

Evidence

On December 11, 2002, the American television network ABC premiered the reality television show Extreme Makeover, one of the most notable examples of the relatively short-lived genre we might term “cosmetic surgery reality television.” These television programs featured participants and sometimes contestants (for the variations of these shows that were competitions) all going through extreme forms of plastic surgery, often framed through narratives in which technological modification would allow the “birth” of a real or idealized self. Plastic surgery—and reality TV—allowed for a realization or revelation of one’s true identity through the modification and reinvention of one’s body. Transformation, these shows suggest, is necessary because one believes their self to be fundamentally at odds with one’s body. The judgment of a proper body, however, requires a gaze that simultaneously derives from the doctors on these shows, there to make “corrective” judgments about surgery, and that of the television audience, delighting in their scopophilic pleasure and disgust at what appears onscreen. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 156

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the ‘cosmetic surgery reality television’ genre and its core premise: transformation releases an authentic self trapped in a mismatched body.
• XREF: The authentic-self-through-transformation theme pairs with the Beautiful Mess house-renovation logic above — both treat material modification as realizing inner identity, key to the Corpocene image-person link.