Administered improvement

Of course, there is another way to think about the exponential growth in the cosmetic surgery industry: not in terms of self-help but in terms of administered improvement. Extreme makeover programming -- whether it be for body or home -- provides a perfect instance of teamwork culture. I do not have any one network or show in mind; the Extreme Makeover teams are the most obvious perhaps but the old show The Swan had the same structure ('meet the team of makeover specialists!), as do all the home improvement shows on Bravo, HGN, and so forth. Also, let us not forget Queer Eye, a makeover team Village People style.

My sense is that extreme makeover programming is illustrative of a new expert culture no longer legitimated by professional institutions and disciplines and by specialized knowledge but by results. This new expert culture is determined not by the individual (or, lone ranger) but by the team and thus emphasizes collaboration, interaction, and performance management. In Extreme Makeover itself, the entire team comprised of doctors, lifestyle coaches, aestheticians, consultants, and media workers assesses its object and prescribes the course of treatment that would realize the collective vision of a final product. However, the noted moment of the final unveiling of the remade body in front of friends and family functions as the substitute for the real outcome, which is the reinforcement and reproduction of the new expert culture. Essentially, Extreme Makeover is outsourced self-help, simultaneously voluntary and interventionist. The women and occasional man seem to have a vague idea of their “problem,” which is written under the sign of beauty, but require the team’s diagnosis of the problem’s precise components. This is not self-fashioning, but expert and administered improvement, paradoxically illustrative of both the logic of mass production, with its emphasis on sameness, and the logic of post-industrial production, with its emphasis on individual tailoring and customization.