October 17, 2003

Finding Happiness Between Commercials

When it comes to makeover shows on television, just about anything is fair game: saggy chins (Extreme Makeover), tired living rooms (Trading Spaces), chubby women about to wed (Buff Brides), sad-sack heterosexual men (Queer Eye for the Straight Guy). By some counts, more than 60 makeover shows are on the air this fall. What accounts for the makeover obsession?

Robert Thompson, a professor of media and popular culture and director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at