All Reality All The Time

I admit it, I watch What Not To Wear, but in my defense, it is only with my wife and daughter. And of course there's How Do I Look, which is similar yet different -- which I also only watch when the female Murphys are around. If it's just me, I watch shows like Dogfights or Modern Marvels, and if it's just the Murphy Men naturally we watch Mythbusters. Somehow I just stopped watching scripted shows except for Monk or comedy reruns.

But back to How Do I Look -- another man watches the show, and given his style sense you'd shouldn't be surprised by another man who does.

Both shows try to impress the importance of taking some pains with your appearance. The subjects are typically women who don't, or who do but in the wrong way (e.g. dress far "younger" than they should). The hosts are pretty blunt about the clothing, makeup, and hairstyling choices but are very supportive of the person themselves - with the goal of minimizing the person's problem areas and maximizing the persons assets. Each episode the hosts first try to teach the subject what kind of clothes are right for them, and then it's off to hair and makeup. When all is done, we have the reveal (yeah, just like home remodeling shows, which have fallen out of favor at chez Murphy recently) and the transformation from wretched to something better.

What I like abou the shows is that the advice is tailored to the person themselves, they use real people so the audience (i.e. my dauther and other impressionable teenagers) are not given unreasonable expectations about appearence, and the point is about helping average people do a better job at presenting themselves and controlling the message their appearence sends. It's not like Extreme Makeover etc. where a whole bunch of surgery is used to transform ugly ducklings into swans. The goal on these shows is to help ugly ducklings turn into ducks by making different appearance choices available to anyone.