“On the DVD boxed set of MTV’s Pimp My Ride, season two, there reads a compelling tag line: “there are to wheels too worthless, no ride too ragged. There is no ride unpimpable!” In this statement of egalitarian optimism comes a promise of reclamation and renewal for a plurality of ratty, tattered, and decrepit bodies. We are encouraged to believe that no body is a priori blocked from transformation. In this doctrine that no ride is unpimpable that sounds across the wider makeover genre, we hear an equally reassuring promise that once rides have been pimped, physical bodies nipped and tucked, personal style tweaked, families super-nannied, and rooms pizazzed, these renovations themselves will entitle After-bodies to take up residence in a territory where all citizens are beautiful, heterosexually fulfilled, and, most of all, confident and welcoming of the gaze (a position coded as both celebrated and of the celbrity). such is the power of transformation that makeovers empower subjects to voice wondrous statements of jubilation and reward (”I can do anything now!” “I’m going straight to the top!”). These discourses tie the workings of the makeover to the broader constitutions of citizenship predicated on meritocratic mobility within free markets and societies.
(…) TV makeovers participate in projects of citizenship, where the neoliberal mandate for care of the self in service of the market fuses with value of a mythic, egalitarian America to create a new imaginary territory I call Makeover Nation. In Makeover Nation, one’s selfhood is intelligible through and on the body or its various symbolic stand-ins (cars, kids, homes, etc.) and functions as a critical element of both belonging to and participating in a democracy.”
“On the DVD boxed set of MTV’s Pimp My Ride, season two, there reads a compelling tag line: “there are to wheels too worthless, no ride too ragged. There is no ride unpimpable!” In this statement of egalitarian optimism comes a promise of reclamation and renewal for a plurality of ratty, tattered, and decrepit bodies. We are encouraged to believe that no body is a priori blocked from transformation. In this doctrine that no ride is unpimpable that sounds across the wider makeover genre, we hear an equally reassuring promise that once rides have been pimped, physical bodies nipped and tucked, personal style tweaked, families super-nannied, and rooms pizazzed, these renovations themselves will entitle After-bodies to take up residence in a territory where all citizens are beautiful, heterosexually fulfilled, and, most of all, confident and welcoming of the gaze (a position coded as both celebrated and of the celbrity). such is the power of transformation that makeovers empower subjects to voice wondrous statements of jubilation and reward (”I can do anything now!” “I’m going straight to the top!”). These discourses tie the workings of the makeover to the broader constitutions of citizenship predicated on meritocratic mobility within free markets and societies.
