My experience of
makeover shows is one of taking someone with a distinct
style and fashion sense and turning them into
a middle class drone.
One must also keep in mind that the makeovees are usually not there of their own free will - rather they are being subjected to this excrutiating public humiliation by well meaning friends or relatives who "just want them to look normal". It is also noteworthy that although such things may exist, I have never seen a makeover show where the makeovees were of the male persuasion.
There are two stylistic patterns which recur more than others:
I like to dress like a man/drably/in any way which suppresses my femininity.
I like to dress like a stripper/S&M mistress/in any way which accentuates my femininity.
The basic premise of these shows is that a woman's sexual expression through clothing shows an invalid and perverse disregard for clothes marketing companies. Whether the women show up bedecked in oversized t-shirts, baseballs caps and boots or in micro mini leather skirts and cup A boob tubes over cup JJ boobs, they all emerge wearing Gap.
It is not uncommon to have re-makeover shows - a year or so after the original makeover, the dissatisfied relative/friend will drag the makeovee back to the studio to lament before the nation on her total failure to conform to the norm created by the makeover stylists, whereupon the poor slob/slut is subjected to the same process all over again.
The makeover show truly is one of the horros of modern American entertainment - a concentrated, deliberate attempt to exterminate individuality and submerge the viwer in propaganda of conformity, unanimity and visual homogeneity. By their very existance they postulate not only that personal appearance is the most important thing about a woman, but that it is a specific, well defined, narrow definition of beauty and style that we should all be striving for. They furthermore validate the privilege of our peers to try and make us conform, to deny us acceptance until we do, to publically canvass our physionomical shortcomings and to treat our wardrobe changes in all other ways as a crucial component of our personality, inspite of and against our own wishes.