JJ is the OP
Is that enough acronyms? 
AFAICS, JJ is the OP talking about the PHBs on E and VH1, two channels on TV, something that should have been figured out ASAP.
QED.
I dunno the name of the specific show I was being subjected to, but there are tons of 'em on E and VH1, plus segments on Access Hollywood and all that crap.
“JJ” comes from my user name prior to this one… me an’ Kyla go way back. See the sig.
Even worse than What Not to Wear is a show I ran across titled, How Do I Look?. At least in WNtW, the victim can say “no, go to hell”, though they rarely do. In the short bit I watched of HDIL, the mother and the best friend of a teenage girl ambushed her. There was no consent given. There was only the mother announcing that she was embarrassed by her daughter’s habit of wearing sweats all the time. Then the host sent mom and “friend” upstairs to collect the girl’s wardrobe for mockery, cutting up, and throwing out. Apparently, it wasn’t enough that the girl had a 4.5 GPA and had never been in trouble. She had to be subjected to a skankified Stepford process so that other people could be happy.
I watched a couple of minutes, realized my blood pressure had gone through the roof and switched channels. Hateful, hateful people.
That’s actually the point of What Not To Wear. Friends and family call WNTW for a “fashion intervention.” They take undercover video of the victim and then yank them aside in public to confront them with their “mistakes.” “Look at this! WTF were you thinking? You look awful! You have the fashion sense of a mentally disabled baboon! It’s amazing anyone loves you when you dress this badly! On the streets of New York they’d spit on you as you walked by!” etc. etc.
Then they make the victim throw away all her favorite old clothes, no exceptions, including the T-shirt which was the last birthday present her father ever gave her right before he died of pancreatic cancer when she was 16. Then they go out shopping and buy a few outfits which either are outright ugly or are totally inappropriate for the victim’s everyday use. In either case, they’re a total departure from the kinds of clothes the victim is comfortable in. Then they wave goodbye and the victim heads to the Yellow Pages to find a hitman for whoever called the show in the first place.
It’s seriously the most uncomfortable makeover show I’ve ever watched. I’ve seen it twice, hoping the first episode was a flukily mean one. It’s not.
Yeah I have to agree. This whole entertainment industry thing is some of the craziest shit ever. I can’t believe there are people who literally make a living from mocking celebrities every personality or fashion quirk.
And I can’t understand why people care so much. So Tom Cruise or Lindsy Lohan are successful actors. I like watching movies too, but I really don’t care what the actors do once they are off screen. I can’t blame them for being jerks to people. Imagine every time you left your house, some idiot came up to you and was like “wow, I really loved your latest marketing analysis!” or bothered you with “HEY!! You’re Dave Richards from accounting!!” while you are eating with your wife. I’d probably tell them to go fuck themselves too!
JJ (sorry, Troy McClureSF) and I are old pals. I know his real name, but I almost always call him JJ, even in person.
Sorry for the confusion.
I kinda like What Not to Wear. I’ve only seen it a few times, but I enjoy the trainwreck aspect. I was pissed when they made this girl throw away her Buffy t-shirts, though.
Yeah, I’m with the “What Not to Wear Sucks” brigade on this one. That show rankles me much more than Joan Rivers et al.* making fun of celebrities’ outfits, because a celebrity is more of an abstract entity, somehow. The isolation of fame prevents us, or at least lessens the possibility of, actually hurting a celebrity’s feelings. Confronting real people, on the other hand, and making them feel retarded for questionable fashion choices is completely obnoxious to me when it isn’t flat-out cruel.
*The Fug beetches deserve complete exemption from the conversation, imo. They could be professional comedy writers if they aren’t already. 
I was thinking the same thing. I saw a characteristically mean episode of one of these craptacular shows (on TLC, I think) in which the mother of the young woman being “made over” becomes increasingly angry and hostile (and who was egged on by the two bitchy, dumbass “hostesses”) and snottily called her Goth-dressing daughter a freak and an embarrassment numerous times. I could swear I even heard her call the young lady a “bad mother” somewhere in there, but I can’t be sure.
Geez, nice show, isn’t it. :rolleyes:
Yes, the young mother dressed somewhat Goth. She had a young son whom she didn’t necessarily dress full-blown Goth, but she did tint his hair. I wouldn’t tint my preschooler’s hair - but she’s an adult and it’s her son, so it’s her decision.
The mother is yelling hysterically about how awful “her grandson” looks and what a freak and embarrassment her daughter is. After watching the back-and-forth of “Freak! You’re an embarrassment!” and “No I’m not!” between mother and daughter, the mouthbreathing hostess who was staring off into space finally wakes up, realizes where she is and says, “Now now, that’s not productive.”
Uh, didn’t you just engineer that whole spectacle for your televised crapfest?
So they make over the young mom and her son. They’re now dressed in bland designer separates. Mom’s got a new shoulder-length haircut and is now blonde. The haircut is reminiscent of Heather Locklear’s cut. Okay - so I think she looks good. She’s a very pretty lady. But I don’t think that’s the point. She’s an adult and can dress in whatever way makes her happy, and this whole scenario reeks because the young mother didn’t willingly go into it with informed consent. She likes to dress Goth style and dye her hair black - she’s an adult and can do what she wants.
Young mom looks severely pissed off but is masking it with a slight smile. You can almost see daggers shooting out of her eyes at her windbag mother. Young mom won’t go near her when the idiot hostess tries to gush about how great she looks and what a fab idea this all was. The little boy was, I have to say, adorable. He looked positively precious - but again, he was just as precious before makeover, too. His mom gets to make the decisions until he’s old enough to decide for himself. I think grandma forgot that part.
I’d really like to have seen what happened once the ditzbags and the cameras cleared out.
What really oogs me out about these shows is the ambush. It would piss the ever-loving hell out of me if anyone tried that ambush garbage on me.
What cinched it for me was the “wrap up” - meaning the hostesses of the show babbled on incoherently for sixty seconds before signing off. One of the hostesses said something like, yeah, grandma had a “right” to get angry, that was a really “radical” makeover, and the world will be a better place since we’ve assimilated yet another clueless bad dresser…
Okay, so they didn’t say ALL that - but they did say the grandmother had “the right” to do this because …well, because she didn’t like the way young mom dressed or the way her grandson was dressed by his mom.
Hey, ditzbags - go do something anatomically impossible to yourselves.
I was really saddened by the whole nastiness exhibited by “grandma”. She was yelling at her daughter calling her a “freak, an embarrassment” and saying how she didn’t want to be seen in public with her. She went on and on, and it was sickening.
I’d have taken that moment to pick up my child and say, “Okay - adios, and go ___ yourself.”
In fairness to What Not To Wear, they only throw out the stuff for TV purposes, but the victim can keep it all afterwards if they so choose; and it’s not actually thrown out, either, but is given to charity. And they don’t even have to spend the whole 5 grand on clothes the hosts approve; they just have to buy 7 outfits that meet the guidelines laid out for them, and they can spend the rest on anything they want.
I guess the idea is to shock people out of the rut they’re stuck in – and some of these people are stuck in deep, deep, bad fashion ruts, like the worst of the '80s, Big Hair and all – and get them to look at themselves and how they dress and present themselves in a new light. And with only a few exceptions, most of the folks are quite delighted with the results. I’ve actually learned a lot about what looks better on different figure types from that show than I expected, plus, of course, the importance of good foundation garments.
But the E! and VH1 shows are just non-celebs mocking those often only marginally only more famous, and personally I love them. They provide that sense of false superiority that comes from neither knowing nor caring why those people wear what they do, except they look ridiculous most of the time. It’s mind candy of the cheapest variety, good to nap by and such.
Come on, you guys have to admit that the strange wraparound swan outfit worn a couple of years ago by some starlet WAS a bit strange. And Demi Moore’s biker shorts meets a chiffon curtain thingie that she proudly declared she’d designed herself.
As are various other outfits seen frequently from time to time both on the red carpet and by “real” people.
For folks who’ve got all the money in the world with which to hire advisors and the very best of fashion, sometimes they deserve to be made fun of when they think they’re bullet-proof fashion-wise that is.
But by and large, I agree with the OP. Way too much time and attention is given to whether someone is wearing the “correct” designer or whatever.
Who are the Fug girls? Sounds like I’m missing something fun here!
Bjork wore the swan dress. I wouldn’t characterize her as a starlet though. She just plain doesn’t play the game. I found it highly entertaining and personally loved the outfit too.
My husband and I want the What Not To Wear people to release a clip show of all the people who said “Fuck OFF!” when confronted with the makeover ambush. Because if anyone tried to organize a fashion intervention for me they’d be on the receiving end of a rather substantial amount of on-camera vitriol. We watched one show in which they "made over’ a rather lovely young woman who had a very low-key, Pacific North West sort of wardrobe with lots of long dresses and practical shoes, and lovely long hair and glasses, a very natural kind of style for her - she was an academic. They turned her into a tightly groomed corporate pinup. It was ever so sad and I hope she rescued some of the clothes they deemed too dorky because we both thought she was wonderful the way she started out, if perhaps in need of a trim and a few newer versions of her existing wardrobe choices.
Thanks for clearing up my ignorance on that. I’d just guessed that she was a starlet because I really had no idea who she was. Actually I still have no idea who she is. 
As to the WNtW folks. Their little sign on the 1/2 a second cut to commercial seque which states “No Miniskirts after 35” REALLY torques me off. That and their constant assertion that “pegged pants make you look bad”.
The idea there is that they outline a womans body so that it shows that she is wider at the hips and then narrows toward her ankles and that actually letting this show is somehow unnattractive. 
Um, scuse me? We ARE wider at the hips narrowing on down the leg toward the ankle, someone please explain to me why our natural shape is bad, and we must disquise it with flared or straight leg pants so that we then appear to be the same size at our ankles as we are at our hips (which reminds me, aren’t MEN shaped more like that? that is, same sized hips at waist hips and straight down legs with no narrowing?)?
Some of the sexiest clothing, IMO were those 50s style dresses which were fitted and narrowed toward the knees, showing off exactly what our hipsand behind look like.
Besides which, before all of these recycled 70s fashion bellbottoms came back into style (but now they’re OH so cleverly disguised as “bootcut” or “flared”), all of the old fashionistas were saying about them “what were they thinking”?
Bjork is a musician from Iceland. She sang at the opening of the Olympics last year - in a rather amazing blue/green dress creation that would probably also get hammered on What Not to Wear. I admire her personal style, which is quite quirky but usually cute.
No miniskirts after 35? How dreary! I have a prominently hour-glass shaped figure so the chances of me ever looking the same width at hip and ankle would depend on being able to disguise my bottom half as a soviet-era apartment block. Not a good look. Those pencil skirts that narrow at the knee are darling although difficult to walk in. I have one right now with a deep flounce at the knee and I just love it!
But tapered or pegged pants make your butt look big.
Actually, let me amend that. Tapered pants make your butt look huge.
So unless you’re built like a stick with no butt and want to encourage it, they are not flattering to the average woman. They make you look like a whale, even if you’re otherwise quite svelt. I was shocked when I switched to wider legged pants how much thinner I look wearing them, without losing a pound.
Maybe you don’t mind if your butt looks big, but I do and so do most women I know. Otherwise, why else the classic joke question, “Does this make my butt look big?”, to which there is no decent answer for the poor man involved?
The idea is to look your best with the body you have. Mocking stars who dress like utter freaks is fun. They waste time and money to be noticed, and then what are they noticed for? Being idiots. I approve, since usually they are idiots.
They did show that last night, actually.
Anyway, I’ve noticed that most people on What Not To Wear are- initially freaked- but they usually like the look in the end. The fact is that most people hide themselves under clothing and use it as a defense against their insecurities. If you notice, most of the people walk with their heads much higher after the makeover.
Plus, the hosts on WNTW let the…subjects…maintain their individuality. I remember one particular episode with a goth-ish young lady. She came in wearing all black, long black hair, bright red lipstick- the works. The hosts admitted that showing her true self was awesome, but she is an adult and needed to class it up for work and such. They ended up cutting her hair into a blunt bob that was very red- which she loved. They showed her how to properly choose makeup that complimented her but still stood out- she loved it. They took her shopping in vintage stores and department stores. They helped her pick out adorable clothing that fit her personality but was professional (50’s style halter dresses and such). Anyway, my point is: they aren’t trying to make clones. Personality is taken into account.
The shows on E!, VH1, etc are annoying simply because they aren’t critiquing the fashion, they are critiquing the person. Sarah Jessica Parker wears some HIDEOUS dresses, but they praise her all over because she is SJP. But if someone else throws on that EXACT SAME DRESS and looks better, she is a fashion faux mistake.
I used to like The Look for Less on Style, but the new hostess (the chick from America’s Next Top Model) is awful. I guess whether or not you like these shows just depends on what you’re into (duh). I have no shame for my love of fashion shows
The Fug Girls are Heather and Jessica. They’re the bitches who write Go Fug Yourself. I am a devotee. My favorite favorite favorite bits are Britney Spears’ Letters of Fug.
Not even a faux mistake! A REALY mistake.
Sigh. One day I will learn to preview.
Not to mention the lovely Melissa “Probably Couldn’t Even Get A Steamer There” Rivers, and their pals Tha Fashion Police, who have probably done more to perpetuate both the negative stereotypes of the fashion industry and its continuing hegemony over women’s bodies and body images.
You notice how nobody is ever too thin to these folks until she reaches the point of painfully obvious anorexia? That’s what I mean.