Has anyone on the show What Not to Wear ever gotten really mad or upset when the hosts tell them they are on a show called “What Not to Wear”?
I can imagine someone reacting badly to this piece of news. But I’ve never seen it happen on the show.
Has it happened on one of the many episodes I have not seen? Or might it be that when this happens, that episode doesn’t get made? Or could it be that this simply doesn’t happen?
-FrL-
I’ve only ever seen one episode, but if somebody had talked to me the way those talked to that woman, I’d have told them to…well, let’s just say there’d be a lot of reflexive verbs not typically suited to a family show, lots of references to body openings not always associated with those verbs, and lots of talking about various pointy objects. If nobody has ever gotten pissed and refused to cooperate, I’d be shocked. In that sort of situation, I’d assume the episode just wouldn’t be made.
I’ve not seen many of these “gotcha”-style reality shows (which look to me like the Satanic offspring of “Candid Camera”), and summarily avoid them now. One I did have the misfortune of being exposed to was, IIRC, called “Boiling Point” or “Meltdown” (or something along those lines), and I found it disgusting. Watching the show made me almost wish they would pick on me so that I shove my boot up the ass of somebody involved in the process of provoking the fury of hapless victims to feed the sadistic voyeurism of the show’s retarded audience. I certainly hope somebody had a bad reaction to such abuse, bad enough that it made the perpetrators think twice about doing it again.
There’s a big difference between a show like WNTW and “Boiling Point” though. At least on the WNTW eps that get made the “victim” is among family and friends and the hosts aren’t deliberately antagonizing them (yet) and I have to think that there’s some inkling in the victims that they aren’t the best-dressed people in the world. “Boiling Point” on the other hand, is about engaging in repeated assholeish behaviour just to see how long someone will put up with it. I’ve seen bits of it and have never been able to make it through an entire segment because it’s so revolting. Life’s tough enough without setting out deliberately to screw with someone’s day.
I’d be interested in knowing if anyone turns down the WNTW people. I can’t imagine why they would; who’d say no to a free trip to NYC, $5000 in free clothes and everything else? I’d put up with Stacey saying I look fat in these pants for that (and that Clinton is just dreeeeamy). It’d be fun to watch the rejections. What do the hosts do, just sort of slink out? “Oh, uh, OK, sorry then. Go back to your party. We’ll, uh, let ourselves out.” Of course the real fun would be planting a camera on the aftermath and the horrible catfights the intended victim got into with the people who turned her in.
This is driving me nuts, because I can’t remember which episode is, but there was a woman seemed close to turning them down. (The Southern lady who was the mother of two teenagers, perhaps?)
Clinton and Stacey appeared to be genuinely worried that she actually was going to refuse and said something like, “Nobody has ever turned us down! Are you going to be the first?”
Before that, I’d always assumed that they had ambused a few people who told them no way, José, but if they were being honest, seems like everyone ends up agreeing.
Usually the people on the show have some idea that they’re not the best dressers in the world, but there was an episode where the ambushed a woman who spends thousands of dollars on clothes (to the point where she had trouble paying her bills, if I recall) and she was shocked that she’d been nominated for the show. I thought she was going to start crying. She also creeped me out; she was totally obsessed with her dog. She looked a lot better when they cleaned her up, though.
Can I ask, is this an American version of the programme that you’re talking about? The British one is fully consensual (OK, so they do a bit of hidden-camera filming to start with, but it’s obviously cleared).
In the American version, the victim is nominated by friends or family members, then filmed secretly for a while, and then ambushed. I assume they have to sign a release for the episode to appear on the air, though.
I’ve only seen the American version of WNTW once and that was enough. It was awful, just plain awful when compared to the British version. I have seen most of the British episodes and no one that I have watched has turned them down.
I wish they’d do a makeover on the Queen.
The Queen always looks appropriate at her public appearances.
I like the British version better, too. Last time our Prez & lovely Laura hopped the pond, I kept hoping Trini & Susannah would kidnap our first lady & give her a clue or two.
Years ago I watched and interview with Alan Funt. He was the host and I believe creator of Candid Camera which was the first of the hidden camera TV shows. He said that 99.9% of the people who they caught, many of them in humiliating circumstances, agreed to sign the release form. Virtually everyone who wouldn’t sign the form were people who were someplace they shouldn’t have been, i.e. playing hookey from work or with their partner in an extra-marital affair.
There is no way in hell I would sign the form.
Haj
This would totally be my mom. Over Thanksgiving, they had a WNTW marathon that my mom and I watched (she’d never seen it, I’d seen it like, twice). My mom is, imho, a pretty terrible dresser, but she doesn’t have a job, so who cares, right? The next day, she got dressed in an ordinarily horrible outfit and then commented to me that she was dressed nicely because she was inspired by WNTW!
I hope my mom doesn’t know this message board exists.
Since there seems to be recent a habit of dire British TV programs being remade for US audiences, just you wait until you get “How Clean Is My House?” wherein two busybodies expose the disgusting habits of various householders, and then the spin-off “Too Posh to Wash”. They get rich people who are unhygienic, show them how many bacteria are living in their mouths/dreadlocks/whatever, and then get people to sniff their armpits in the street. :barf smiley: I kid you not.
And then there’s the one - on at prime time - where some annoying pseudoscientific woman analyses people’s shite, and gives them enemas, and they actually show the liquid coming out of their arses. :double barf smiley:
I’m afraid I would have to turn them down, for the simple fact that the idea of spending $5,000 on clothes is the most outrageously frivolous waste of good money I can imagine. I doubt if I’ve spent that much money clothing my whole family in the last 10 years. Who spends $150 dollars on a plain old button-down shirt, or $300 for a pair of uncomfortable shoes? I’m either at home or I’m at work, locked in a basement answering phones; I see no reason to get dressed up for it.
The few times I’ve seen the show I’ve gotten very impatient waiting for the victim to tell those two Madison Avenue mannequin slaves to shove it up their superficial wazoos. Now that would be an episode to make me weep tears of joy.
:eek: I’m never complaining about Fear Factor again.
We have a copy of the How Clean Is My House at work. I borrowed it last weekend. They are fantastically annoying, and seem to think everyone should spend all their time cleaning, and that houses shouldn’t look inhabited. Damned if I’m going to scrub my floor on my hands and knees twice a week, is all I say.
We have a version of *How Clean is My House * here. I’ve seen parts of it while flipping channels. In those few times, the houses they examined were really disgusting–made me feel much better about my slovenly habits!
I’d do WNTW in a heartbeat. $5000 in new clothes? Heck yeah! Plus I’d get a haircut and makeover. My humiliation can be bought for that.
I was with you until this part. Seems sort of ‘sour grapes.’ If I were buying a $300 pair of shoes, they’d better be comfortable–I’d expect to wear them for the next twenty years.
I imagine they would turn me down after I agreed to participate on the condition that they not color my hair or put makeup on me, and that they air every moment of my telling them what I think of them.
And I have no interest whatsoever in a trip to New York. I wonder if they’d negotiate a better city.
There was an episode from the first season where the gal (the one who complained about the pointed shoes the whole time) fought them tooth and nail over everything and wouldn’t let them cut her hair. On the TLC message boards after the show aired she said she returned everything to the snobby stores before she left NY and when she got home spent it on Old Navy crap.
I don’t like the British version, because no one ever looks better at the end! They do nice work when they’re on the Oprah show, though.