Like all ground-breaking studies of culture, The Makeover, appropriately, tells us not just about its object, narrowly construed, but about ourselves, the society we have created, and the contradictions that permeate both. Sender combines detailed empirical research with thoughtful and nuanced interpretation to provide us with a timely meditation on the limitsand potentialsof reflexivity. The result is a smart and original contribution to the way we think about popular culture and its relation to broader questions of self-hood, identity, and power.

- Mark Andrejevic,University of Queensland,

With its central focus on audience practices, Senders lucidly-written book is unique among the growing body of scholarship on reality TV. While offering a smart and provocative analysis of the complex appeal of specific & makeover shows, she also makes a major contribution to active audience theory. In particular, she problematizes the issue of reflexivity, in the context both of viewers relationships with the shows and in their roles as research participants. In doing so she challenges all audience scholars to examine more carefully the very nature of the research encounter.

- S. Elizabeth Bird,author of The Audience in Everyday Life,

A success on multiple levels. Sender's analysis... provides strong insight into the social significance of reality television.

Contemporary Sociology