EPISODE · May 13, 2025 · 22 MIN

"Be Your Best Self"

from Trash Talk: Where Bad Advice + Cliches Get Taken Out · host Erin Thomas + Erica Breuer

You know that phrase, “Be your best self”? This episode rips it wide open: from its shiny, self-help packaging to the industrial shame complex underneath.Erica and Erin are joined by media scholar Laurie Ouellette to break down how makeover reality shows (Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, The Biggest Loser, Wife Swap, etc.) didn’t just make for good TV; they quietly rewired our ideas about help, worthiness, and personal responsibility. What we mistake for glow-ups, might be about control.Find out more about Laurie Ouellette…Buy one of her books: https://bookshop.org/contributors/laurie-ouelletteViewers Like You?: How Public TV Failed the People (2002)Better Living Through Reality TV: Television and Post-Welfare Citizenship (2008)Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture (2009)The Media Studies Reader (2012)A Companion to Reality Television (2014)Keywords for Media Studies (2017)Lifestyle TV (2016)Read her work as Editor-in-Chief of the academic journal "Television and New Media:" https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/journal/television-new-mediaOr as a Columnist at Film Quarterly: https://filmquarterly.org/tag/laurie-ouellette/

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This episode was published on May 13, 2025.

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