Lifestyle television and diet: body care as a duty

The formats of makeover and lifestyle television are an evolution of the reality television genre. The function of this type of format is to give instructions and examples that are functional to correct lifestyles. Through their “diagnostic eye” experts, who are the protagonists of these programmes, supply advice and knowledge about every sphere of life. In makeover programmes in comparison to lifestyle ones, the process of transformation to which the participant is submitted and of which the spectator becomes witness is more accentuated. The makeover format, above all when it concerns transformation of overweight bodies, puts the transformation of the Self on show. For this reason, in certain literature, makeover shows may be seen as technologies of the Self. In this paper two makeover television programmes will be analysed that deal with overweight adolescents and their families. The aim is to track down and analyse the discursive repertoires around the work on bodies and on their boundaries as a repair of the identity disorders of adolescents.