Thursday, 28 July 2011

How is the contemporary cosmetic and celebrity industry affecting/influencing the wider audeince


This question will investigate the inner workings of such makeover programs like “snog marry avoid” and the counterparts such as realty TV stars ,Katie Price for instance which have caused a fracture and disintegration in today’s youth society, influencing them to have plastic surgery and overall a negative and shallow perspective on life. Furthermore this question will highlight the influence of celebrities and how they impact the youth society on various platforms, for instance YouTube has a vast amount of makeup gurus describing celebrity inspired looks, demonstrating an image fixed, celebrity orientated fixation from today’s youth.
 Snog marry avoid ?

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I chose “snog married avoid” text as I felt it demonstrates a clear influence of celebrities, through the excessive cosmetic surgery  the contestants have done. Moreover the show actually has certain controversial celebrities which come on the show such as Jodie marsh who is infamous for her certain assets.The videos below are clips from the show which i thought reflect the youths society image obsessed outlook and shallow edge .


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Snog Marry Avoid? is a British reality TV show on BBC Three hosted by Jenny Frost and produced by Endemol. It focuses mainly on transforming 'fakery obsessed' or 'slap addicts' in Britain into natural beauties by stripping them of their skimpy clothes and layers of make-up and giving them a make-under instead of a make-over with the help of POD - the Personal Overhaul Device.

Overview
Snog Marry Avoid? has given 'make-under' to a range of people from Great Britain including celebrities.
Within the world of the programme, POD is a computer that "only understands natural beauty". It conducts a public analysis to ask the public whether they would snog, marry or avoid the participant, as well as another random question which offers those questioned another chance to praise or criticise. After the questions it allows the person to choose their style based on a celebrity and dresses them accordingly. It sometimes orders the person to do a 'deep cleanse' where they have to take off all of their make-up. After the transformation POD will ask the public what they think of the person. The person is then re-introduced to their partner or relative outside the TV studio and their reaction is recorded, generally a positive one towards the more natural look. Later on in the show Jenny Frost will meet with the person to see if they have kept their look and discuss the transformation.
As with many BBC TV programmes, previews are uploaded to YouTube before the programme is screened on TV. The most viewed Snog Marry Avoid? Video on YouTube is Scotland's No1 Male Barbie which got interest around the world due to celebrity blogger 

Reviews 
The Guardian review:
Snog, Marry, Avoid will save us from our tears

Snog, Marry, Avoid
Sentiment is not very British. For most of our history, we've been a sturdy, bluff breed, only occasionally journeying into the realms of the sentimental. And when we have, it's never been a pretty sight. There have been two great ages of sentiment. The first began at the end of the 18th century, when the newly powerful middle class, looking to assert themselves over the coarse peasantry and the often coarser aristocracy, invented a new way of being. They emphasised politeness - a new system of morals and manners - and sentiment. Weeping decorously at a novel or poem and suffering from nerves and melancholy indicated that you belonged to the ascendant class.
Of course, not everyone played the game. The fight back started almost immediately: Jane Austen's novels are partly driven by a need to satirise, and so correct, this new fashion. Austen wanted to see more sense and less sensibility, but soon everyone was at it. It took most of the Victorian era for sentiment to be worked out of our system. The second age of sentiment began a decade or so ago. Perhaps as a way of distancing ourselves from the harshness of the Thatcher years, perhaps because we've embraced a more American identity, the last 10 years have seen us weeping and hugging as never before. Princess Diana, in life and in death, was the cheerleader of the new sentimentality. And now we've all been infected by it. The money shot on any talent show or makeover programme is the moment the contestant breaks into tears.
Recently, I found myself in a lift at the BBC with the novelist AS Byatt, who told me: "I can't get my creative writing students to write about anything but the character's feelings. I tell them I don't care about people's feelings. But they don't listen to me." Well, I've got good news for AS Byatt, and for anyone else who's sickened by this glut of feelings. The darkest days may be behind us. I think I've spotted a green shoot of recovery. It's a makeover show on BBC3. It may just be the beginning of the end for the society of sentiment. It's called Snog, Marry, and Avoid.
Each programme takes three young women who are heavy on makeup and light on clothing. Citing Jodie Marsh as their role model, these girls spend a week's wages on fake tan and false eyelashes, leaving only a few quid left for the thong they wear for a night on the town. Dragged into a TV studio, they witness members of the public saying whether they would "snog, marry or avoid" them. Inevitably, choices lean heavily towards "avoid". Removed of the makeup, given clothes that come up to the neck and down to the knee, the girls are then once again presented to the public, who overwhelmingly choose "marry".
So far - as I'm sure you've spotted - it's a pretty standard makeover show. But what is extraordinary about the programme is its total lack of tears, hugging and learning. Faced with criticisms of their fakery, the young women simply shrug them off, and gleefully accept the news that most of the public want to avoid them.
Stripping them of their makeup might lead to a few groans, but no one ever sheds a tear. Many of the girls (most are in their early 20s) express disappointment with the "makeunders", which frequently leave them looking like an English teacher who's been given Oasis vouchers for her 50th birthday. They are then paraded in front of a parent or partner who gives a begrudging, "Yeah, you look all right", instead of TV's more traditional heaving sobs and cries of, "I feel like I've got the real Samantha back." And when the young women are visited months later, they've nearly always slipped back into their falsies and out of their clothes. "It's just more fun," they say and, streaky tans and hair extensions back in place, they sashay happily into the sunset.
At first, I found the programme uncomfortable. I was worried that the producers were missing a trick. "Bring on the pseudo-psychologist!" I shouted at the screen. "Give that one some tissues and get her to weep!" But then I realised that Snog, Marry, Avoid was a new type of programme for a new type of Britain, a nation in which we are happy to accept that we're all flawed. Here is a TV show for a world in which we're happy to carry on as we are, a country where we never shed a sentimental tear. If this is the future, things are about to get a lot better.

Series 1
The first series aired from 23 June - 28 July 2008. It contained six episodes.


Series 2
  • Episode 1 - Celebrity Big Brother winner Chantelle Houghton
  • Episode 2 - Jodie Marsh, POD's arch nemesis because of the 'Jodie Clones'
  • Episode 3 - Big Brother contestant Aisleyne Horgan-Wallace
  • Episode 4 - Jessie Wallace's sister Danielle Mason
  • Episode 5 - The Cheeky Girls
  • Episode 6 - Michelle Heaton
Series 3
  • Episode 4 - Bianca Gascoigne and Andre J
  • Episode 5 - Goldie Looking Chain
  • Episode 9 - Big Brother 2009 (UK) winner Sophie Reade and The X Factor (UK series 6) contestants Kandy Rain
  • Episode 10 - Big Brother contestants Lisa and Mario
Series 4
Series 4 began on 11 January 2011 at 8PM, airing 2 new episodes on BBC3.
  • Episode 1 - Lady Victoria Hervey
  • Episode 2 - Rock star Spud
  • Episode 8 - Matt Pritchard and Lee Dainton
  • Episode 11 - Look-alikes Special
  • Episode 12 - Lynne C & Emma C
 Michelle Phan

 YouTube has become a phenomenon with up to 2 billion watching YouTube videos everyday, makeup and how to videos have become the key to gaining fame as well as success. I have specially chose Michelle phan, a well known makeup guru whom I have watched myself for many years, and has mastered in makeup, and enticing the younger /teenage audience with her makeup/hair/fashion how to videos. But her video statistics show that her celebrity inspired makeup videos have the most views, signifying the emphasis and fixation on controversial yet talented celebrities like lady gaga. 
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YouTube

Michelle joined YouTube on July 18, 2006 and has created over 150 videos. In November 2010, Michelle reached over 1 million subscribers and became the #1 most subscribed female on YouTube.

Phan is known for her video style that incorporates her voice over instruction with music and text subtitles. Her videos are created entirely using iMovie on a Mac Book Pro. Popular beauty tutorials released on Phan's YouTube channel have included her "Romantic Valentine Look", "Brighter Larger Looking Eyes", "Makeup for Glasses", and "Mysterious Masquerade Look". Her most popular videos include the "Lady Gaga 'Poker Face' Tutorial" with over 28,000,000 video views on YouTube, "Lady Gaga Bad Romance Look", "Romantic Valentine Look" and "Seductive Vampire". In January, special effects were used in her new Lady Gaga "Bad Romance" video, the first for a makeup guru. The Buzz feed profiled Phan on January 23, 2009overnight, turning it into a viral video.  She is also the first female You Tuber to reach 1 million subscribers in November 2010. As of 23 December 2010, Phan has introduced Chriselle Lim, a fashion wardrobe stylist and one of Phan's friends, who owns the fashion company Chriselle INC., to showcase fashion tutorials alongside her makeup tutorials on Phan's YouTube page. About a month later, on February 2nd, 2011, Phan introduced Krista Bradford, a hair stylist to her YouTube Channel, who will be posting hair tutorials featuring herself and Phan. Krista Bradford also owns Couture Hair Extensions & Salon in Santa Monica, CA.


Phan's success on YouTube have garnered her significant press and recognition across the globe. She appeared in the August 2009 issue of Seventeen Magazine, the St. Petersburg Times on August 23, 2009, and the Sun Sentinel on August 24, 2009, and on the popular blog Bella Sugar on April 19, 2009. Phan was also featured in a Chilean newspaper for her Barbie makeup video. Recently, Phan was also published in May's issue of NYLON magazine. She appeared in Forbes Magazine as well. In 2010, Phan was hired by Lancôme. Her videos will include Lancôme beauty products. In 2011, Phan started a charity channel rice bunny where she posts videos about her everyday life. Every month, she donates money to two organizations selected. The amount of money depends on the number of views. 


10 years younger
Review: Dailymail
I went on TV's Ten Years Younger and it made me feel THIRTY YEARS OLDER
Last updated at 5:49 PM on 6th August 2008
Like most of the participants on Channel 4's Ten Years Younger programme, Julie Davis, 46, admitted there was plenty about herself she would like to change.
Years of frowning thanks to back pain had left her with deep ageing lines across her forehead, and with her confidence at an all-time low, Julie had taken to hiding herself in layers of unflattering jumpers.
The show - presented by Nicky Hambleton-Jones - sees its participants transformed from dowdy and depressed to glamorous girl-about-town.
Most emerge unrecognisable, their friends and family toasting them with smiles and champagne, their once unhappy lives apparently transformed.
Julie Davis
Regret: Julie Davis was left in agonising pain after appearing on Ten Years Younger
It is a heartwarming format that draws in thousands of viewers every week, and has turned stylist Nicky Hambleton-Jones into a household name.
Naturally, when Julie, a childminder, was accepted onto the show last year she felt nothing but excitement about the journey she was embarking on. Over the following months, she was given a no-expense-spared makeover, and predictably the programme's concluding scenes unveiled Julie transformed - with smooth skin, glossy blonde hair and a perfect smile.
But a year on and Julie, who lives in Worthing with her husband Mark, 44, a computer engineer and three children Robert, 21, Laura, 19, and Jack, 13, regrets applying to take part.
Not only does she say she was treated more like a product than a person, but she's been left in agonising pain due to the cosmetic dentistry - a set of ten veneers - she was given as part of her makeover.
The veneers, which were inserted over her own teeth by Ten Years Younger dentist Dr Surinder Hundle in London in March last year, have left her unable to drink hot or cold drinks without a straw. Her teeth also throb with pain if she even exposes them to a breeze.
At night, she sufferers nightmares in which her teeth are being pulled out, and she wakes every morning with an agonising headache. She's also had to spend £1,000 of her own money in order to try to find a solution.
Worst of all, Julie insists there was nothing wrong with her teeth in the first place.
'I was keen for the show to be a success and felt under pressure to have the work done. If you watch the closing scenes of the programme, I'm standing there smiling and all my friends and family are looking really happy,' says Julie.
'But that was far from the reality of the situation. The production team had to keep telling me to smile and act all surprised, but I was in so much agony I found it a struggle not to cry.
'Then, at the end of filming, they made me pose with a cocktail and I couldn't even sip it because my teeth were shooting with pain. It was meant to be the happiest moment of my life, but I felt close to tears.
'My friends and family were worried too, they knew I was putting on an act. At that point, I could only hope the pain would subside. I couldn't get hold of any pain killers strong enough. I just wanted to go home.'
Indeed, Julie says she is so miserable about what's happened that she is now considering the drastic move of having her own teeth taken out - and resorting to wearing dentures.
Nicky Hambleton-Jones
Presenter Nicky Hambleton-Jones: Mrs Davis said she was cold and unfriendly off camera
'I'd never have agreed to go on the show if I'd known this was the state I would be left in,' says Julie. 'The most I was told by the dentist was that my teeth would be sensitive for a while. They didn't say anything about actual pain. As it is, I'm in constant agony.'
When Julie applied to the show, she was full of high hopes for her transformation.
'I was feeling low about my appearance,' she says. 'I didn't like what I saw in the mirror and thought I looked much older than I was. I felt like I was stuck in a rut. I hoped the show would make me feel great.'
But from the moment filming started, Julie felt disappointed and nervous. She noticed quickly that the show's presenter, Nicky Hambleton-Jones, known for her ability to put the show's guests at ease, was quite different off camera.
'Nicky was cold and distant and not how she appears on screen at all,' says Julie. 'She'd rather stand picking her fingernails then speak to you between takes while filming.
'You could tell it was very much just a job to her. I felt a bit disappointed. I didn't think we'd be friends, but on camera she seems warm and caring and I'd expected her to be the same off camera.'
She says: 'I'd applied to be on the show because I was unhappy with the frown lines on my face, but during the initial consultation they asked me to describe everything I didn't like about myself.
'This was in a room full of people, with all of them nodding in agreement and pointing out what was wrong with me. I mentioned I didn't like the way my front teeth overlapped and the team sent me to the dentist. I then found myself lying on the dentist's chair, with the camera crew staring at me, and I felt quite desperate to do anything to look better.
'The dentist, Dr Surinder Hundle, showed me all these images of my teeth and said that I had 'long' teeth and they were very stained.
'No one put words in my mouth or openly pressured me in to having veneers done. Instead, I was swept along in the process and eventually capitulated, and said: "OK, do my teeth, too."
'But really, until that point, I hadn't thought there was anything wrong with my teeth, a fact that I believe is reflected in the before pictures, which show my teeth as they originally were.'
Over the course of the following two months, Julie underwent a transformation which included a full face-lift and chemical peel as well as a style update.
Although she felt generally pleased with the results, the real problems arose when it came to the fitting of her new veneers. The operation took six hours, with frequent pauses for filming.
'I was in total agony for the last hour of it and I wasn't given any painkillers,' says Julie.
'As soon as the cameras weren't there, Dr Surinder was abrupt with me. I felt scared and upset - it was not a pleasurable and positive experience.'
From the moment the operation ended, Julie complained of unexpected pain in her teeth and gums.
Julie Davis before the cosmetic surgery in 2005 (left) and as she is now, suffering from severe tooth ache after she appeared on the 10 Years Younger show (right)
'I'd never had severe tooth ache or sensitive teeth before and this was unlike anything I'd ever felt,' she says. 'I wanted to die it was so painful. I couldn't talk, eat or breathe.
'I saw a "before" photograph of my teeth and I just buried my head in my hands and thought: "What have you done?" My teeth had been fine as they were, there certainly wasn't a dramatic improvement with the veneers, and now I could hardly speak because of the pain.'
Julie's attempts to make the production team aware of the agony she was in fell on deaf ears.
'I told producers that my teeth hurt, but I got the feeling the team thought I should be grateful for what I'd had done because it was free,' says Julie. 'I felt like they had done their part, and I had to do mine in return.
'And because I was pleased with the results of some of the other work, like my face lift, I felt too guilty to complain too much. I felt like I had no option but to grin and bear it.'
Over the following two months, Julie hoped the pain would subside, but instead it got worse. She began to experience nightmares that her teeth were being pulled out.
Friends and family reassured her the pain would settle, but night after night she would wake up crying with pain.
'I counted the minutes between pain-killers and I was constantly putting hot flannels in my mouth to dull the pain,' she says. 'I'd be up all night and Mark didn't know what to do to help me.'
Julie tried a variety of over-the-counter painkillers and in May 2007, her GP prescribed her with a strong painkiller.
He also recommended that she return to Dr Surinder Hundle's clinic.
'I went back to him in June 2007, and Dr Hundle was very defensive,' recalls Julie. 'He kept saying he had that evidence my teeth were terrible beforehand and did not seem at all concerned I was in such pain.
'It was horrible because I wasn't interested in sueing him, I just wanted help. He said there was nothing wrong and that I had a low pain threshold.'
In desperation, Julie went to her own dentist, who told her the nerve endings in her teeth were severely swollen and were pressing against the veneers. She was told it could take years for the swelling to subside and that Julie might need to have a root canal filling.
The dentist also said that a nerve ending must have been hit during the operation on her teeth.
In the meantime, Julie was still taking painkillers constantly and visiting acupuncturists and chiropractors in her desperation to find an alternative remedy.
When the programme aired last August, Julie, not surprisingly, felt angry.
'When the scenes featuring the dentistry and my grand unveiling were aired, I had to leave the room,' she says. 'It all looks so happy and perfect on screen, but my life has been ruined by what's happened.
'Because of the veneers, I have to endure the embarrassment of drinking coffee through a straw. I can't enjoy a nice glass of wine, and I can't even stay outside if it's cold or breezy because my teeth hurt so much.
'Although my new teeth look fine, I don't feel they belong to me. My teeth feel like they are trapped in some sort of vice-like device and the daily pain I am experiencing is crippling.
'I was offered further review appointments with Dr Hundle, but after what had happened I honestly couldn't face seeing him again.
'I phoned the Ten Years Younger team and told them I wouldn't be going back to any more of my appointments with him and that I'd rather see my own dentist in the future.
'The production team didn't seem to mind what I did, and as far as I was concerned, I wouldn't see Dr Hundle again for all the tea in China.'
When approached by the Mail, Dr Hundle said: 'On her preparation visit, Mrs Davis was told about all the options and procedures as well as post-operative warnings such as pain and sensitivity she would experience after the veneers were fitted, which she fully understood, and she signed the consent for treatment.
'In my personal experience I have seen clients experiencing no symptoms at all and others taking up to the better part of a year for their symptoms to settle.
'I can only say that I have done my very best to ensure Mrs Davis receives the levels of skill and care that we provide for all of our clients, and it was on her own accord that she cancelled her reviews following her treatment with us.'
A spokesperson for Ten Years Younger added: 'The welfare of our contributors is of paramount concern. All our contributors are made aware of the implications of their participation and any treatments they choose to undergo are made with their full consent and agreement.'
These words, however, are scant consolation to Julie, who fears she will be stuck with severe toothache indefinitely.
'When you watch programmes like these, it's all too easy to believe that everyone's life has been transformed for the better,' says Julie. 'But all the viewers see is that smiling faces at the end of the programme - they don't see the fallout that can last for years afterwards.
'Nothing is worth the pain I'm in and the stress I've gone through. I no longer care if I look 35 or 55 - I simply want to feel like a normal human being again.'