When Taylor Swift sang “you wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me,” she may have been talking about coming of age in the early 2000s.
Pop culture at the time was rife with fat-shaming, homophobia, racism and sexism. Jessica Simpson was considered overweight. Ross demanded to know if his male nanny was gay while the Friends laugh track rolled. Samantha Jones unironically referred to herself as a victim of reverse racism after dating a Black man on Sex and the City.
It was an era when much of pop culture was devoted to casually destroying young women with cruel misogyny and pressure to be thin, toned and stylish. And that was the environment in which many of us eagerly watched the hit TLC show What Not To Wear give style makeovers to unsuspecting people nominated by their family and friends.
Yes life is hard now but in the early 2000s your coworkers could secretly nominate you for What Not to Wear.
Now, a decade later, hosts Stacy London and Clinton Kelly have announced that they’re reuniting for a new series called Wear Whatever The F You Want that some might interpret as a mea culpa.
“The world has changed a lot since the run of What Not to Wear, and, thankfully, so have we. These days, we have zero interest in telling people what to do, based on society’s norms — because there are no more norms!,” Kelly and London said in a joint statement.
Prime Video announced Monday that the new show will have eight episodes and air exclusively on Prime Video. Though the streamer notes that it’s still considered a “style transformation” show, instead of telling people what to wear, the hosts say they will “empower each client to live out their fashion fantasy and find their style truth.”
The new show’s style reflects the more contemporary, supportive values around personal identity and expression, explained Zorianna Zurba, a pop culture expert and assistant professor in the Creative School at Toronto Metropolitan University.
These values include “recognizing that identity includes gender expression, and, of course, financial access to clothing, beauty treatments and accessories,” Zurba told CBC News.
Some fans say that’s refreshing.
“The Gen Z kids are moving things in a comfortable direction,” one commenter wrote on London’s Instagram post announcing the show.
“There is something so healing about all of this,” said another on Kelly’s post.
In her column Chronically Online, CBC’s Ashley Moliere explains why so many people seem to be using the words “demure” and “mindful.”
A product of the time
On What Not To Wear, hosts London and Kelly ambushed people — mostly women nominated by friends and family — in order to methodically pick apart their everyday outfits in front of a 360 degree mirror.
Finally, when most of their wardrobes had been stuffed into a comically large trash bin, participants were given a credit card and sent to boutiques and stores to shop for new clothes while keeping London and Kelly’s “fashion rules” in mind.
The original show attempted to offer a guideline as to how people should present themselves, and on occasion, Zurba says it did support women in a positive way, allowing them to feel their best and see themselves in a new way.
“But underlying this support was always the assumption that you were watched and silently judged for your appearance.”
While the show was beloved by many, some of its rules — like choosing slimming clothing and the importance of creating a waist — didn’t age well. Personal style and preference was often quashed, and looking “flattering” (to others) was the ultimate goal.
It was sassy, sometimes heart-warming, and so popular that it was nominated for a 2005 People’s Choice Award. But it was also very much a product of the time, explains Shana MacDonald, a pop culture and digital media expert and the O’Donovan Chair in Communication at the University of Waterloo.
It aired during a time that she and other media scholars refer to as peak post-feminism. Around the turn of the millennium, shows like Sex and the City embraced female empowerment, but within a relationship to capitalism and consumption.
MacDonald says shows like this and society in general set a very specific standard of being fashionable, thin, white, able-bodied, heterosexual and hyper-feminine. “It became toxic,” she told CBC News.
This is evident in some of the more problematic episodes of What Not To Wear, such as one featuring Courtney, a woman the show labelled a tomboy, who repeatedly told the hosts that dressing more feminine was outside her comfort zone and cried often.
WATCH | What Not To Wear makes over Courtney:
“Courtney can’t hide from Stacy and Clinton, even in her camouflage. They’re determined to take this dress-hating girl from tomboy to trendsetter,” notes the episode’s description on YouTube.
“You can’t really see if you’re a boy or a girl under there,” Kelly told Courtney as she showed off one of her favourite outfits, which wound up in the trash.
‘Thank god for Gen Z’
But as some fans point out, the problem wasn’t necessarily the show: it was the era.
“Every time I found myself re-watching an episode and cringing at the word ‘flattering’ or ‘slimming’ or ‘camouflaging,’ words that were used almost every episode, my first thought wasn’t, ‘Shame on Clinton and Stacy. How dare they?’ ” wrote Olivia Muenter on the beauty and style news website Byrdie in 2021.
“It was, ‘Wow, this is how everyone talked about bodies and clothing 10 years ago.’ “
Though MacDonald says the early 2000s were a fairly problematic time, she notes that things have started to change, with audiences today demanding better.
“Thank God for Gen Z and for fourth-wave feminism, because they’re pushing agendas and being dissatisfied with things we just kind of took for granted and accepted.”
But with Wear Whatever The F You Want seemingly taking into account a new perspective that focuses on body-positivity and helping people embrace their own unique styles, viewers of the original show seem to be on board … mostly.
“I’m curious to see how the reboot changes makeover elements like the 360 mirror, throwing away all the old clothes, teaching style, and of course the makeover itself,” Zurba said.
“I think a better title would be ‘Clinton and Stacy Apologize for Things They Said on Basic Cable,” one commenter wrote on Kelly’s Instagram post.
