Classy Looks and Classificatory Gazes: the fashioning of class on reality TV

Reality television has spawned a proliferation of programmes that feature ‘ordinary’ people. Often this notion of ordinary not only means non-celebrity but is also a synonym for working-class. Class, however, is typically unacknowledged and unspoken in the narratives that unfold in the genre, while the programmes themselves construct class and perceptions of difference, largely through fashion and appearance. Although there is an increased representation of working-class subjects in the reality genre, this visibility is not matched by an access to control of media platforms. Therefore, it is argued, what is often found in the representations generated by these programmes is a kind of class tourism that involves Othering. A substantial branch of reality TV that deals in narratives of transformation and foregrounds fashion and the body as signifiers of classed taste is introduced, and it is posited that cultural hegemony might be identified in the framing of middle-class taste as good taste in this subgenre, not only for those surveyed on-screen but also for the audience watching at home. Snog Marry Avoid? is analysed in relation to the performance of classed femininity it offers within this context.