Configurations: Introduction

Configurations

Volumn 15, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 1-8

  Wegenstein, Bernadette ^a  

^a JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 67651209037     PISSN: 10631801     EISSN: 10806520     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (11)

1. http://www.surgery.org/press/news-release.php?iid=465 (accessed 10/3/07).
2. Alex Kuczynski, Beauty Junkies: Inside Our $15 Billion Obsession with Cosmetic Surgery (New York: Doubleday, 2006), p. 152
3. http://www.surgery.org/press/news-release.php?iid=395 (accessed 10/3/07).
4. Another statistic to keep in mind: the average individual American watches television for roughly four hours a day, and the average American household watches more than seven hours of television a day. According to one study, television accounts for nearly 40 percent of the average American's free time: Carl Elliott, Better Than Well: American Medicine Meets the American Dream (New York: Norton, 2003), p. 84.
5. Chad Raphael, "The Political Economic Origins of Reali-TV," in Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture, ed. Susan Murray and Laurie Ouellette (New York/London: New York University Press, 2004), p. 119. For coining the term "Reali-TV" Chad refers to an article by Ed Siegel, "It's Not Fiction. Or, It's Not Reality. It's Reali-TV," Boston Globe, May 26, 1991, p. A1.
6. Interview for the documentary Made Over in America by Bernadette Wegenstein and Geoffrey Alan Rhodes: http://www.frif.com/new2007/over.htm (accessed 10/3/07).
7. The Swan, The Complete Series, First Season (2004), DVD edition, gaLAnEntertainment 2006.
8. Interview for the documentary Made Over in America (above, n. 6).
9. The second season included two episodes in which one contestant was handicapped, as well as some ethnic diversity.
10. Body dysmorphic disorder is a psychiatric disorder characterized by excessive preoccupation with some imagined defect in physical appearance, causing the subject significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning. See DSM-IV, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, 4th ed., quoted in Katharine R. Phillips, The Broken Mirror: Understanding and Treating Body Dysmorphic Disorder (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 33.
11. Michelle Green and Michael A. Lipton, "The Swan Controversy: Has TV Plastic Surgery Gone Too Far?" cover story, People Magazine, June 7, 2004, p. 61.