Transformations

I realized today that all my favorite TV shows- basically "What Not to Wear" and anything on HGTV- have a lot in common.  In each of these shows, a really big transformation takes place.  In "What Not to Wear", my favorite part is when the woman gets her hair and makeup done, and she looks amazing despite how bad she looked before she was on the show.  But in fact, if she had looked fine before, the show wouldn't be so addicting.  And the shows that I like on HGTV are all room transformations: a really skilled designer takes a room lacking in style and throughout the episode, it becomes better and better until voila! it's all put together and even though we saw part of the process, it's such a great surprise.  So "What Not to Wear" and an HGTV room design show actually have almost the same structure: something that doesn't look that great is taken, through a long and difficult process, to a stunning level that was impossible to anticipate.

What is it about transformations that is so addicting?  Change is one thing, but transformation is a woman who looks almost completely different, or a room become unrecognizable.  I think people are both drawn to and afraid of transformations.  We don't want to lose who we are, and it's so hard to imagine what this kind of change could result in that we tend to stop somewhere in the middle.  Watching transformations can be fun and exciting. And while we want the excitement that would come from such a change, we're afraid of giving up control because that's what a  transformation is: in order for it to really work, we need to lose ourselves a little bit because we have no idea how spectacular the big picture really is.