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Makeover Nation: The United States of Reinvention
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Makeover Nation: The United States of Reinvention
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Life is very much a project in the United Statesbut not a straightforwardly individual one. A duality of individual free choice and disciplinary institutional governance is the grand national paradox. Simply beingleading life without a bumper sticker avowing one’s elective institutional affinitiesseems implausible in a country consumed by the makeoverthe idea that what you were born as need not define you forever.
As Toby Miller writes in his introduction: “I come neither to bury the makeover nor to praise the makeover, but to criticize it, even as I stand alternately bewildered, amused, appalled, and attracted by it.” In
he does just that in a witty, no-holds-barred style. Miller looks at the power of various forms of knowledge about people and their emotions as they have been applied to the US population, from talk therapy to drug treatment. He is particularly interested in young peoplein examining how childhood is constructedand pays close attention to the much-favored (and overused) diagnosis and treatment of ADHD/ADD. He also focuses his attention on metrosexuals and right-wing Christians to disclose how these opposing groups manifest their drive toward self-creation. Miller believes that we must
the pleasures of reinvention even as we embrace them.