This collection of essays focuses on two sub-genres of reality television: dating shows, like ""The Bachelor"", ""Joe Millionaire"", and the earlier ""Love Connection""; and makeover reality shows, like ""The Swan"" and ""Are You Hot? The Search for America's Sexiest People"". Each author explores a different aspect of one or both of these types of shows, focusing especially on the cultural interaction between the text - dating and makeover shows - and society. Five of the essays utilize audience analysis to discern the ways in which actual, as opposed to idealized, viewers relate to these genres. The others cover a wide range of critical methodologies - including textual, rhetorical, cultural, and ideological approaches - to analyze a broad spectrum of dating and makeover shows.