Stacy and Clinton reunite — with a gentler approach to makeovers — on Wear Whatever the F You Want

Another 2000s era cultural artifact has gotten a makeover — and this time, it's a makeover show.

Wear Whatever the F You Want is a new show that brings together stylists Stacy London and Clinton Kelly, who many audiences will recognize from their time hosting the popular TLC reality show, What Not to Wear.

But it's not exactly a reboot. On What Not to Wear, the pair gained notoriety for not only giving everyday people style makeovers, but also their approach to these makeovers — which often required throwing out the subject's old clothes, and making a lot of snarky comments along the way.

Now, on Amazon Prime's Wear Whatever the F You Want, Stacy and Clinton are taking a totally different approach to helping people develop their personal style. But does their newer, nicer approach still make for good TV?

Today on Commotion, culture writers Amil Niazi and Joan Summers chat with host Elamin Abdelmahmoud about the legacy of 2000s-era fashion anxiety, and how Wear Whatever the F You Want takes an entirely different philosophy on fashion.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: Amil, the show felt very centered around the hosts, Stacy and Clinton, and how opinionated they are, and how harsh they can be around other people. What was the appeal of that? Why did we want to watch something like that? 

Amil: Well, I think as an audience, we really get something out of other people saying the thing that is taboo. And for Stacy and Clinton to be able to just say the mean thing — to tell the woman that she's too old to wear a short skirt and bobby socks, you know — something that you might have thought in passing, but you would never tell someone in your life…. They were kind of like an avatar for our worst desires and our worst thoughts and our worst impulses.

They were fun to watch in their meanness, too, of course. We wouldn't have enjoyed them if they weren't funny and snarky. And their love for each other, and the way they sort of giggled when each made a really good joke, I think we also got something out of that. We can't be that mean in real life. And so Stacy and Clinton allowed us to experience something that we all don't want to admit that we have inside of us.

Elamin: Joan, the subtext of what Amil was saying there is we all have these thoughts, we just don't actually get to air them out. And this show was sort of an opportunity for those thoughts to emerge…. Television was like this from 2003 until maybe 2013, which is when the show was on. How much do you feel like this show is an artifact of that time?

Joan: Yeah, I think that especially here in America, where the show was obviously very popular, it was such an expression of this burgeoning anxiety in American media around specifically the way that women looked, dressed, where we shopped. As women found more agency in the workplace, in the home, at school, with their career opportunities and their self-expression, and media became so much more disseminated and in our own hands, I think that a lot of conservative beliefs started to bubble up in the way that we talked about women's bodies, whether it's body size or clothing. And I think this show specifically was such a good way for people to channel all that onto these avatars of, like, "No, you're 40. You can't do this. Time to put on the pencil skirt and the blazer from JCPenney and watch the kids, or go to work at the office job, and that's all you ever get to be," you know? And there's so much media that I think it also ties into….

There's also this idea of crushing people's dreams or hopes. You look at American Idol, which was also kind of schlocky reality TV for the time. And for all the good singing, people didn't enjoy that. They enjoyed watching the auditions and seeing people panic and cry because their dreams got crushed, or have a really crazy bad audition, you know? There was this, I think, need for people in the 2000s to channel all of these anxieties and frustrations onto reality TV. And Stacy and Clinton were more than happy to do that.

Amil: You also think about what was happening online — you had people like Perez Hilton talking about Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan and their bodies, how they looked, who they were dating and what they were doing. The landscape was just mean, online and on television. It was just a very harsh time to be a woman.

Elamin: The approach that Stacy and Clinton are taking has changed a lot. Amil, you watched the show [Wear Whatever the F You Want]. What's different about it? 

Amil: I mean, it's so funny because you can almost hear how difficult it is for them to not be judging. They're just like, "We want to help you be whatever you want to be, and we won't say anything about what we think about that fantasy. We'll just help you do it." Yes, it is obviously a reboot that really pushes aside the meanness, pushes aside the judginess and says, "We want to repent for what we did to women, specifically, for all those years. And now we accept that personal style is an expression of who you are, and it's meant to be different from what everyone else is doing. And so we wanna help you achieve that." So it's a much nicer, much gentler, much more inclusive, pulling people into the circle rather than pushing them out. But I still hear in their voices how hard it is for them to do that because it doesn't come naturally to Stacy and Clinton.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Jean Kim.