by There is a particular kind of photograph that almost everyone recognizes instantly: two images placed side by side, separated by a line, with a person on one side and a supposedly “new” version of that same person on the other.
The format may appear in a magazine feature, reality television episode, social-media carousel, advertisement, documentary, celebrity interview, or personal post. Sometimes the transformation involves clothing. Sometimes beauty. Sometimes fitness. Sometimes an entire lifestyle. And sometimes, most controversially, the body itself becomes the central evidence that change has supposedly occurred.
The language surrounding these stories is familiar: before and after, glow-up, transformation, new me, changed my life, from this to this.
Yet the cultural power of the transformation story extends far beyond the individual featured in it.
A transformation narrative quietly teaches audiences how to interpret human lives. It suggests that people have a “before” that is incomplete and an “after” that is more desirable. It can turn appearance into evidence of discipline, success, confidence, desirability or personal growth. It can make change feel inspirational while simultaneously making the untransformed self appear like a problem waiting to be solved.
That contradiction is what makes transformation stories culturally significant.
They are not inherently harmful. A person may genuinely experience a change in clothing, career, confidence, environment or self-expression as liberating. A makeover can introduce someone to a style they love. A fitness journey can become a meaningful personal experience. A television makeover can create community, recognition and opportunity.
The issue is not transformation itself.
The deeper question is why media so often needs transformation to make a person’s story feel complete.
For BodyInclusivity.com, that question matters because body-inclusive culture is not simply about putting more body types into advertisements. It is also about challenging the narrative structures through which bodies are assigned value.
Why Transformation Makes Such a Powerful Media Story
Stories require movement.
A character begins somewhere, encounters a challenge, changes and arrives somewhere else. Transformation therefore fits naturally into the basic grammar of storytelling. It offers conflict, progress and resolution in a format audiences understand almost instinctively.
But when the subject of transformation is a person’s appearance, the storytelling structure can become morally loaded.
The “before” is rarely treated as a neutral starting point.
It may be presented through unflattering lighting, casual clothing, an awkward pose or an image deliberately chosen to emphasize difference. The “after,” meanwhile, often receives professional styling, dramatic lighting, polished clothing and confident posture.
The visual language itself tells the audience which version deserves celebration.
This is especially powerful because photographs do not simply document change. They construct an interpretation of change.
Research into before-and-after imagery on social media illustrates why the format deserves more attention. A 2023 study involving young women found that responses differed depending on whether people saw before-and-after comparison images, only the “after” image, or fitspiration-style imagery. Interestingly, the researchers found that the side-by-side comparison condition did not simply produce the negative reaction that might be expected; participants exposed to the comparison images experienced improved mood and reduced body dissatisfaction compared with those shown the “after” image alone. (University of Portsmouth)
That finding complicates the conversation.
The problem is not necessarily the existence of a “before.” Context matters.
When the before is erased, however, audiences may be encouraged to see the after as the natural endpoint. The person becomes less a human being with an evolving life and more a visual project with a finished result.
That is where transformation culture becomes particularly interesting.
The “Before” Is Often Given a Cultural Meaning
A photograph can be technically neutral while the story around it is anything but neutral.
Consider the difference between:
“Here is how this person looked five years ago.”
and:
“Look what this person achieved.”
The first statement describes chronology.
The second assigns value.
Transformation media frequently collapses the distinction between the two.
An older body becomes the “before.” A newer body becomes the “after.” The implication can be that the first body represented stagnation while the second represents progress.
This is one reason transformation stories have such psychological weight. They can teach audiences to evaluate their own lives through the same framework.
Instead of asking, Do I feel comfortable in this body?
people may begin asking:
What would my after look like?
Instead of:
What clothes express me?
the question becomes:
What should I change before I deserve to wear them?
Instead of:
What does confidence mean to me?
the cultural script can suggest:
What do I need to change physically before I can become confident?
The distinction is subtle, but important.
Confidence may accompany transformation. It does not necessarily originate from it.
When Appearance Becomes a Shortcut for Personal Growth
Transformation stories are particularly powerful because appearance is easy to photograph.
Inner change is not.
You cannot photograph somebody becoming more emotionally resilient. You cannot place a side-by-side image of two versions of a person’s self-esteem and instantly communicate the difference. You cannot easily create a dramatic television reveal for someone who has developed stronger boundaries, learned to forgive themselves or stopped measuring their worth through other people’s approval.
Appearance, by contrast, creates immediate visual evidence.
That makes it exceptionally useful to media.
A new hairstyle can be shown.
A new wardrobe can be shown.
A changed silhouette can be shown.
A redesigned home can be shown.
The camera loves visible transformation because visibility creates narrative efficiency.
The danger comes when audiences learn to treat visible change as proof of deeper human improvement.
A person who looks different may indeed feel different. But the visual change itself cannot tell us whether their life is happier, healthier, more meaningful or more fulfilling.
Those are different categories of experience.
The Psychology of Comparison
Transformation stories also operate through social comparison.
Research on media and body image has repeatedly examined the relationship between exposure to idealized bodies, comparison and body dissatisfaction. A study published in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, for example, found that exposure to thin-idealized magazine imagery was associated with increased negative mood and body dissatisfaction, with social comparison playing an important mediating role. (Guilford Journals)
More recent research has complicated this picture by showing that not every person responds to every image in exactly the same way.
A 2022 study of young women found that exposure to thin-ideal social-media imagery did not produce a uniform effect across participants. Rather, upward appearance comparison was associated with greater decreases in body satisfaction among some participants, while emotion regulation and self-efficacy also influenced responses. (PubMed)
This matters because media criticism can sometimes become too simplistic.
It is tempting to say:
“Transformation stories make people feel bad about themselves.”
But the reality is more nuanced.
Some people feel inspired.
Some feel neutral.
Some feel motivated.
Some feel inadequate.
Some enjoy the story while remaining completely aware that it is constructed.
Others may internalize the message much more deeply.
The same photograph can therefore function differently depending on the viewer’s age, cultural environment, self-concept, appearance investment, media literacy and personal circumstances.
The cultural issue is not that every transformation story produces harm.
It is that a media ecosystem saturated with transformation narratives can repeatedly reinforce the idea that appearance is a legitimate measure of personal progress.
The Rise of the “Glow-Up” as a Cultural Language
The contemporary “glow-up” is an especially revealing development.
The term can be playful and empowering. It can describe experimentation with fashion, makeup, hair, confidence or self-expression. For many people, changing their appearance is genuinely enjoyable.
But the popularity of the glow-up also reflects a broader cultural fascination with visible self-optimization.
Social media rewards the reveal.
The old photo creates curiosity.
The new photo creates a payoff.
The comments provide validation.
The algorithm provides distribution.
The story can then become a loop: transformation produces attention, attention reinforces transformation, and transformation becomes content.
This is different from older makeover culture because the audience is no longer merely watching someone else’s transformation.
People can now become the producers, subjects and distributors of their own transformation narratives.
Instagram, TikTok and YouTube have effectively turned the makeover into a participatory media format.
The individual does not simply experience change.
They can document it.
Package it.
Caption it.
Monetize it.
Repeat it.
This changes the cultural stakes.
From Makeover Television to the Self as a Media Project
Traditional makeover television often followed a recognizable formula.
Someone was introduced as struggling with appearance or confidence. Experts intervened. Clothing, grooming, interiors, food or lifestyle were changed. A reveal followed.
The transformation was presented as entertainment, but it also carried an implicit philosophy:
Experts know what your improved self should look like.
Contemporary digital culture has decentralized that authority.
There is no longer necessarily one stylist, one host or one television network determining what transformation means.
Instead, millions of creators participate in defining it.
A person can become their own stylist, fitness coach, beauty expert, photographer, editor and narrator.
This can be liberating.
It can also create an environment in which self-surveillance becomes continuous.
The camera is always available.
The comparison photograph is always possible.
The audience is always potentially watching.
The transformation therefore does not have to end.
There can always be another “after.”
And once an “after” becomes normal, it can eventually become the next “before.”
The Particularly Powerful Role of Body Transformation Narratives
Among all transformation stories, body-focused narratives carry an unusually heavy cultural burden.
This is because bodies have historically been assigned social meanings.
A body can be read as attractive or unattractive, disciplined or undisciplined, youthful or aging, feminine or masculine, fashionable or unfashionable, respectable or undesirable.
Those judgments are not biologically inevitable. They are culturally produced.
Media participates in producing them.
Research examining body imagery across mass and social media has found relationships between perceived media body ideals, internalization of those ideals, self-discrepancy and body dissatisfaction. The study also emphasizes that the effects of media are shaped by the interaction between social ideals and the individual’s perception of the gap between their actual and ideal self. (PubMed Central (PMC))
That “gap” is crucial.
Transformation narratives make the gap visible.
They effectively say:
Here is where you are.
Here is where you could be.
The distance between the two becomes the story.
For some viewers, that distance may feel exciting.
For others, it can feel like a personal failure.
The Problem With Treating Thinness as a Plot Resolution
One of the oldest patterns in popular culture is the idea that becoming thinner constitutes an inherently positive transformation.
This does not require a character to explicitly say, “Thinness equals success.”
The message can be embedded in narrative structure.
The character becomes thinner.
People react positively.
Clothes fit differently.
Romance becomes possible.
Confidence increases.
The story ends.
The audience is expected to understand the transformation as progress.
That storytelling pattern has cultural consequences because it makes a particular body type function as a visual shorthand for achievement.
The problem is not that people should never want to change their bodies.
People have agency over their own bodies, and their reasons for changing or maintaining them can be deeply personal.
The problem is assigning a universal moral meaning to that change.
A thinner body is not automatically a happier body.
A larger body is not automatically an unhappy body.
A muscular body is not automatically a healthier body.
A conventionally attractive body is not automatically a more fulfilled body.
The media does not need to eliminate transformation stories.
It needs to become more sophisticated about what transformation means.
A Global Story With Different Cultural Scripts
Transformation culture is not exclusively Western, although many of its most recognizable commercial forms emerged through Western advertising, celebrity culture, reality television and fashion media.
Across the world, ideals surrounding bodies and beauty are shaped by local histories, class structures, colonial legacies, religion, race, gender, colorism and economic aspiration.
In South Asian cultures, for example, beauty messaging can intersect with longstanding preferences surrounding complexion, hair, body proportions, clothing and marriageability.
In East Asian societies, beauty industries have developed their own distinctive standards around facial appearance, skin and presentation.
Across parts of Africa, body ideals have historically varied substantially between communities and periods, demonstrating why it is inaccurate to treat “the ideal body” as a single global category.
At the same time, globalized media platforms can circulate particular aesthetic ideals at unprecedented speed.
A beauty trend originating in Seoul can reach Karachi.
A fitness trend emerging in Los Angeles can reach Nairobi.
A celebrity styling aesthetic from Lagos can influence audiences in London.
A body transformation format developed on American television can be recreated by creators around the world.
The result is not simple cultural homogenization.
Local cultures adapt global aesthetics.
They reinterpret them.
They resist them.
They combine them with existing traditions.
That is why body inclusivity must be understood as a cultural conversation rather than a single Western media movement.
Colorism, Class and the Politics of the “Glow-Up”
Transformation stories can also carry class signals.
A makeover may involve access to professional styling, expensive skincare, designer clothing, cosmetic services, personal training, travel or carefully curated environments.
When these resources are presented simply as the result of “confidence” or “self-improvement,” structural inequality disappears from the story.
The transformation looks individual.
The resources behind it do not.
This is especially important in societies where appearance can function as a marker of social mobility.
The “glow-up” can therefore become more than an aesthetic transformation. It can represent entry into a different social world.
A new wardrobe may communicate professional status.
A new beauty aesthetic may signal cosmopolitan identity.
A particular body shape may be associated with access to leisure, fitness culture or disposable income.
A transformation narrative can therefore tell audiences not only how to look, but also what kind of person society rewards.
Race and the Question of Whose Transformation Gets Celebrated
Transformation stories also intersect with racial representation.
Historically, mainstream media has frequently centered narrow definitions of beauty, often privileging whiteness, Eurocentric facial features and particular body proportions.
This means that “transformation” can sometimes imply movement toward an existing racialized beauty hierarchy.
Body-inclusive media has an opportunity to disrupt that structure.
A meaningful transformation story does not have to be about becoming closer to a dominant beauty ideal.
It can be about becoming more visible as oneself.
That distinction is significant.
When a woman with tightly coiled hair embraces her natural texture, the cultural meaning may involve identity and representation rather than “fixing” her appearance.
When a dark-skinned model becomes the center of a major beauty campaign, the transformation may occur not in her body but in the industry’s understanding of who belongs in beauty imagery.
When disabled people are represented wearing fashion without their bodies being framed as inspirational objects, the transformation can occur in the media narrative itself.
Sometimes the most important transformation is not what happens to the person on screen.
It is what happens to the audience’s expectations.
The “Inspirational” Trap
There is another tension within transformation culture: the expectation that people with visibly different bodies should become inspirational.
This can happen particularly often with disabled people, people in larger bodies and people who challenge conventional beauty standards.
Their bodies become stories.
Their resilience becomes content.
Their appearance becomes a lesson.
Even when the intention is positive, this can create an uncomfortable burden.
Not every person needs to turn their body into an educational experience for someone else.
A person can simply exist.
They can wear beautiful clothes without representing a movement.
They can take photographs without proving anything.
They can age without presenting aging as a problem.
They can remain the same size without explaining why.
This may sound ordinary, but culturally it is radical.
Celebrity Transformation Stories and the Public Body
Celebrity culture intensifies these dynamics because famous people already exist under extraordinary visual scrutiny.
A celebrity’s appearance can become news independently of anything they have said or done.
That makes responsible reporting particularly important.
A documented public statement about a celebrity’s changing relationship with fashion, identity or self-expression can provide meaningful cultural analysis.
Speculation about someone’s body, health, private choices or supposed cosmetic procedures cannot.
This distinction matters because celebrity transformation stories can quickly become templates for ordinary audiences.
When a famous person’s appearance is treated as a public project, audiences may begin to believe that their own appearance should be similarly available for evaluation.
The healthier media approach is to focus on what public figures have actually said or participated in publicly: campaigns, interviews, creative work, fashion choices and documented cultural moments.
The story should remain about the cultural meaning of those moments rather than inventing private explanations.
Reality Television and the Promise of Reinvention
Reality television deserves particular attention because it transformed personal change into serialized entertainment.
Shows built around makeovers, fitness, dating or lifestyle reinvention often create a dramatic emotional arc.
There is a problem.
Then there is intervention.
Then there is struggle.
Then comes revelation.
Finally, the transformed person receives approval.
Academic scholarship on The Biggest Loser, for example, has examined what happens to transformation narratives after the television makeover itself. The story does not simply end with the reveal; it continues through digital media and post-show representations, demonstrating how makeover culture can extend beyond the original television episode. (Taylor & Francis Online)
This is an important insight for the social-media era.
There is increasingly no final episode.
The audience can continue watching.
The subject can continue posting.
The comments can continue evaluating.
The transformation becomes an ongoing public narrative.
Why “After” Can Become a Dangerous Word
The word after sounds final.
It suggests completion.
But human beings do not have final versions.
Bodies change with age.
Style changes with circumstance.
Confidence fluctuates.
Relationships change.
Careers change.
Cultures change.
A person who once celebrated an “after” may later discover that they preferred an earlier version of themselves.
That is not failure.
It is simply being human.
The problem with transformation culture is that it can turn natural change into an endless optimization project.
There is always another improvement.
Another flaw.
Another trend.
Another ideal.
Another “after.”
Not Every Transformation Story Is a Problem
A genuinely inclusive media culture should resist the temptation to replace one rigid rule with another.
It would be just as limiting to say that transformation is always oppressive as it is to say transformation is always empowering.
People deserve autonomy.
Someone may want to change their hairstyle.
Someone may want to experiment with fashion.
Someone may want to become stronger.
Someone may want to change their body.
Someone may want to lose weight.
Someone may want to gain weight.
Someone may want to remain exactly as they are.
None of these choices automatically tells us whether the person is liberated or pressured.
The cultural responsibility lies partly with the media framing.
Does the story imply that the old body was worthless?
Does it describe one appearance as universally superior?
Does it turn a private choice into a moral achievement?
Does it erase the resources required to produce the transformation?
Does it suggest that happiness is guaranteed at the other end?
Or does it allow the person to describe their own experience in their own terms?
Those distinctions can transform the cultural meaning of the story.
A More Inclusive Transformation Narrative
What would a genuinely body-inclusive transformation story look like?
It might begin by abandoning the assumption that the body itself has to be transformed.
Perhaps the transformation is sartorial.
Perhaps someone discovers color after years of avoiding it.
Perhaps a person begins photographing themselves after years of hiding from cameras.
Perhaps someone enters a workplace where their cultural clothing is finally respected.
Perhaps an older woman discovers a style that makes her feel visible rather than invisible.
Perhaps a disabled fashion creator challenges the industry’s assumptions about who can model clothing.
Perhaps a person stops editing every photograph before publishing it.
These are transformations too.
They simply move the narrative away from the body as a problem.
The most powerful transformation may therefore be a transformation in relationship.
The relationship with clothing.
The relationship with photographs.
The relationship with aging.
The relationship with visibility.
The relationship with beauty.
The relationship with one’s own reflection.
The Rise of “Process” Over “Reveal”
One promising cultural shift is the move away from dramatic reveals toward process-based storytelling.
The reveal asks:
“How different do I look?”
The process asks:
“What did I learn?”
The reveal emphasizes the endpoint.
The process makes room for uncertainty.
This difference matters because real life rarely resembles a makeover montage.
People change unevenly.
They experiment.
They reverse decisions.
They discover preferences.
They have good days and bad days.
A process-oriented story can represent that complexity.
It also gives audiences more realistic expectations.
Instead of teaching people to chase a perfect final image, it teaches them to understand change as an ongoing experience.
Media Literacy Can Change the Way Transformation Is Received
Audiences are not passive.
They can learn to recognize framing.
Research has found evidence that media literacy can act as a protective factor against some negative effects of idealized media exposure. In one study involving adolescent girls, stronger critical media literacy reduced the relationship between thin-ideal internalization, upward appearance comparison and reduced body satisfaction. (PubMed)
That does not mean audiences can simply “think their way out” of harmful media environments.
Structural responsibility still belongs to publishers, producers, advertisers, platforms and creators.
But critical viewing skills matter.
A viewer can ask:
Why was this particular photograph selected?
What has the caption told me to think about the person?
What information is missing?
Is appearance being treated as evidence of character?
Who benefits commercially from this transformation narrative?
Would this story still be considered interesting if the body had not changed?
Those questions interrupt the automatic power of the before-and-after format.
The Future of Transformation Culture
The future may not involve abandoning transformation stories.
Instead, the most meaningful shift may be changing what counts as transformation.
The media industry increasingly understands that audiences are diverse.
But diversity cannot stop at casting.
A campaign can feature bodies of different sizes while still presenting thinness as the ultimate endpoint.
A television show can include different races while still treating appearance as the measure of success.
A social-media creator can promote body acceptance while continuing to structure every post around physical improvement.
True inclusivity requires changing the narrative architecture.
The body cannot simply be included in the frame.
It must be released from the requirement to justify its presence.
That means allowing bodies to appear without being explained.
Without being compared.
Without being ranked.
Without being transformed for the audience’s satisfaction.
What Comes After the “After”?
Perhaps the most important question is not whether transformation stories should disappear.
It is what comes after the obsession with the after.
A more mature media culture could tell stories in which change is meaningful without making the original self inferior.
It could celebrate fashion without prescribing a body.
It could celebrate fitness without presenting thinness or muscularity as moral achievements.
It could celebrate beauty without pretending beauty has one universal form.
It could celebrate personal change without turning change into a requirement.
And it could make room for another kind of story altogether:
the story of becoming comfortable without becoming different.
That may be one of the most radical possibilities for body-inclusive media.
For generations, popular culture has been extraordinarily skilled at showing audiences how people become “better.”
The next cultural challenge is learning how to show people becoming more themselves.
Transformation will always be part of human life. People grow, change, experiment, recover, reinvent and evolve. There is nothing inherently wrong with that.
What deserves scrutiny is the cultural assumption that every evolution needs a visual before-and-after, and that the second image must always be better.
A body-inclusive future does not have to reject transformation.
It can redefine it.
The transformation can happen in the camera.
In the casting room.
In the fashion industry.
In the editing suite.
In the language of headlines.
In the audience’s expectations.
And perhaps most importantly, in the quiet moment when a person looks at an old photograph and no longer feels compelled to judge the person staring back.
That is a transformation worth telling.
Sources: PubMed, Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, University of Portsmouth, Fat Studies, ScienceDirect, Vogue, The Guardian
