It’s HGTV’s Fault I Hate My Home, or Something
HGTV doesn’t make you insecure about your home any more than watching SVU makes you worry about getting arrested, unless you are projecting.
It took one generation to go from “TV will rot your brain” to “HGTV will make you hate your home,” apparently.
Washington Post’s “The Home You Own” reporter Rachel Kurzius:
If you’ve ever watched a home makeover show on HGTV, you know the key “before” sequence. It’s when the camera critically pans over the house and the host points out everything that needs to be fixed. The decor? Cluttered. The paint? Cringe. The overall takeaway is that the home is an utter embarrassment and needs a total overhaul before anyone of taste would consider putting a doormat out front.
But what happens when people consider how their own homes might fare under this kind of scrutiny? It can lead to an overwhelming sameness in aesthetics, according to Annetta Grant, an assistant professor of markets, innovation and design at Bucknell University, who researched how home renovation media such as HGTV and magazines such as Better Homes and Gardens influenced homeowners.
Grant calls the idea that anyone could be scrutinizing or judging your decorating choices the “market-reflected gaze” in a research paper with Jay M. Handelman, an associate professor…
