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There is an inescapable likeness between the names Snog Marry Avoid? and Fuck Marry Kill . Having played the game Fuck Marry Kill with groups of friends in our late adolescence and early twenties, we could not help but notice the similarities when recently stumbling across the television show Snog Marry Avoid? . In the game Fuck Marry Kill , one person selects three celebrities and their friends must then declare, for the group's macabre amusement, who out of these three they would choose to fuck, marry or kill. In Snog Marry Avoid? 's reality television incarnation, the gaze of judgement is turned explicitly to (predominantly) 'everyday' women and their bodies. These (predominantly white) women are judged through the device of vox pop, where supposedly everyday men decide whether the women are snogging or marriage material, or worst of all, should be avoided altogether. This is an explicitly sexualised (and predominantly heterosexual) judgement, in which men are granted a casting vote over whether or not women are successful in their gender performance. Of course, the ultimate judgement is held by the television audiences in the UK, and now in Australia, who are invited to gaze at, revel in and revolt against the excesses of femininity and to recognise 'subjectivities out of control [and] beyond propriety' (Skeggs, 2005: 974).
Running into its sixth season in the UK, Snog Marry Avoid? reached Australian television screens last year. Produced by and aired on BBC3 in the UK, and re-run on the recently created free-to-air digital channel 11 in Australia, Snog Marry Avoid? 's arrival among the growing conglomeration of reality television programming is perhaps unsurprising. From the perspective of programmers, Snog Marry Avoid? has the winning combination of scantily clad women and the much-loved genre of makeovers (or in this case, 'makeunders'). Put briefly, Snog Marry Avoid? offers makeunders to women who are assessed to excessively use make-up, fake tan and so on, so that they can find their 'natural beauty'. In this way, Snog Marry Avoid? could be seen to reflect an apparent popular consensus: that 'raunch culture' and the hyper-sexualisation of girls and young women need to be explicitly countered and deconstructed (see Levy, 2010).
Moreover, in encouraging women to be more 'natural', Snog Marry Avoid?