‘100% Hotter’ On Netflix Is Like If ‘Queer Eye’ Went To The Dark Side

I need to talk about the show 100% Hotter. The British reality show dropped on Netflix this week, and since I like Queer Eye and British reality shows about nice men who come and help families design gardens, the streaming service thought this was the show for me. It’s a makeover show akin to What Not To Wear, but with a twist. 100% Hotter prides itself on giving “makeunders.” That is, the show targets fashion disasters who take makeup and style to a costume-ish extreme and tones them down. It continually bills itself as a positive force, helping people put their best face forward. Instead, I found it to be a dark, mean, bitchy Queer Eye. Compelling? Sure. Healthy? Probably not.

100% Hotter follows three beauty style gurus — stylist Grace Woodward, hair designer Daniel Palmer, and make-up artist Melissa Sophia — as they help so-called fashion disasters achieve their perfect glow up with some major dampening down. At first glance, it’s a simple enough set up. However, I had a few reservations. One is how catty the format is.

After meeting the style team, each contestant has to withstand a blistering supercut of everyday Brits maligning them with insults and rating them on a dubious scale of 1-10. (The idea is that after the makeover, they’ll be scored again and it will be better.)  Then, once their make up is clean off their face, they are dressed in a “Work In Progress” t-shirt and sent on a potentially traumatic exercise out on the street. Some of these are nice — like when disabled drag queen Sophie is asked to model for an art class to show that she’s beautiful and worthy of attention — and some of these are not so nice — like when Jade, a woman with a tanning addiction and Barbie-fetish, is sent to a local hardware store so strangers can match her fake skin tone to wood varnish.

Which brings me back to Jade. Poor Jade. Jade is the very first contestant we meet on 100% Hotter and her journey encompasses all of my concerns about this show. Jade clearly has some deeply rooted issues that cannot and will not (and should not) be fixed by a humiliating experience on a catty British makeover show. While the other contestant on this episode, a goth girl named Maisie, seemed reluctant, though ultimately ready for a polish to her personal style, Jade was confused by what everyone’s issue with her look was.

Jade (seen in the lead image up top), had undergone surgery and daily fake tanning sessions in order to make herself look like a living Barbie doll. When pressed about her huge breast implants, she said that she liked the big boob look. After she was asked to wipe off her tan, you could see her soul crumple a bit. The whole episode she awkwardly nodded and acquiesced that others must not like the way she looks. It was heartbreaking.

About halfway through the first episode, as the team pulled Jade’s long platinum extensions out and revealed that her real hair was nothing more than a bleach-burned bob, fraying at the ends and balding in several sore areas, I felt like crying. (And it wasn’t the good, cathartic kind of cry that Queer Eye inspires.) It was all-too-apparent that Jade was hurting physically, if not also obviously mentally. When hairstylist Daniel Palmer later showed Jade her new stepford wife-soft look, complete with dusty blonde wig, and she fidgeted in discomfort, I wanted to scream.

And don’t get me started on the “magic mirror.”

My issue with 100% Hotter is twofold. The goal of the show is to tame contestants’ outrageous looks to make them more palatable to society at large, and I don’t think that’s a good thing. It’s a pernicious mission that puts self-esteem in the hands of strangers. Other makeover shows like Queer Eye and What Not To Wear focus on how a style upgrade can lift self-esteem for people who have found themselves foundering. 100% Hotter seems to be okay with forcing square pegs into round holes if need be.

Which leads me to my big concern: not all these contestants need a makeover as much as they need acceptance. The magic of Queer Eye is the Fab Five comes in ready and eager with hugs and positivity. On 100% Hotter, the stylists stand ready and willing to take a person apart. It’s tough love that works for some, but it breaks others. Case in point: Jade did not keep up with her new look, opting to go full goth instead.

100% Hotter can be good. There’s joy in seeing someone like the aforementioned Maisie beam with happiness when she realizes she can be “pretty.” But in Maisie’s case, the team softened the rough edges of what was already there. In cases like Jade’s, their goal is to raze the person down to rebuild her in their preferred image. Hot or not, I found the end result upsetting.

Stream 100% Hotter on Netflix