It’s also interesting that in its second season The City acknowledges Whitney’s role as a ‘fashion designer’ (oh so many ironic air quotes) rather than the masquerade of her DVF job in the first season, so perhaps The Hills was forced to follow that lead.

Or perhaps the fact that whilst the cast’s activities and lives outside the show’s ‘narrative’ could be disguised through omission, Heidi’s body remodelling could no longer be disguised and thus had to be ‘written’ into the show – creating actual moments of authenticity. One of my students wrote perceptively about the show’s structuring of the ‘reveal’ of Heidi’s body through the trope of the makeover show’s reveal. However, here the emotion of that reveal being displaced from the viewer (who had already seen it in the tabloids) onto Heidi’s mother (one of the few characters whose emotions we have always read as ‘real’).

Lots to think through here, still!