She’s never happy with her looks. Every day she looks in the mirror and complains that she doesn’t have any nice clothes to wear, that she’s got bad hair. Almost every morning she’s in a bad mood because she’s not happy with herseIf. When I say ‘I like what you’re wearing’, she almost always thinks that I’m joking. She’s convinced that we don’t have enough money to buy new clothes, or to get a nice haircut. I hope that this Make Over will give her more confidence. So that she believes me when I say that I love her ‘just the way she is’, that she believes me, and is happy with herself.

The thing is that I’m not very happy with how people see me. I think they see me as a little bit dull, a little bit fat, a little bit . . .Yeah . . ., so, I would like to look interesting, or more expressive.

Once I got free tickets, at a fair, for a Make Over. There was a make-up person, and a hairdesser . . . and they made something out of me that was marvelous! Afterwards I looked into the windows, and thought ‘Is that me?’ I went to a photographer, and had photos taken, cause the next day my hair was going to be different, and I had to take off the make-up. That day I was quite handsome ...good looking! Ohhhh! ...lt was twenty years ago. I was quite a different person. When I was walking around like that, I was a different person. I was walking straighter, and I looked straighter … everything was different.

I’m not unhappy with my appearance, it’s just that sometimes when l’m tired I look a little like this. I’d like to know how to improve that, and to know what someone professional could make of me . . .what he can do with my appearance. I would also like to know, for myself, what I can do to, well . . . make myself look more positive, or however you want to call it.

Why? You want to know why? Because l’m always interested in changes, especially in ‘Make overs’. I have different reasons actually, and I made some up ...like, I’ve seen some Make Overs on television programs, but . . . it’s always a bit of a disappointment, because in the end people still look like housewives, or something like that. But it has always interested me; they are terrible programs, but somehow, I would really like to have a Make Over too.

I thought ‘that’d be nice, a Make Over, just call’, otherwise I wouldn’t have done it. If I would have thought about it longer, I wouldn’t have done it. But this time I thought ‘why not, just call and we’ll see ...’ So, . . . what I would like is to have short hair, like this, or something like that, something really crazy.

To show more of her ‘inside’, rather than really change her looks ...She wants to have a look that really reflects her ‘inside’.

I'm not satisfied with my face, or my life, or my body . . . I think something could change, but don’t know how. In my fantasies I would go to a plastic surgeon ...”

- excerpts from the interviews with Make Over candidates