Welcome to Most Popular, the podcast about pop culture and the impact it has on society. I'm Dr. Adrienne Trier Bieniek, I'm a professor of sociology, and I will be your host. I don't know if you can hear it or not in the background, but my dog Winston. That's just wandered into the room and he is making himself comfortable next to me.

Winston is a mix of nine different dogs. Right, buddy? Yeah. When we had his DNA done, it came back as a great preonies and a retriever and like. Five different types of hound dogs, and he's black and white, and he's just the sweetest boy ever, and he loves to sit next to me on this piece of carpet in my home office.

Actually, Winston is a perfect segue for today's episode. Today is my very first crossover episode, [00:01:00] so my guest is Christina Browning, who is a licensed realtor in Portland, Oregon, and a home functionality coach nationwide. I love what she says. She says she's allergic to stagnation. So she combines her two home centric professions in a podcast called Home Space and Reason.

Christina and I met through a podcasting group when we realized that we both have lots of thoughts on the realistic nature of home improvement shows. Her point of view comes from years of showing homes to people and the preconceived notions that potential home buyers have about the costs associated with renovating a home and just the realistic expectations of purchasing a home and what that means.

My approach was to think about how these television shows Set up people for a bit of a shock when they realized that they cannot redo a home on a 1, 000 budget. And anyone who remembers the show Trading Spaces on HGTV will understand that reference. And if you haven't ever seen Trading Spaces, I don't know if it's available, but if you can find the [00:02:00] episode where the woman's room gets painted brown and she loses her mind over this brown paint, I think that's a classic.

edition of that show. So what happened was Christina and I decided to combine our skills and produced what you are about to hear. I really want to thank Christina for taking the time to talk with me, but also she did a lot of the editing on this, and she made the gorgeous graphic that you're going to see if you find this on social media or on my website.

So really, she was the heavy lifter here. I was just sort of along for the ride. And I really have a lot to learn about marketing myself because she's just a great example of how to do that. So here's our conversation. I hope you enjoy it. So there's a Washington Post article that I found fascinating and the writer, it was written by Rachel, I think it's Curzius.

Pardon me if I'm slaughtering her last name. She wrote an article titled HGTV is making our homes boring and us sad. I read that and laughed. So just [00:03:00] to bring everybody up to speed, I'm going to read a little excerpt. If you've ever watched a home makeover show on HGTV, you know, the key before sequence is 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. Overall takeaway is that the home is in an utter embarrassment and needs a total overhaul before anyone of taste would consider putting a doormat out front. That was fabulously written. . Mm-Hmm. . But her point in this article is that it leads to frustration and a pause.

They, they're worried about it getting it wrong. So they don't choose anything that has any kind of personality. Yeah. I wanted to ask you about that actually, that on my list. Do you notice that when you go out with people [00:04:00] who are looking at homes. Do you notice that they've kind of been influenced by what they've been seeing on television shows?

I do. And I've also had clients on the other end saying, you, this has no personality and they want to go to more historical areas and buy an older home. specifically because it has the character that they're looking for. I think when people are thinking of a forever home, especially if it's not a stepping stone, if it's not their first purchase, they think of something that kind of holds them close.

And by that, I mean, it feels like something that has history and can be a part of their life for the next 10 or 20 years. And to do that, it, it can't feel like a sterile operating room, can't lack character that doesn't feel personal or cozy or enveloping. Yeah. When I read that, I [00:05:00] was thinking about the literature around like the culture of perfection, where people are kind of sold this idea that if you can Not necessarily be perfect, but look perfect, that you will somehow fool everyone into thinking your life is ideal.

It just, it fits so well with a lot of the things that we talk about in terms of like, What can people afford? How does the housing market factor into, you know, especially like new homeowners, but not just that, just the things that happen on HGTV that have seemingly become really normal. Like you can redo your entire house for 30, 000.

Like as a homeowner, I am very aware that that's not possible. Also, you can have it redone in 60 minutes. Yeah, yeah, you know, the, the two day period is totally realistic to have your house gutted and put back together. There's never going to be any issues there or [00:06:00] whatever issues are so simple that we can just make a quick phone call.

I think I saw one once on Fixer Upper where they needed to install a new furnace and they did it for like 2, 000. And I was just like, that's. Where are you getting your furnace from? I mean, that's an insanely low price for that. Also, I think it, it's a testament to the fact that they are in Texas and it's so different.

Viewers are all over the world and so it, it doesn't translate. necessarily. Yes. Purchasing that in Los Angeles would be a very different situation. Totally. And I'm from Portland, Oregon. So a hundred percent different here as well. I wanted to just introduce a short excerpt from architectural digest article that appeared on July 29th in 2019 called an inside look at how HGTV became an industry juggernaut.

And there's one paragraph stood out. And it says, when Kenneth Lowe conceived of HGTV in the early [00:07:00] 1990s, the national conversation about where we live was much different if it existed at all. Home building and home design 20 years ago was this deep, dark mystery. People just didn't understand it. And a lot of what HGTV has done is educate the public, Lowe says.

It used to be just shelter. You need a home. Now it's more about what's my lifestyle. What's my family's lifestyle and how's my home going to best fit and serve it. So I feel like that has totally introduced, well, who am I? What is my brand? If you will, even if you're just. You know, Joe Schmo. Suddenly, I have to have a look.

I have to have an opinion about all this. And the right opinion, and the right look for whatever. Exactly. Yeah, I'm curious what your reaction is to that. I think [00:08:00] it's fascinating. I think there's a lot of pressure. Because I was a realtor first, before I got into home functionality coaching, a lot of times people would make decisions based on the resale.

And not necessarily on what really spoke to them. So. If you feel like, gosh, this is, this home is really outdated, let's bring it up to, you know, modern day and they're going to just paint it all white or gray because that's safe or cream, whatever that neutral is. I don't think people are necessarily asking themselves what speaks to me personally.

It's all about resale. And that also may be part of the reason why people are only living in homes for six years before they sell. And you can't accumulate any kind of [00:09:00] wealth when you keep That's so interesting. I'm in Florida and one of the issues I think we run into here is we've got a lot of developers building the exact same home over and over again.

And then when you look at the insides, I mean, some things are different in terms of like maybe layout, but for the most part, it's very similar homes everywhere you go and you can kind of see the HGTV ness of it all, where the. bare pallet, white walls, basic kitchen with whatever granite you want to have.

Like all of that is very common down here. I know that's very similar in a lot of like suburban areas to have similarly shaped homes, but it's a cookie cutter. And I, I refer to that as a builder special. Yes, that's exactly what we, we exist very much in that down here of very little diversity in terms of what a home can look like, unless you're in like a historical Florida Floridian area.[00:10:00]

Where people have said, this is, you know, we're going to keep the history of this and keep it looking a similar way. But the, the urban sprawl situation here is very real. And the exact copy of Holmes is very real. A hundred percent, the sameness in aesthetics and HGTV seems to have been on the forefront of that, where there is this, whether it's the organization shows or the, there was one that was on for a long time where they redid a room in like a day.

But there's this notion that if you can make it perfect, or if you can make it look perfect, that you will now be perceived as this person who has it all together. Got the perfect life, perfect home, family, all of that will fall in line if you can have this ideal thing. And And what I think that person was saying in the article was that this is insanely boring in that sense because nobody's life looks like that.

The other thing that's fascinating is those are all staged. [00:11:00] Even those homeowners featured in that show don't get that house that looks like that once the show stops filming. That all goes away. All the contents is not even theirs. So, what we're seeing is almost a misrepresentation, and I'm not saying I don't love HGTV, because I do.

But at the same time, you have to sort of look at it through a lens of realism in that this was staged beautifully, and unless those homeowners choose to buy that staging, which a lot of times they can. It's not going to look like that a week later. I, it's literally, the end result is literally not even the end.

It's not the end result. Yeah, it's kind of like if you look at like the Realtor websites like Zillow and Realtor. com, there's the fisheye effect, right? That some folks use to make things look [00:12:00] bigger and then when you walk in, you're like, oh, this isn't what the picture looked like. It's kind of. That is the biggest.

Pet peeve as a realtor ever because it's misrepresenting the space and it wastes everybody's time. And so I have a big talk with the photographer when I have homes photographed and that I don't want anything stretched. Because if you think. Of a room as being a certain size and you take the time out of your day to go look at that home and you get there and you realize it is nothing like the photo appeared that you're going to leave.

You're not going to suddenly fall in love with it. And so everybody's time is wasted in that. And it drives me crazy. I can see why. I do staging, funny enough, complimentary staging in my listings because a lot of times people don't understand how a home can look and what is possible. But it [00:13:00] is not top to bottom bringing in furniture.

It is most of the time using the furniture of the people who live there. And more often than not, I'm bringing in plants because it's amazing how much greenery can help a space feel homey, even in photos. And make such a big difference. I know you mentioned the fandom of some of the HG TV hosts and the property brothers, I think are the top cream of the crop when it comes to building a following media franchise.

Spinoffs, net worth. It is insane how big their empire is now. Yeah. I think them and Chip and Joanna Gaines, right, are the most successful to have come out of the HGTV [00:14:00] TV bubble. Yeah. And Ben and Erin, the hometown host, they are pretty significant as well. And I think it's fascinating how different. All three of those are, if you look at them as groups, it's so interesting that they're all so very different, but they've all had a meteoric rise.

I think what's interesting about the property brothers is there is the attraction of them being twins. and also extremely good looking and the show just seems like they've figured out the formula, right, where you get the brother dynamic mixed with the redoing home dynamic. It's funny to me that people attach themselves to a fandom of this type of thing because normally fandoms are like, we see them as like obsessive groups of folks who are just Beyond what a normal person would be interested in.

But the, the Gaineses and the, and the Property Brothers have busted through that bubble. I mean, Joanna [00:15:00] Gaines is in every Target and I think they have their own channel now, or they, they used to. They do. Yeah, the Magnolia Network. Yeah. They've kind of created a space for themselves where people can get really obsessive about.

What they're doing to make their homes look great and how that can be brought back to their home And it's also kind of a genius marketing move because you've got built in product right where people Can see chip and joanna gains bought french doors. So i'm gonna go buy french doors. Absolutely and whatever it is They're they're using that week.

There's a whole Sustainability conversation that I could have there, but I had to insert this little hilarious tidbit the property brothers show Apparently was almost called bros before Reno's. I found that hilarious. Oh, that's such a terrible title. That's so glad they did something else.[00:16:00]

Oh my gosh. So sustainability, I find that topic to be all up in the middle of all this, because when you go into a home and it maybe is like 10 years out of date, I'm using air quotes here. And I see people on these shows and in real life just tearing out the countertops, tearing out the cabinets, and hucking it in these giant, you know, dumpsters.

That is literally going into the ground to be buried. And I think we use the word garbage frivolously, like it miraculously disappears instead of the reality that it's going into the earth for the next 10, 000 years. And so I like when I see the reuse. Of some of these cabinets, we have a homeless [00:17:00] crisis across the country and to think that so many of these cabinets or you name it, whatever may not be in vogue at the moment going into dumpsters, it's just horrifying.

You know, I, I'm really, this is why I'm glad that we're, that I'm talking with you because this is such an important thing to think about, that these things don't exist in a vacuum. And that you are kind of teaching people that if you don't like it, just tear it out and throw it away. Instead of tweaking what you have, painting what you have, upcycling what you have, like there can be small changes that can make the space that you're in absolutely beautiful without.

The ripping, tearing, garbaging. It seems like the notion is keep building until you get what you want. And that is a very consumer driven way to look at things. And it also kind of goes back to what I was [00:18:00] saying before about find the perfection in this. And if you don't see it, then just rip it out and put something else in.

A more sustainable version of that. I feel like there is a place in the market for someone to come in and maybe this exists already. But if it. Doesn't it sure should and just be a place for what we have excavated out of a perfectly good home. That's reusable. Like a matchmaking service, what I have, right, and what do you need?

Yes. Within a geography, right? So that we're not shipping anything. It just seems like that's a sustainable idea to pair as a resource for not only homeowners, but builders. And. You know, we need to make lower cost, more affordable, entry level options [00:19:00] for houseless people. Why couldn't we use stuff that's come out of remodels?

Or even just reusing what you've pulled out, like if you've pulled out boards that can be reused, put that back in. There is a way to, like, you know, like you said, upcycle things or Or move things around and, and I think some people do it through like Facebook groups and things where they say like, Hey, I'm, I'm getting rid of this closet.

Does anybody need these parts? You can come pick it up at my front door or whatever. I think that's out there, but man, if you could develop an app, that would be amazing. Noteworthy. The Facebook group is called buy nothing. It's fantastic. It's nationwide. So if the listeners don't know about it, it's a great place to upcycle.

Gift forward when I do my home functionality sessions, if editing is one of the cures, so to speak, we read them of duplicates and things that they haven't touched or used. And I bring them home and I photograph each item and we [00:20:00] gift it forward on the buy nothing Facebook group page. So it's that, but I'm only one person and my time is finite.

So it would be interesting if there was some sort of. An app to connect the things. Oh, I love this idea. You should do that. Yeah, you're, what you're getting at in my world, we, we look at it as the result of consumerism and the idea that it kind of is a mark of your social class status. If you can, in this case, gut a house or redo a room or whatever, and not have to keep any of it to reuse because you can afford to get all new stuff.

And that is. It's a really key point when you're thinking about homeownership. I think one of the things that channels like HGTV and even Pinterest do is drive home the notion that newer is better and, and that doesn't always fit for everybody's budget. Some people really do need to reuse the stuff or find, like you said, a more effective way to [00:21:00] do things.

I, I love that idea. Can I ask you, do you have folks react with Pinterest the same way they do with HGTV. Like, has anyone ever brought you like their Pinterest vision board and said, this is what I want. And can we find this? I ask for those because sometimes people say, well, sometimes people say, you know, I want my space to be more beautiful.

They just know it's broken and they say, I clean it. And I've. Reduced all the things, extras, it still doesn't look like a magazine. And so what they're telling me is I want it to be more aesthetically beautiful for me. At the same time, I need to get a sense of what they like, because if I'm designing a space for me, that is not going to be your aesthetic.

So I need to know what that looks like for them. Certain people like dark and moody and, you know, floral. And the next person is [00:22:00] wanting bright and light wood and plants. And that's a whole different thing, both equally beautiful, but that doesn't mean it's universal. So I like to see it, but kind of more like a mood board creation rather than Instructions because if you look at like fixer upper or the one where it was the husband and wife and they got divorced and his name Was Tariq.

I think she Christina and Tariq. I think it's called flip or flop. They very much had A very similar aesthetic for everything they did, like those two shows. Oh, yes. You knew if you were going to get a Chip and Joanna Gaines house, it was going to have shiplap and French doors and look very country.

Farmhouse modern. Yeah, exactly. And I'm, I'm wondering if Do you think that that's like people hire them specifically for that aesthetic? Or do you think they have the ability to go outside of that aesthetic and we just don't see [00:23:00] it because that's what the show wants to present? I think when you create a following on HGTV, the producers are probably thinking this aesthetic is resonating with viewers, so we shouldn't stray too far from it because what we have is working.

And the aesthetic that you're building, no matter which designer you're talking about, is working and resonating. So let's follow this to a degree. If you watch Fixer Upper, sometimes you'll see it does go outside a bit. I believe there was a show that there was a bachelor single guy that Joanna was designing for and he wanted it more modern than her usual.

And she absolutely accommodated that. So I do think that they're capable, but I think as the show is produced, they're very careful because what's successful, they don't want to derail. [00:24:00] And so, you know, and a lot of times in the real world, when you go to hire an interior designer, a lot of times you're hiring them because you, you like what they've done already and you want more of that.

That doesn't mean designer A looks the same as designer B looks the same as designer C. Presumably you're going to choose your designer because of what they've done and you like that. That's a really good. So I think HGTV is just a televised version of that. Yeah, I think that's a really good way to think about it.

One interesting line. That I read in the business of home article, it's titled, how 25 years of HGTV has transformed the home industry. They use the phrase constant aspirational. Messaging. Yeah, they, they know their, they know their crowds, don't they? That's it. That's it, condensed. They know who's watching and they are clearly paying attention to the metrics of what people are [00:25:00] reacting to.

You know what I think about when I, when I think about that is, have you ever seen like during a presidential debate and there's a group that are assigned dials and then dial will go up and down depending on how much someone agrees with whatever someone is saying? Yes. And I think about that in terms of when HGTV does it's, it's.

Market analysis, like I just envision in my head like people sitting in a room going. I love that wall color Nope, I do not like that person's hair. I love the way they did the tile. Nope Don't like that bathroom set like it feels like they've they've gotten that down to a science of what of what they know People are gonna want a hundred percent.

I agree with you and Because it's just one channel. I'm not sure if this is current. The article that I'm looking at is from 2019, but apparently according to this, it reaches eight of 10 households in the country. So that's a giant portion of that being spoon fed, [00:26:00] right? That's bananas. It's the epitome of immediate gratification.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm assuming there are some people that watch just. For like the the aesthetic of it, right? Like they know they're never gonna do that stuff to their house But it's kind of fun to watch something be taken down to the studs and then something I mean, what's better than that? Oh 100 percent it takes 30 minutes and you can have a whole new house right in there in lies I think the fun and also the part that I take issue with because you know I think most folks know when they're watching that they're that this is not the way that home renovations normally go but They also do a good job of selling the fantasy.

And making it seem like these things are not as expensive as they real us usually are. Don't take as long as they usually do. Or, you know, you don't normally like get a plumber in within an hour to fix an issue because you popped a, you broke a pipe or For sure there is that, there is that part. It, there are many people that have [00:27:00] a plumber that they can just text real quick.

I do, yeah. But I, I don't pretend that they're available that fast.

But you should considering your line of work, right? Like right like the average when I when we first bought our house and we had the first thing that went wrong We had wind damage and we had to have the roof repaired and we neither one of us knew how to deal with insurance companies It took like four months to get the roof done even though we were promised it would be done in like Four weeks, you know, just things like that, that, that the reality is very different.

And I, and I get that they're selling the fantasy. I get that part. I'm just, what's interesting to your point. What's interesting about that is when people come to me and we have conversations, even though our. Brains know that's a show. They know nothing happens in 60 minutes. They're [00:28:00] still Horrified when they find out they're not gonna be able to get a drywaller in for a month and a half Yeah, like I think we know that it's not real, but you don't have the juxtaposition of Of unless you're in the industry, how long stuff actually takes just sometimes just because it's booked out.

Yeah. During the pandemic, I wanted to repaint my bathroom because I was bored and there was a color drought. Like there wasn't enough color out there. And I went to Lowe's and I picked out this very pretty blue. And the man very kindly looked at me and said, there's no way we're going to get this paint color for you because there's literally, it's not available.

It's just not. It's not there. And I was like, what do you mean it's not there? It's color. You just mix it. And he was like, nope, we don't have the ability to do it. And I went to a few other places and they all said the same thing. Like, nope, color isn't available right now. Everyone's repainting their homes trying to do something.

What a metaphor. [00:29:00] It's, it's a pandemic, so we don't do color right now. The world is black and white, in case you didn't know, until we're back to regular programming, we're going to be in black and white. Yeah, it was so funny. That's so true. And I painted my bathroom white, because I literally couldn't sit still.

I had to do something. And so I just have, I still have a white bathroom. I haven't gotten around to fixing it. That's fascinating. You were bored. And so you painted your bathroom. Mm hmm. Yep. Do you enjoy painting? No, but the pandemic was long and my husband works in healthcare, so it was extremely stressful.

Fascinating that you don't enjoy it and you still chose to paint your bathroom. So, do you watch HGTV? I do not. I used to. I would say it's been A solid decade since I've, I've sat down and watched anything significant. I saw the Tripp and Joanna Gaines show when it, when it first came out [00:30:00] and I liked it initially.

And then as they tended, as they got bigger and bigger and their stuff started appearing in Target, I started to be a little turned off by the hegemony of it all, the, the sameness of all of it. It's not been on my radar for a while. I think before I became a homeowner, it was more interesting. And then when you become a homeowner and the reality of what you're dealing with versus what is being sold to you is so different.

And if you're a pragmatic person, you're going, there's nothing on this show that is helpful for me at this point, because I know, like you said, that I can't tear down a wall and have somebody in, you know, within a day to, to take care of it for me. These things all take time. I do like Pinterest. I haven't done Pinterest in a long time, but I do, I do like the pinning of the pretty things.

I think there's a place for all of these things as tools. I think Pinterest is a great place for a big giant board. I go in [00:31:00] there and I use it when I have a project or sometimes when I need to start the new year or when I'm curating things for a particular client, but then I don't go back. I find that.

It gives me ads and suggestions. That I should not have seen because I can't unsee it. I put in the most insane buster and punch light switch. I turned the entryway. Of my home, because we don't have one, you basically open the front door and you spill right into the middle of our main floor, which is an open floor plan.

So there's not like a hall or an area where you can hang your coat or anything like that. It's, it just enters into the middle of our house. And [00:32:00] I wanted to make that a little bit more defined. So we put up some really cool paneling and I ran along. Runner carpet on the floor in front of that. So it felt like when you walked in, you had a visual cue of where you could stop and set your purse and take your shoes off it's.

Black felt in between these wood slats and I have white light switches, which stuck out like I was wearing, you know, bright white sneakers and white socks with black pants. Let's just say that. And so I had to change it. And of course our phones listened to us. And I got fed an ad for a company called Buster and Punch, which I believe they are from England.

The most gorgeous black metal with [00:33:00] gold rivets. It looks like a high end music amp. It's so beautiful. And I couldn't get it out of my head. So when you go and spend. You know, 280 for four switches. You're mad. I had to. Yeah. Because I saw it and I couldn't unsee it. Come on. So I am hesitant to go back into Pinterest because of those situations because I don't want to see something I then have to have and I can't unsee.

Yeah, I think that the algorithm and the urge to Comply with what we're what we're targeted is is an entirely different podcast, but it's very real and you're right The phones are listening to you They they they always are and they know what to show you to make you want to buy a hundred percent it They it has my number for sure Thank you again for [00:34:00] listening You can find more episodes of most popular on iTunes Spotify YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts Please take the time to follow, rate and review.

And if you're so inclined and you are not one of my current students, there is a Patreon for most popular setup and it's LinkedIn show notes. More information including additional resources for educators can be found on my website, which is a adrian trier benik.com. That's also linked in the show notes 'cause I know my name goes on forever.

I'm also on Instagram at at dr dot Adrian, T as in Tom, B as in boy. Thanks again for listening and as. Special, special thank you to my students for the encouragement to keep making these episodes. I'll see you next time. Bye!

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