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Lifetime’s new reality show, “Girlfriend Intervention,” is making use of the concept of women helping women out but it’s coming with controversy attached.

The show promises to help bring out the “strong Black woman” that the network says is found in every white woman. Among those helping in the effort are makeup artists Tracy Balan on beauty, Nikki Chu on “home and sanctuary,” Tiffiny Dixon on fashion, and reality star Tanisha Thomas (from Oxygen’s “Bad Girls Club”).

Despite its good intention, Girlfriend Intervention has received negative reviews from critics, who question the sincerity of the series.

“Like so much of makeover television, this is shaming dressed up as encouragement (they actually call the segment where the makeover candidate shows them how she currently dresses the “catwalk of shame”). It’s conformity dressed up as individuality, and it’s submission to the expectations of others dressed up as self-confidence. Only now, with obnoxious racial politics slathered all over the entire thing!” according to an editorial NPR wrote on the show, which premiered Wednesday on Lifetime.

NPR continues its criticism of Girlfriend Intervention by zeroing in on the “consultants” who work to transform their clients. Overall, the channel questions the women assigned to turn lives around as it cites the stars of another popular reality show in getting its point across about the effectiveness of the consultants.

“The casually insulting way these consultants approach their white … clients? … is unappealing, certainly, but the show’s approach to the consultants themselves, and to black women in general, is hugely problematic, too,” NPR stated. “The black women on ‘Girlfriend Intervention,’ like the gay men who did the work on ‘Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,’ are supposedly being saluted for their (stereotypically) superior style and knowledge and backbone, but are cast as helpers and facilitators for the benefit of, respectively, white women and straight men, valued for what they can offer and required to display sass at all times in sufficient amounts. (Among other things, it’s unfortunate that other than Thomas being the loudest, they don’t much distinguish the four stylists from each other, either.)”

Read/learn more about Girlfriend Intervention, at NPR.

Check out the premiere episode:

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