Pop-Stars Aren’t Born, They’re Made

One of my most played DVDs as a preteen growing up in Brazil was called Rouge: O sonho de ser uma Popstar [Rouge: The Dream of Being a Pop Star].It chronicled the making of Rouge, a girl group put together by a record label, from the selection process to live performances. Watching the group converge was like watching the crew-assembly montage of a heist film. The girls lived in a house. They practiced choreo and took singing lessons and picked outfits. Importantly, each member had a distinct personality trait that defined her role in the context of the group: There was the dancer, the fashionista, the lyricist, and so on. Rouge’s DVD came out in 2002, half a decade after the Spice Girls had established the millennial girl-group standard, in part by trading on similar pre-determined archetypes.