the painted, glittery, somewhat queer representation of the people at the Capitol makes them so alien, compared to the very recognizable people of the Districts, that it is even harder to see ourselves as judged. We can't relate to the people of the Capitol

I don't find that all that different from the books. I'll admit that the three stylists, with what can really only be called First World Problems, felt uncomfortably familiar to me. But Effie? And the people of the Capitol in general? I read the book as wanting us to identify with Katniss (and Peeta and Gale), telling us that we too could be scrappy heroines if the world suddenly became post-apocalyptic, and Effie (at least in the first book, and as I recall most of the second) never felt like anything more than a glittery alien to me. It didn't feel like "as a white middle-class privileged reader, you should realize that you're just like the Capitol citizens and the poor of this country are like the Districts", but more as "even as a white middle-class privileged reader, you should realize that you're precariously close to District life, while the 1% are the Capitol citizens".

I suspect I'll feel differently when I read Katniss's Shadow, about a girl living in the Capitol who watches the Hunger Games with enthusiasm and slowly grows to realize that she identifies so strongly with the archer from District 12 that she realizes how awful she's being. But this book wasn't that book.