Maybe I was absent that day in kindergarten and missed the part of the Ugly Duckling where the bird has a tummy tuck and a beak job before emerging victorious as a stunning swan.
Or maybe Fox sees the story a bit differently.
It's hard to blame the network, reality TV-happy and notoriously shameless, for giving television viewers what they want. The Swan, an extreme makeover show that transforms self-declared average women miserable in their current lives into the epitome of today's beauty standards, had a whopping average of 9.2 million viewers per episode in its debut season last spring.
The Swan's "improvement" techniques include diet and exercise, of course, but also an extensive amount of plastic surgery. The show's second season is slated to begin Oct. 25.
We've come to expect reality shows in any network's lineup. The news is not that these shows exist, but rather which new aspects of life are (for the most part unnecessarily) now being glamorized and publicized. As producers run out of new reality, they invent alternative and sometimes perverse versions of it. The problem is that audiences still tune in.
The most disconcerting thing about The Swan is the length to which participants willingly go and audience members willingly go along with for vanity and entertainment's sake.
The show's participants, who do not see themselves in a mirror throughout their entire transformation, are revealed to the viewing audience and to themselves at the end of each episode.
They truly look like different people. Whether they succeed in recreating their vision of feigned perfection or not, they have succeeded in erasing at least the physical remnants of their former selves.
Is it just me? Doesn't anyone else see something wrong with that?
Television makeovers are popular in their own right and were long before they comprised their own sub-genre of reality TV. However, more traditional makeover programs alter a participant's hair and clothing and introduce or update cosmetic routines.
Fashion experts will agree that the very definition of fashion implies trends and fads and changes. Putting one's body through the physical trauma of cosmetic surgery to mimic transitory fads is sick and shows little respect for the human body as a natural creation. Fashion itself has traditionally involved pain on the part of women, but high heels and eyebrow plucking are nothing compared to going under they knife.
Fox claims that the show's contestants are "women seeking a second chance at life" and each of the 12 to-be-transformed women, has a biographical tale of despair. They've always been teased about a particular physical attribute, they are left with a particularly disfigured body post-maternity, or they spend all of their time taking care of others and never had time to focus on their own appearance. Wah, wah, wah.
Each episode chronicles the transformation of two of the 12 women from their original, pitiable state to that of great beauty.
A sad but common theme among these biographies is an emphasis on the need for validation from others. They comment that boyfriends and husbands find them unattractive -- way to pick supportive mates!
The emphasis we place on image is a societal problem, not just one of reality TV show participants. But programs like this and others of a genre where cosmetic surgery is commonplace (including Dr. 90210 and Extreme Makeover), reinforce the notion that regardless of what is inside, outward beauty is the first step toward happiness, fulfillment and success.
What these women need is a backbone, plain and simple. Self-confidence is a much better first step and, though show participants receive counseling as part of an individually tailored makeover program, show designers clearly feel that it wouldn't be enough.
Regardless, any redeeming value The Swan has in terms of empowering women, increasing their self-confidence and setting them up for a fresh start is completely lost with the final component of the show.
The series concludes with a beauty pageant that places one woman from each episode in a competition for "The Ultimate Swan."
What this suggests is that it is not good enough to be reinvented physically and emotionally -- with supposed benefits to one's self-esteem and life outlook. No, what makes for good entertainment is ranking the women, making them parade around scantily clad, and defining the most successful woman, the one who is judged more beautiful than the rest.
In this mentality, we see the women not as recreated, recharged, newly confident individuals, but as objects to be evaluated and judged. Despite all of the traumas their bodies have experienced, there will still be women and men at home critiquing the final product.
Hopkins is a school whose female population is often heralded as less attractive than the norm, or at the very least pegged against other schools around us. Regardless of the inherent one-sidedness and shallowness of this argument, I don't know any Hopkins girls who consider themselves less capable or less worthy as human beings than those girls at "hotter" schools. Are we all getting breast implants and liposuction to "catch up"?
No, because we're smarter than that. And we should be smarter viewers too.
Among the viewing public, there are individuals who feel like I do, who are disgusted by the thought of elective surgery and increasing breast size in order to "feminize" women.
By contrast, there are those who think the show is spectacular, not shallow -- because, well, you need to be beautiful to survive and that's just how the world works.
There are those who will watch because the show is an interesting social experiment. They are curious and shocked, but not appalled.
Then there are those who will not care enough to especially tune in, but won't protest either.
But as long as someone watches The Swan and other shows like it, as long as there is a viable market, networks will keep delivering. It's hard and somewhat scary to imagine where the envelope might be pushed next if we continue to exhibit a clear preference for an image, for plastic people over "reality."
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