three (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
threeplusfire) wrote2004-04-26 08:53 pm
threeplusfire) wrote2004-04-26 08:53 pm
swans
I watched The Swan tonight on Fox, because I've got a morbid voyeuristic streak in me. The key to reality programming is this creeping desire to see just what the hell happens next, and The Swan gives that up in spades and in one of the most creepy ways possible. In its way, the show is genius.
I can't help but think of the team of surgeons and specialists as a horde of vampires having a ball. This does seem like the sort of thing the Toreador would do, after all.
What's hideous about this show is that girls on tonight, and most likely the others, are people with genuine emotional and psychologial issues. Instead of giving them therapy, personal trainers and things to improve their lives, they get marathon plastic surgery and exercise/diet boot camp. What happens when they go home? Is their physical beauty meant to be some kind of shield against the world? What happens when the woman goes back to overeating and not exercising? Can you imagine suffering through all that liposuction and then gaining that weight back?
I suppose they are all adults, and they did make the choice. Plastic surgery isn't always an evil thing. It can be used for good, so to speak. The evil lies more in our cultural obsession with impossible, arbitraty standards of beauty. Not everyone needs to be a praying mantis god model. Some women look a hell of a lot better with real curves and unique features.
The shots of the puffy faces and hobbling bodies certainly don't make me want to ever go through any of that. Crikey.
Time for sleep.
I can't help but think of the team of surgeons and specialists as a horde of vampires having a ball. This does seem like the sort of thing the Toreador would do, after all.
What's hideous about this show is that girls on tonight, and most likely the others, are people with genuine emotional and psychologial issues. Instead of giving them therapy, personal trainers and things to improve their lives, they get marathon plastic surgery and exercise/diet boot camp. What happens when they go home? Is their physical beauty meant to be some kind of shield against the world? What happens when the woman goes back to overeating and not exercising? Can you imagine suffering through all that liposuction and then gaining that weight back?
I suppose they are all adults, and they did make the choice. Plastic surgery isn't always an evil thing. It can be used for good, so to speak. The evil lies more in our cultural obsession with impossible, arbitraty standards of beauty. Not everyone needs to be a praying mantis god model. Some women look a hell of a lot better with real curves and unique features.
The shots of the puffy faces and hobbling bodies certainly don't make me want to ever go through any of that. Crikey.
Time for sleep.