Swan or Albatross?
BY FOBBY EGG
I'll be the first to admit that I have been far out of touch with the reality-TV phenomenon that has taken over television programming since the last time I cared enough to follow a television series. Over the last few years I have caught the odd episode of "Survivor" or "Temptation Island", but such shows have never been able to hold my interest. Watching a group of hyper-competitive type-A personalities do anything necessary to win some cash while satisfying their penchant for grandstanding in front of an audience is not really my idea of an hour well spent.

Nevertheless, when you live in a world and interact with people whose cultural references are very much involved with what is broadcast on television, you sometimes fall prey to your own morbid curiosity and sit down to watch a few episodes of "The Swan".

What amazed me most about "The Swan" was the lengths to which the participants were willing to go in order to change their appearance. In the two episodes I saw, all the women had several cosmetic procedures: nose jobs, tummy tucks, eyebrow lifts, liposuction, oral surgery: a veritable overhaul of the human body; and then spent three months recovering and starting extensive exercise and diet regiments. All this cutting, fat sucking, skin moving, implanting of foreign substances into the body, calorie cutting, and vigorous physical exercise in the name of inching closer to one society's ideal of beauty.

It was not so much the procedures that these women were willing to undergo in order to change how they look and feel that bothered me, it was more that the women were willing to make this transformation on network television, for all the world to see and become a part of and judge if they so desired.

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for change and becoming a better person. Hell, aren't we all constantly in the process of changing and adapting in order to become a better person than the one that we currently perceive ourselves to be? That is completely natural and useful even. That is, after all, what it is to be human. Constantly growing and changing and working toward becoming the person who we aspire to be. For some, the person they want to be is a provider, a husband, a wife; some want to be a doctor helping their patients; some a teacher sharing their knowledge with their students; others a clergyman caring for their flock; still others, a factory owner manufacturing polystyrene beverage containers. Change and growth: the impetus of life. Just the same, when massive transformations are undertaken with ticker-tape parades and fanfare, they lose their sincerity and appear to be entirely cosmetic, rather than both inside and out as the producers of "The Swan" would like their audience to believe the changes made by their contestants are.

I wonder what goes through the contestant's minds when they decide to make a radical transformation in the living rooms of millions of viewers. Have they decided to undertake such an endeavor so publicly because they otherwise lack the discipline that it takes to successfully complete the process? Is their self-esteem so low that they are seeking the approval of strangers? Or are they doing it because they just want to feel better about themselves and are putting themselves in the public's eye to make the point that there is nothing wrong with sculpting and tweaking what you have in order to be the best "you" possible? Or is it quite simply an economic decision? The free surgery and support provided throughout the filming by sponsors and the possibility for future economic gains as a result of the experience are too great for your average semi-struggling middle class American to pass up?

While I can tolerate the banality of most of the other reality-TV shows, for some reason a show that provides plastic surgery for the competitors doesn't really sit well with me. But alas the laws of supply and demand tell a different story. As a person who can barely stomach watching women undergo extensive painful procedures in order to achieve something that conforms better with society's ideal of beauty I am not, apparently, in the majority. So where does it end. We begin the twenty-first century watching reality-TV shows about women with low self esteem getting plastic surgery in front of millions and competing with one another to win the crown as the best dramatic transformation of the season. Where will we be in ten, twenty years?

Perhaps I should just sit back and thank the llamas that I somewhere along the way developed enough self-esteem so I can look at myself in the mirror and think "Hey … not bad at all!" Sometimes less is more. Watching self-absorbed members of self-important nations battle their inner demons through plastic surgery and talk therapy remind me that money is definitely not the answer. Where does it end?