Epiphany!! The Swan = "Number Twelve Looks Just Like You"

I refuse to watch this show on the grounds that it sounds like the most grotesque thing ever. I'm also not going to discuss it. . .

. . . but that Twilight Zone sounds amazingly prescient.

I've watched one episode and that was enough, I would agree the body aesthetics they advocate is bland just like the mainstream canon of beauty, no surprises there since it's not an avant-garde show or anything like that. But now that I think of it, if the competition to make the realest tv goes on for a while in pair with the increase in the number of channels changing the rules of what is a successful tv show (less listeners but focusing on target audiences), maybe this show paves the way to another one who would have, like, Orlan as a consultant and contestants who would do makeovers like altering their skins into real leopard fur and stuff like that (I would watch that, maybe).

This show (The Swan aka Pimp My Face) has reminded me many times of the "designer faces" idea in Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. Which itself seems somewhat descended of this Twilight Zone ep.

The Swan bothers me on so many levels: the notion of a specific set of physical criteria that define female beauty, the way it willingly contributes to poor self-image in the impressionable females undoubtedly watching the show, especially the way it glorifies cosmetic surgery, as well as the way it throws grammar to the wind with the climactic "reveals". Ugh.

Just admit it - you can't stop watching it anyway.

I watched the 2nd hal-hour yesterday.. I thought the show was not only as appaling as I thought it would be, but also really boring. There was a lot of awkward silence at the end. The drama fell flat.

But then there's also the whole self-esteem issue and wouldn't it be weird to look in a mirror and not even recognize your own face? Some of the women they showed at the end, from other episodes, looked pretty normal to me .. I don't think radical plastic surgery is necessary. Maybe a hairbrush would do.

And one of the women who was a judge or consultant or interviewer or who fucking knows - looked like she was made in a laboratory. She looked like a clone of Victoria Principle, only made out of latex.

Actually I have ceased watching it, as it makes me fucking really pissed off.

Last night, they had a woman on who used to be a model. All she wanted to do was lose weight, but they gave her a shitload of plastic surgery anyway.

USA! USA!

My fave is the token theraputatist on the steering committee. "In addition to the 120-hour workout regimen, #12 will be subjected to 75 hours of grueling psychoanalysis!"