11:32 p.m. - 2004-04-07
ranting and raving
I'm making a notion to everyone out there to not watch "The Swan" which airs every Monday night on Fox. The point of the show is to transform so-called "ugly-ducklings" into beautiful women and then enter them into a new Beauty Pageant called "The Swan". Where one of these women will be the most beautiful and win.

Am I the only person who sees something completely wrong with this picture? They are making women more beautiful to our Media culture standards. They're getting liposuction, new chins, new noses, better teeth, and so on. Instead of transforming these women to make them more "beautiful", why don't they work on transforming what really matters. I don't care how beautiful you are--if you started with the insecurities that made you unhappy with yourself, they're not going to dissapear with an extreme makeover. I can't believe that the American culture has stooped so low as to broadcast this on TV. I know it's probably going to be a high-rated "reality" show. Yes, it's such reality. Let's take some women that we consider ugly and give them a makeover to transform them into the stereotypical beautiful that the rest of america wants to see.

Which leads me to my next point-- they wonder why eating disorders are so out of control. I had the oppurtunity to do a women's studies project on eating disorders, meaning anorexia and bulimia nervosa, and I learned that ninety percent of the people with eating disorders are women. Hmmm. We don't put men on national TV to make them into more beautiful people. And no, they can't keep their same body shape. Let's give them liposuction so they can feel even more inadequate. Give me a break. I did learn that eating disorders are so westernized because we have so much available to us. Instead of eating and enjoying what we have, we find it necessary to starve ourselves to absolute extremes. In cultures where food isn't abundant, women are preferred to be more rotund. I guess we always want what we can't have.

Oh--and "I want a famous face". . . There's just nothing more I can say to that. Thanks MTV for showing the world how fucked up America's youth really is.

-Amber

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