Goodbye skin; hello collagen

Females: if you could change one part of your physical appearance, what would it be: your nose, breasts, waist, thighs, teeth, or all of the above?

On the website for FOX's new series "The Swan," the poll's most popular answer out of 162 women is "all of the above." Each episode of "The Swan" capitalizes on these and many other self-esteem issues that plague today's women for the show's own financial gain, joining a slew of other networks that have dropped their moral standards to a new low in the realm of reality television. Not only do these series feed on people's self-loathing by promising them false happiness, but they also support the concept of a single, ideal and vastly unattainable standard of what is considered to be "beautiful" in American society.

"Swan" focuses on two "average-looking" women per episode, who explain their reasons for loathing their physical appearance and then are given intensive three-month makeovers, ranging from significant plastic surgery to dieting to self-esteem therapy. Twenty-eight-year-old Kelly, one of the show's first two contestants, sobs uncontrollably when she is told that she has been selected to be a Swan. Photographs of her semi-nude body are shown to the "reconstruction team" and are accentuated with large target signs on all of the body parts the team deems "unworthy." In Kelly's case, these necessary changes include a brow lift, lip enhancement, liposuction on her chin and cheeks, collagen in the lips and in nasal labial folds, hair removal and Lasik eye surgery. And this is just for her face.

Not only does the show perpetuate the idea that there is only one standard of beauty for women (large breasts, impossibly thin frame, and various fixed facial features), but it also sends the message to every female viewer who does not have these characteristics that they are not beautiful and never will be unless they conform by modifying themselves, as the unhappy contestants have here.

However, perhaps the most disturbing part of "Swan" is that at the end of the transformation, one of the two "contestants" is chosen to compete in the Swan Beauty Pageant, which will serve as the ultimate degradation of television. Basically, whoever has received the best plastic surgery and has done the most complete job of transforming their appearance into something unrecognizable from the "average-looking" woman before will be crowned "The Swan."

After enduring three months of painful torture and even after enormous transformations during which one's entire physical look is discarded and reconstructed, the losing contestant is still not considered to be beautiful enough when superficially compared to another woman. What kind of psychological effect would this have on a human being, to be told after the most drastic form of makeover on this planet that they are still not "good" enough?

Equally alarming are the contestants' reiterations that they will "become a new person" after the physical transformation, which the surgery team eagerly plays into. The "Swan Team" of two cosmetic surgeons, a cosmetic and reconstructive dentist, a laser eye surgeon, and several other professional "enhancers" hack into these women like pieces of meat, decorate them with new plastic body parts like personal Barbie dolls, and then surround the contestant cheering and clapping over their final product. The women undergoing the transformations don't become "new people;" they are still the same except now the doctors have chipped and sliced away at them.

But this plastic surgery craze and desire to become someone else is not limited to women. One of the first episodes of MTV's "I Want a Famous Face" chronicled the transformation of two teenage twin boys whose ultimate desire in life is to look like Brad Pitt.

The most sickening element of the new makeover reality show phenomenon is the blatant fact that these people's deep, psychological needs are being ignored in order to get good Nielsen ratings. "Swan's" Kelly cried continuously throughout the makeover process and repeatedly made comments such as, "I would love to look in the mirror one day and be happy with what I see."

Reality shows like "Swan" and "I Want a Famous Face" are making this idea of rejecting one's own body and appearance as a normal and sometimes necessary action in order to obtain happiness. Somewhere between the participants' weeping and repeated declarations that their lives will be drastically changed once they have a new face, it becomes painfully obvious to the viewer that no amount of physical transformation can make these people accept themselves or succeed in giving them happiness.