Coming to a TV near you: The Swan

This week's TV review: The Swan

Apparently, no woman is her ‘true’ self until she’s undergone 10 or so plastic surgeries all at the same time, spent three months isolated from her family (spouse, children – everyone), been put through a fitness training routine to rival the military, and learned all that she needs to know about make-up and grooming in order to reveal her inner ‘swan’. Like trying not to stare at a traffic accident, once I realise I’m watching it, I find it difficult to pull my eyes away. All the time my mind is reeling – WHAT THE HELL ARE THESE PEOPLE THINKING!!!

Potential swans are holed up in a fancy hotel for three months with no mirrors or reflective surfaces available. They are operated on to correct all their most pronounced ‘faults’, then they undergo recovery and begin an intensive exercise and grooming regime. There is psychological counselling provided as well, but I’ve not watched it long enough to discover if its purpose is to fix the broken inner person, to help them get through the stress and emotional discomfort of undergoing this barbaric process, or whether it’s to provide some gritty revelation for the television audience. I suspect its that latter, after all if they were to try and fix the broken inner person, that repaired being just might decide this gig is a sham and quit before filming is over. Once the swans make it to the dramatic ‘reveal’ at the end when we and they see themselves in their reconfigured form for the first time (a reveal which takes about three preliminary ad breaks to get to, by the way), one of them is chosen to go on to the (gag!) final pageant. Yes, it’s all topped off with that most 1950s-style display of womanhood, the beauty pageant.

The way the participants are introduced to the audience sets up the notion that they are doing this because they sorely need a boost to their self-esteem and they way they look is a severe hindrance to a successful life. Surely there are other ways to boost a person’s self-esteem…or perhaps that’s not really the aim here? Perhaps it’s a massive advertising campaign by the plastic surgery ‘industry’, perhaps it’s purely to make the rest of us feel truly inadequate, and thus we will rush out to book surgeries and order complete makeovers instead of boosting our intelligence quotient, getting rich and exercising our political power. Whatever the intention, it’s a vile piece of television with the underlying message that women must look good, no matter what the price (financial or emotional). And just to hammer the message home, when new participants who are struggling to mend after massive surgery while on a low calorie diet and participating in vigorous exercise finally have their breakdown moment, as they all inevitably do, they bring in a previous swan just to hammer home the message that success won’t follow this process unless you complete it. Previous swans have ‘had their lives changed’. No doubt simply being on telly was part of it, but many have changed their careers and surprise, surprise, become models of varying sorts. The world, it seems, is just crying out for more models. I know I could do with one around the house – they make great umbrella stands.