...and I'm zonked out. Generally fried, in fact. I should sleep before long.
However, in trashy-television news, I watched part of tonight's episode of The Swan out of a certain sick, fascinated curiosity, and it's every bit as loathsome as people are saying it is. Further commentary is probably superfluous; I must, however, register my special loathing for the moment where the plastic surgeon happily describes how they "feminized" the "tomboyish" woman (who was thus designated on the show) by lifting her brows and liposuctioning all the spare fat off her body and giving her disproportionate fake boobs. She was "desperate to become a woman," according to the voice-over narration. Oy. Where's Simone de Beauvoir when you need her?
Up yours, Fox executives. Some of us like tomboys. You know what I want to see? I want a reality show where millionaire television executives get stripped of their designer suits and their luxury cars and their stupid beach houses, and turned into regular slobby middle-aged guys. There could be plastic surgeons to give them beer bellies and receding hairlines, and wardrobe consultants to dress them in track suits. And then I want a pageant where said executives parade on a platform while average-looking, "unfeminine" women compete to see who can lob rotten tomatoes at them with the greatest accuracy. Now that I would watch. I think it would make the world a better place.
Well, Fox executives, how about it? I'm a television viewer in the all-important 18-to-35 demographic; doesn't my revenge fantasy deserve a shot? It might even assuage some of my annoyance at the way you've canceled almost every Fox program that I've ever actually liked.
I like your idea, I could act as the "type" for the slobby middle-aged man so maybe I could make a buck here too!
Great site Amanda, hope you don't mind but I've "blogged you forwards"!
Posted by: zeno | April 13, 2004 at 04:47 AM
The brilliant part is that I'd wager none of these guys would need all that much alteration. Just lose the power tie, scare them out from behind the desks and make them shovel gravel or operate a drill press.
I watched a few short minutes of the show before I started twitching. There was some line about "I'd hate to see all of your time hard work ruined by butter. That would be a shame." <-- ?!?!!
Where's Susan Bordo when you need her?
Posted by: MisterBS | April 13, 2004 at 11:13 AM
I'd watch the pelt-the-execs show too. :)
Posted by: Rana | April 13, 2004 at 05:51 PM
I watched about 5 minutes of that episode. I thought I was going to puke. The plastic surgeon should be forced into some bio-ethics boot-camp because those women certainly wanted to look beautiful for all the wrong reasons.
Posted by: Ben the Geographer | April 14, 2004 at 02:46 PM
I like your idea, Amanda; so much so that I used it as a jumping-off point for my own -- as you can see from those multiple trackbacks above. I have no idea why MT did that; my apologies: feels kinda like I've just repeated myself several times, very loudly, for no apparent reason. Time to go see what's going on with auto-discover trackback links and why it likes your blog so much.
Posted by: Mike | April 15, 2004 at 10:32 PM
No problem, Mike — I've just fixed the duplicate trackbacks. (And your takeoff is splendidly mean, by the way.)
Mr BS: no kidding. The worst was watching the diet counselors scold that one woman for eating ice cream: "If you keep that up you'll never make it to the pageant!" Yeesh.
You know, there are makeover shows (not on Fox) that I've watched because they're frivolous fun, the kind where someone who needs a wardrobe update gets taken out shopping for new clothes and receives a spiffing new haircut. But this show was all about making the contestants suffer, and then making them suffer some more by telling them they're still not pretty enough. Bleah!
Posted by: Amanda | April 16, 2004 at 11:41 AM