THE SWAN: WOMEN & THEIR BODIES
http://www.007b.com/breast_gallery.php
I chanced upon the above website this week and thought very hard if I wanted to bring this to the attention of Nikki, Coco and Judette. They’re all young teenagers now and it might be necessary to let them know that the media has a way of glorifying a certain body type in women and that they should not be taken in by the media always when the promotion of a certain “perfect” body form is constantly used to condition and instil doubt and self-consciousness of personally perceived “imperfections” in themselves. Perfect body types are abnormal in that it is rare to find a woman or young girl genetically and “perfectly” created – naturally. What’s normal are the bodies of women and girls around them, and in reality, they do look like what you see in the website.
What do I mean? I feel we should be satisfied with what we have. Although, the last few weeks I’ve been monitoring a television series here in France called The Swan, an American television reality show dubbed in French.
Apparently, this is a nine-episode series, and it involves the acceptance and selection of eighteen women who write in to the show to participate in a full makeover programme compliment of the show which includes a tremendous amount of plastic surgery. The makeover transformation takes place through a three month period and includes a regime of controlled diet, exercise, counselling and the necessary surgeries. On each show, two women are selected and featured, and at the end of their ordeal – they remove all the mirrors in the private rooms they are each given and none of the contestants are permitted a look at themselves – they are brought, totally made up, coiffed and beautiful especially when flash-back photos and videos are played for recall and comparison, to stand in front of a full length mirror for a final assessment of the end result.
Naturally, it is astounding, the transformation is pretty stunning, and of course, I personally would choose the “AFTER” effect to the “BEFORE”.
Of the two contestant for the episode, one is then chosen to go on for a final “Miss Swan” title competition, and the other is sent back home. The prizes offered to the winner of the Miss Swan competition are US$300,000 in cash and prizes (mostly), and US$100,000 to be the new spokeswoman of NutriSystem diet.
But it’s still a great way to be sent back home even if you loose out to the winner of that particular episode. The transformation process is quite remarkable and the counselling sessions help tremendously in boosting the women’s low self-esteem.
My take on this will always be to stay as natural as possible unless you can’t deal with your problem.
And, you’re willing to go under the knife and through the pain.
That’s key for me. I do not like to inflict pain and hurt myself deliberately. I always have this image of thousands of your body cells crying out not to be harmed whenever a surgical knife cuts through body parts just for aesthetic or cosmetic reason. I have this weird feeling that, one day, internal cells would rebel for the ordeal you deliberately put them through by going through a process of cell mutations so you eventually end up with something like cancer.
I would only accept cosmetic surgery if I’ve had the misfortune of being in an accident and I end up looking like a mess, but I’d really prefer the changes to occur when I’m still out and anaesthetized for that first cleanup job. It’s harder on my mind to think and accept that I would have to go through another surgery after getting bruised and broken in an accident. Or, if it’s really a necessary process for health reasons.
It’s that brain to nerves to cell relay that affects me.
Reminds me of when I was in high school and Eileen told me that her classmate had said that everytime a rose was cut, there would be little voices coming out from the rose plant and the roses crying out “please don’t cut us, please don’t cut us, we’ll die if you cut us …”
I guess that’s why I’m not in favour of plastic or cosmetic surgery – I feel my cells will die if I cut them … deliberately. But then, that’s me.
Following photos are of one of the contestants in The Swan television realty programme in a BEFORE and AFTER shot:
