10 Horrifying Reality TV Shows You Won’t Believe Exist
2. The Swan (Fox, 2004)
The Swan is a tricky programme to nail down in a sentence. The best way I can describe it is if 10 Years Younger was adapted by a madman with substantial shares in a cosmetic surgery company. While the makeover methods of 10 Years Younger are makeup, new clothes and very mild cosmetic procedures like teeth whitening, The Swan's techniques are to completely rebuild the participant's face until they look exactly like all of the other plastic Barbie wannabes that popular culture is at pains to tell us is the peak of beauty. It's like a real life version of a terrible soap opera plot where a character is recast with the explanation being that they had extensive plastic surgery. But the really horrifying thing is that rather than enhancing a person's existing features and tweaking minor things like crows' feet, it's basically scrapping the person's appearance and starting from the ground up. The surgeons involved are more or less telling the participants "Nothing about your appearance is good enough. The only way you can be beautiful is to look completely different". I agree with comedienne Josie Long that they may as well call it "The Bullies Were Right".
But because this show isn't quite a full-on ethical car crash just from that part of the premise, it goes a little bit further by recording the participants' slow and painful recovery process as they're sequestered in a house without mirrors for three months, only seeing how much they now look like a shop mannequin at a grand ceremony that will make you develop a burning hatred of reality TV, plastic surgery, and everyone who finds this entertaining. But wait, there's more. Each episode features two participants, one of whom is declared the winner simply based on looks. The season finale then features these 'Swans' being pitted against each other in a beauty pageant as a final kick in the nuts to the participants by telling all but one of them that they're still not quite pretty enough. Goodbye faith in humanity, it's been nice knowing you.