Recently, Comcast upgraded the lines in the area to fiber optic. To celebrate this momentous occasion, I added a phone line I’ll never use and a buttload of TV channels and somehow will save $30 a month. In surveying this new kingdom of channels on a lazy Sunday afternoon, I happened upon one of the best and worst and saddest things I have ever seen in my life: Bridalplasty.
The premise of Bridalplasty is simple, yet mind-boggling: a group of brides-to-be live in a home together to compete to win the perfect wedding…and also to win plastic surgeries off their wish list in order to become perfect themselves. You heard me. This right here is why other countries hate the United States. Just saying.
This is how E! describes it:
Each week, a group of women competes head-to-head in such challenges as writing wedding vows and planning honeymoons. The winner receives the chance to choose a plastic surgery procedure from her “wish list.” She’s given the procedure immediately, and results are shown at the start of the following week’s episode.
One by one, the women are voted out by their competitors and, according to the show’s description, “possibly walking away with nothing and losing [their] chance to be the perfect bride.”
The last bride standing will receive a “dream wedding,” where she will reveal her new appearance to friends, family and the groom. “Viewers will witness his emotional and possibly shocked reaction as they stand at the altar and he lifts her veil to see her for the first time following her extreme plastic surgery,” E! said.
…and yet somehow, it’s gays that are ruining the concept of marriage? I will love and cherish you forever, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health…but not with that nose. Nuh-uh. Or, for that matter, that icky divot on your forehead that I have to look at every time I kiss you. I love you, but there are limits, woman!
Except it’s not the men asking that the women they love live up to some unattainable standard, that they make themselves somehow more appealing to the male gaze, it’s the WOMEN. Already beautiful women with cripplingly low self esteem knocking themselves on camera in front of the men who already love them enough to make a lifetime commitment to them despite these supposed flaws. Universally, the men looked embarrassed and uncomfortable. They expressed that they loved these women the way they are, and equally universally, the women could not accept these statements as fact, laughing them off or continuing to insist that they’re a quarter troll on their mom’s side and half goat on their dad’s side.
And then there’s the whole, "I am going to get an asston of plastic surgery and you, who are making a lifetime commitment to me, will not see my brand new face until the day of our wedding, so hey, surprise, I always wanted to be a tiger-woman! How do you like my cheek implants? My whiskers are fiber optic!"
So, the premise of the show is horribly wrong, and the reality of the show is even worse. One bride-to-be moaned that her fiance has been deployed to Iraq for months and he was finally coming home the day she left to go do the show, and that "I think I’ll always regret not being at the airport to welcome him home." Because, you know, the opportunity for televised plastic surgery was way more important, right? Another of the brides-to-be was appalled that another had to pawn her ring to fix her car "because it shows she doesn’t value nice things." It’s easier to value nice things when you can call the first bank of daddy to fix every problem, right? When all of the competing women were introduced, they also went over their plastic surgery wishlists with a ‘plastic surgeon to the stars’, who augmented them by taking a marker to their naked bodies and saying "Well, you need liposuction here…and here…and here…and all through here…and here…and here…and back there…and up here, also, you have the perfect breasts….for augmentation surgery" until they looked like one large connect-the-dots puzzle. It was horrifying.
And then they got to the first challenge–the girls had to assemble a puzzle of what they might look like after becoming the perfect bride over a picture of what they look like now, as clearly hideous swine-women. If they’re among the first ten brides to complete the challenge, they win a syringe and get to attend an "exclusive injectables party" (I swear I am not making this up). One of the last two will be voted off, and the other’s punishment for not being great at puzzles is to just watch everyone else get happily stuffed with botox and god knows what else. The first bride-to-be to assemble her puzzle shrieked, grabbed her syringe and ran with it downstairs yelling "I’m so stoked! Let’s take care of my buttface!"
I’m so stoked.
Let’s take care of my buttface.
-Socrates
But still the worst was yet to come. Because the bride-to-be who was voted off was ushered off the program with "Your wedding will go on…it just might not be perfect."
WHAT. Better just call the whole thing off, then! God knows if it’s not a perfect wedding with a perfectly plastic bride, it doesn’t stand a chance. Love and commitment and honesty and hard work–that doesn’t have shit to do with marriage. Look at your successfully married hostess, Shanna Moakler! ….whoops.
I watched one episode of that. I was horrified. I agree with everything you said.
Wow. That’s even more evil than “The Swan”, if such a thing could be.
I am happy to be getting married with my bird beak intact.
I heard of this show a couple weeks ago and was horrified!!! This is kinda what I pictured! Fuck
Oh wow, this is just so wrong? What ever happened to you know, Love!
I’m pretty sure the premise of the show is the same as the MTV “Sweet 16”, the A&E “Hoarders”, and Animal Planet’s “Animal Hoarders” shows:
Show unbalanced, emotionally broken people so we can be happy we are not them.
So should I feel badly for feeling good about myself now? :\
No, I think of it more like when Edward Abbey suggested sterilizing teens (paraphrase):
The shows, in essence, highlight that these people are out there, and you should look for them. It’s almost like a Crimestoppers show, making you aware of these people, and further, helping you identify those people who may be in your life, and hopefully eliminate them from your life – or get them help.
The show is like the car offer. Being on these shows in essence is like getting the Mustang – you’ve been marked, and hopefully segregated from society.
Am I a bad person if I would have taken the Mustang and getting sterilized? I’ve known since I was a teenager that I never wanted children and that the less people bred, the better.
I understand the original point of the argument, but my husband and I agree as intelligent people, we’d both still take the Mustang and a solid no baby making policy for our marriage. Sorry to plat devil’s advocate. =P
*play
Hell, I’d take the Mustang, too.
It’s like a road accident that way.
I was already pre-numbed to modern horror reality shows with The Swan. This show is just a hilarious spin-off. Pardon me, while I excise the part of my brain that knows this.
I somehow missed this show when it was on the air.
…that’s probably a good thing because it might have made me shrivel up and die inside.
E! really should have let you do the official write-up on the show because I totally want to watch it now. Actually I want to be ON it now because I am AWESOME at puzzles. Plus I have the perfect body… for lyposuction. (and if that line doesn’t make it to my OK Cupid profile page I don’t know what will)
It really is jaw-droppingly entertaining.
Oh. My. God. I’m scared for the human race now. What is wrong with people?!
This show reminds me of a reality show I watched a few years ago, called the Swan or something. It was women who were really ugly, had plastic surgery in order to look like beauty queens. They then competed in a beauty pageant to become the “swan.” It was pretty terrible, and I doubt there was another season.
I’ve heard of that show but never seen it–it sounds like it was wretched. “Hey, you’re pretty now! BUT NOT PRETTY ENOUGH!”
I like the wikipedia entry:
It attracted further criticism internationally as British comedian and writer Charlie Brooker launched attacks on The Swan during his Channel 4 show ‘You Have Been Watching’, where he suggested the show be renamed “The bullies were right”.[1][2]
There are not nearly enough pictures on the wikipedia entry.
I was watching someone someone talk about this show with similar thoughts that you have in this rant and I’m with you. That being said, I’m walking away from this LJ post wanting fiber-optic tiger whiskers. I think I could pull it off.
You could rock the hell out of those. I hope they’ll change color with your mood!
Fuck this. I am going to become a fundamentalist religious fanatic, and move to a traditional society, so at least i won’t have to put up with fucked up shit like this.
seriously.
No shit! Maybe the Amish have had it right this whole time.
That sounds absolutely horrible. I can’t think of an amusing way to frame this. Fucking hell. Fuck fuck fuckety fuck.
This world must be destroyed.
At the root of my horror with shows like this is a tangled ball of the following concepts:
1) The contestants of this show intend to breed.
2) A battery of telephone polls and focus groups have determined that this show stands a chance of being popular (otherwise it would not run).
3) The people who will enjoy watching this show are also likely to breed.
4) Therefore, shows like this are likely to become more and more common as time goes on as their troglodyte fans rut away, relentlessly filling their living rooms with brain-stunted howling demon spawn, cackling all day long until they pick up the phone and say A)“sure, I watch lotsa teevee and I’d LURVE to take part in your focus group…” or B) “sure, I’d LURVE to take part in your reality teevee show!”
I hereby promise to never breed, especially if I continue to watch this show.
Thank you, citizen. If your judgment improves, we will return your fecundity license by mail.
Eh, keep it, I wasn’t going to use it anyway. 😉
They should have made Heidi Montag hostess of this godforsaken show!
Maybe she’ll be a guest hostess!
yup
I watched it and put it on my DVR. I also watch Toddlers & Tiaras. I like any show that proves that people richer and/or more beautiful than me are more fucked up than I am and I enjoy watching their pain. I’m not bitter.
I enjoy them for pretty much the same reason.
*nods* when we had cable, I too watched T&T
I gotta know: Do you watch Sister Wives? I am DYING to see that lol
o.m.g. there are so many things wrong with this that I want to share but I feel like it’s a waste of my good time– ugh! just wrong! and it really shows how superficial people can be!
Omg I need this is so many ways.
OMG this post is so epic! I wish we had cable so I could watch that trainwreck of a show lol
Also, I told Zach to read this entry as it was A++ entertaining!
I am sure some poor soul has uploaded them to the internet if you’re dying to check them out.
I’m considering doing recaps of the episodes–I watched the second episode this weekend and it was equally trainwreck-y.
Oh would you please?! There’s a blogger who did that with the Fatty McFatterson version of The Bachelor, a show called More to Love, and it was awesome. I’m sure your recaps would be off-the-charts epic!
Yeah, I totally remember Lesley doing those recaps at Fatshionista, and I think this is a show I could tackle…if I can get past how horrible I feel about the potential future of humanity after each and every viewing. One of the golden moments in the second episode was one of the brides-to-be flipping out and sobbing that it wasn’t fair that someone else got to have surgery, that she should be the one in the recovery room. I just about died.
I find it ironic that E! is so aptly named, because most of their programming evokes an EEEEEEE! response in me. That said, Bridalplasty is a train wreck. I tripped across an episode about two weeks ago and everything in my brain screamed “Change the channel, change the channel!” Instead, I sat there and boggled at the bridal carnage, spouting OMFG about every five minutes. And I thought “The Swan” was bad. Holy crap.
Of course, fiber optic whiskers would be awesome. Do you think the doc would install them in my cat? Oh wait, he’s not getting married. My bad. Bummer.
You could set up a perfect ‘sham’ wedding for the cat in oder to get him the fiber optic whiskers of his dreams.
I’ve seen the ads for the show, but I haven’t talked myself into watching an episode. Yet. Sadly, if it comes on and the remote isn’t in my lap, I’ll probably sit and watch it. That’s how I got lured into watching Jerseylicious.
Jerseylicious!? OH, TONYA.
The first step to overcoming a problem is to admit you have a problem.
With time and the love of my friends, I hope to overcome this horrible shame.