“Your quest to be the perfect bride has ended. Your wedding will still go on, it just won’t be perfect”.
In the latest in a long-line degrading reality shows which both generate then prey on female insecurity comes Bridalplasty, billed as “The only reality show where the winner gets cut!”
Fodder for the expansion of the global cosmetic surgery, 12 bridal contestants compete in wedding-related challenges to win cosmetic surgery, so they can have the ‘perfect wedding’.
This gut-churning exercise is further evidence for the case that the cause of women is rapidly moving – in a backwards direction.
The show is screening on “E!” TV. Liz, writing for Feministing this week, has watched the show. Here’s what she reports:
Brides to be…are living in a house together and competing in wedding related challenges (dress, food etc) to win plastic surgery. Each woman has a list of surgeries and each time she wins a challenge, or is the “top bride”, she gets some work done. At the end of each week the three women who scored the lowest on the challenge are summoned to an RSVP ceremony where one of them, the “bottom bride”, is voted off. Eventually there will be one “top bride” who will have received all the surgeries on her list, and wins prizes/money design her dream wedding.
The set is a decked out banquet hall, as though it were actually someone’s wedding. Each of the 3 “bottom brides” sit at their own table, and the other brides stand across the dance floor from them. The hostess calls each bride forward and she must cross the dance floor and chose which table she will sit at. The “bottom bride” is the one with the least amount of people at her table, and is then sent home, with these parting words: “Your quest to be the perfect bride has ended. Your wedding will still go on, it just won’t be perfect”.
Bottom bride, you are a loser. You have lost the popularity contest, your cake-making skills (so essential to a happy marriage) suck, and your wedding can never be perfect. Because you don’t make the cut (literally).
Isn’t it ironic that a so-called ‘reality show’ is actually centered on how to get rid of reality by employing knives, breast implants, botox, veneers and fat suctioning devices?
What pressure on women. What ugly competitiveness. What a view of how to launch a life-long partnership.
The groom doesn’t get to see his re-made (artificial) bride until the wedding day. What if he preferred her how she was when he proposed? What if PlasticBarbieBride isn’t quite the look he was after?
And what of the woman who perhaps had considered getting one procedure done, but with the combination of peer pressure – and being persuaded she should to ‘cash in’ on all the free surgery on offer – ends up getting a lot more done than she’d originally planned? It’s not hard to imagine this happening.
You can watch a pitch for the show here (‘Bridalplasty: a fight for perfection’) and extracts here.
I appeared on Channel 7’s Morning Show recently on the issue – along with a cosmetic surgeon and his post operative bridal patient. You can watch it here.
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/17859850 [/vimeo]
4 Responses
this is incredible! How daft! How is this entertaining? Already Australia has one of the highest suicide rates because our young people don’t seem to want to live here! With shows like this further damaging relational expectations, relationship with self, self respect, feeding self loathe and limiting in particular women’s capabilities to the ‘achievement’ of cup size, producers need to acknowledge their responsibility and incredible ability to empower the people of our country, instead of limiting their capabilities to a circle of diminishing self-image.
You have to wonder if this series is a joke, with actors paid very high sums of money to send themselves up in the name of ratings – albeit a very sick one. I suspect the little boy execs are laughing all the way to their next island purchase.
Again, why is it always women who seem (according to the corporate media) to ‘need’ cosmetic surgery?
The reason why women are constantly targetted by corporate media and told our bodies and even our minds are ‘faulty’ and in dire need of mutiliating surgery and re-programming is because we continue to live in a male supremacist society.
Capitalism is all about profit and constant propaganda targetting women and telling them their bodies/minds/behaviours/beliefs/interests etc. are innately faulty ensures huge profits for corporate media and also the innumerable plastic surgeons.
There is a concerted male backlash against women and this ties in very well with our male supremacist society who do not want women to achieve even a tiny amount of their human rights and not forgetting capitalism which is all about exploiting women. Capitalism feeds on the patriarchal system because we do not have reality shows for example, wherein it is men who are told ‘you must have mutilating surgery, you must change your style of clothes, you must change the way you interact with women because your only role in life is to serve women 24/7. No men are the default human so therefore it is women who are supposedly in dire need of constant monitoring and being told they are not meeting the default male-centric definition of how women should appear, what their bodies should like and how they must put their needs last and men’s needs first.
Individual men are not the ones demanding that women be reduced to male-centric robots but certainly our male supremacist society promotes the myth that only men are the default human and hence it is women who are in dire need of ‘constant fixing.’
Men are not constantly targetted by multi-national corporations and told ‘your body needs fixing because you don’t measure up.’ Reality programmes do not portray men as seeing their only goal in life is to achieve their ‘perfect wedding.’ No instead we constantly read, hear and see men’s successes and men’s achievements – because you see men are human whereas women are what? Just men’s support systems apparently.
If women didn’t want to put themselves through plastic surgery they wouldnt!
It’s a big decision and theres many complications to consider after surgery.
I for one have just had my nose done and my chest augmented and i’ve been wanting this for over 15 years, its increased my confidence I look like a fuller woman and I’m much healthier looking! I don’t regret it one bit because i considered all my options and spoke to many many professionals before rushing into anything.
My attitude towards this show is if you are offended by it or don’t want your kids (daughters) watching it then turn it off!! it’s that simple. If i had a daughter I would explain every part of the reality of plastic surgery and educate her on the topic.
There are far more worse things that should be cancelled on TV than this BS show. I think this show does no justice for the women who do take their time considering the side effects of plastic surgery and consider all other possible options prior to rushing to be surgerised just because it seems like the easiest solution.
Also I feel as though these woman on this show are so so so in need of a therapist to talk to – doing plastic surgery just to look good on 1 day of your life is not worth the risk nor is it sending the right message in my opinion. Doing it because you want to maintain a healthy body image for the rest of your life is another story – be warned plastic surgery does also age you need to maintain it once you start it.