I was all set today to write about my dreams - warm and fuzzy thoughts, general happiness, and hope.

And then.

Watching tv, I saw a promo for the "reality" program The Swan. We'll ignore for the moment that I detest all "reality" programs where we pit contestant against contestant, and the one who emerges victorious is the one who can behave the most despicably. Lying, cheating, back-stabbing, not just par for the course, but flat out encouraged. We see so much of that on everyday streets, and complain about it then... and praise it with a million dollars when it occurs in our living rooms via the television set. So let's just ignore those feelings for now.

Because I think we may have hit an alltime low. Maybe even lower than eating pig intestine. If you are unaware, the premise of The Swan is to take a group of "ugly" women, give them plastic surgery, and then put them in a beauty pagent.

Harmless, enough, right?

But no, it isn't. Because who are we to tell these women that they are "ugly" to begin with? How dare we presume to judge them at all? And then to take that, make them do torturous things to their bodies - liposuction, face lifts, dental work, extreme cosmetic surgeries... even just the healing process is painful, on the physical level.

But of course the human body bounces back much more quickly than the human mind.

So not only will they carve into these women's bodies, but also into their spirits. They will put them through every kind of physical alteration that can possibly be done, and then put them up to parade around in front of the world, and say to them - "see, after everything we did to you, you're still not good enough. You were so disgusting to begin with, there was literally no saving you, no way to make you beautiful, you will simply never be attractive, no matter what you do." How disgusting, how dispicable, and how very ashamed I hope the producers of this program feel about themselves. I hope, but feel sure those hopes are in vain. And I am ashamed to be part of a society that considers such abuse (and can it be called anything but abuse? Torture, maybe?) "entertainment."




Thoughts for the Day:

Proverb - “If there is light in the soul, there will be beauty in the person If there is beauty in the person, there will be harmony in the house If there is harmony in the house, there will be order in the nation If there is order in the nation, there will be Peace in the World.”

Henry David Thoreau - “The perception of beauty is a moral test.”