The Plastic People

In the past I would check my email once a week in a good month, lately I'm up to at least once a day, until the past week. I have no internet at home, and it is driving me CRAZY! I can't check my email, I can't read blogs, I can't buy crap I don't need on e-bay!

So instead of internet I've been wasting my time watching TV. I went three years without cable. I thought I missed it. The truth is that there are only about a dozen channels out of the 70+ I have that I'm willing to watch, and maybe 5 of those I watch on a regular basis. There's Adult Swim of course, I loves me my cartoons, and The Daily Show and The Colbert Report! And lately I've gotten sucked into the Style network, mostly How do I look?. And I get sucked into Trading Spaces too. I. Can't. Help. It!

The other day I was randomly flipping through channels, mostly because I still don't know which ones are which or what time any of the shows are on. I came across Extreme Makeover, on Style network (damn you Style network!) The episode that was on featured a couple that got made over and then received a "fantasy wedding" at Disney World. I had caught bits of the show before, but for the first time I really found the show disturbing me. I don't have a problem with plastic surgery itself. I think it's great when they help people who have some sort of physical abnormality (like a cleft lip), but I actually found myself being slightly creeped out by the "fixing" of certain "problems". The people on the show were saying what a great help Dr. So-and-so was. Well of course he was! He's selling you (and the viewing audience) a product. He's a salesman, honey. "Well, we can do yadayada to your nose and do a brow lift and your chin is kind of small compared to the proportions of your other features so we can do a chin implant to make everything balanced." There was nothing wrong with the woman's chin, it may have been a little smaller, but it gave her face a nice heart shape. Later, (yeah, I watched the show, shuddup) we get to see the bride and groom, and all I could think was that all the people I've seen on that show look like dolls after their makeover. They all kind of look the same. They showed the rest of the dude's family, who all had the same long nose he had before the surgery, now he looks nothing like his family. He looks like just another pop culture Ken doll. These people are erasing all the little bits of their appearance that make them themselves. "Fixing the problems" Stuff you wouldn't even notice. It seriously weirds me out.

It's not just on shows like Extreme Makeover that you see this sort of thing. Everywhere you look people are striving to look like everybody else. In a "unique" way, but still within the parameters set by the fashion moguls. Yes, I watch TV and read a fashion magazine or two, but I don't subscribe to a particular look or way of life because it's laid out in all it's airbrushed glory on glossy paper. Everyday I see people who look familiar to me, not necessarily because I've met them before I think.

It's not just in people's appearances either. It's in their heads too. The clones all think the same. They are told to think it and they do. Seriously scary.



P.S. I just did a spell check and Blogger told me that "Blogs" wasn't a word. Good job guys.