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Going 'Behind the Mirror' with 'TheSwan' · Pop Culture Junkie®

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♪ Entertain me, entertain me right now ♪
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- Hello and welcome to the Pop Culture Junkie podcast.
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My name is Shauna here once again
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with my fellow Junkie.
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- Olivia.
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- Hey.
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- Hey.
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- How was your European summer?
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I guess it was a lead into European fall, but how was it?
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- It was so good.
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It was incredible.
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Oh my God, I can't even begin.
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Like, Paris, I'm obsessed with.
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I would go back in a heartbeat.
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That was definitely my favorite place that we went.
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- The catacombs?
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- The catacombs was sick.
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- Glodrumated out.
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- Yes, we did not get taken by the,
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"As Above, So Below" creatures.
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We did the catacombs, the Eiffel Tower.
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We saw the Arc
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De Triomphe, Notre Dame, like everything.
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- Yeah.
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- Our flight was delayed 24 hours,
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so we got one less day than we wanted to
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and ended up in Boston.
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- So that was the adventure.
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- It's been a lot of time in the Utah airport.
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- Yes, I did too much time.
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I think we went three days without sleeping in a bed.
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Like, we slept in just on airplanes
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and then on like the benches in airports
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and then Delta gave us little pillows
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and blankets to curl up with.
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It was bonkers, but we got to Paris and we're like,
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"Oh, we got two days to fit in as much as we can.
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Let's go."
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And then London, we got to kind of take our time
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a little more, 'cause we were there for five days
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and it was wonderful as well.
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I got to go to a bar.
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I forgot what it's called,
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"Holly," the old "Holly" or something.
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"Holly Arms," there you go.
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And it's where Amy Winehouse,
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it's like old stomping grounds
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in this place called Camden Town and London
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and it's kind of like the Punk Alternative part of London
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and they have like a statue of Amy
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and I did a lot of shopping in that town.
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Ooh, yeah.
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I bet you there are some good finds.
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Yeah, I got these ridiculous jeans after like free beers
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and I don't know if I'm ever gonna wear them,
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but they're really cool.
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They're like covered in sequined patches.
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Okay, amazing.
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Yeah, so you needed them.
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They're really like in pants.
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So I'm like, "Landan pants."
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And then Madrid, Madrid was wonderful as well.
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A little warm.
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I got the worst travelers diary of my life.
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(laughing)
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I.P.S. Gurley.
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Yeah, that was gonna be my question.
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How was the eating of the gluten?
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Did you notice a difference?
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You know, I don't know.
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I ate everything without regard for calories and gluten.
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I just ate joyously and it was wonderful
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until I got to Madrid and then I had one day
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where I needed to find a bathroom quite urgently.
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But that was only one day.
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And then I was okay to eat all of the toughest again.
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So thank God for that.
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Yeah, after that much like drinking and traveling,
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you're just like, "Oh my God."
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Yeah, English food.
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Also, sorry to any of our English listeners, you know?
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I feel like it's nothing to read home about.
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So you went Paris, England and Madrid.
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I had some good food in England.
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I had like a full English, what, tenando, shout out to Nando's.
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That was great.
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But you know, like it's nothing like,
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we're not like writing.
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Yeah, writing from about English food.
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I ate a croissant and I drank in a espresso
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and had a glass of champagne a day in Paris.
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Like, that was amazing.
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The best food I had was definitely Madrid.
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And my favorite place was Paris.
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And then London just kind of felt like
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I was making it my home.
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So everything was wonderful.
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I miss you.
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I feel like I haven't seen you in like a year,
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but it's probably not long.
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I know.
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I know.
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No, it's been like three weeks since we recorded
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because you last bit.
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I know, but I haven't seen you.
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I haven't held you in like a minute.
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I know.
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I know.
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Well, hopefully we get to see each other when I'm there.
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I'm Seanate texted me today and was like,
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when are you coming to Phoenix?
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And I was like, well, I land tomorrow.
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And she's like, are you going to fucking tell me?
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Yeah, I was like, you weren't going to tell me
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you're coming to Phoenix.
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I'm starting to find my friends.
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Like, what's the bug?
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I'm going to tell you in an hour or in a couple of hours
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when we're traveling, but no, I'm going to Phoenix
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to take you to, you know, be watched by my mother.
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And then I am going to San Diego
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or one of my best friends wedding.
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And I'm very, very excited.
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All that.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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It is going to be, it's going to be an interesting one.
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It's going to be my first wedding since my father passed away.
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So we're going to have to really hold it together
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during the father daughter dance.
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But we will persist.
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And thankfully, it's an open bar.
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So we're very excited.
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Are you a bridesmaid?
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Yeah, I'm a bridesmaid.
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And it's going to be a beautiful wedding.
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But I am very, very excited.
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No, I feel like I have some crazy updates
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to give you on my life after we're done recording.
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But I know exactly what you're talking about.
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And I need to know about this tarot card readings.
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That's all I'm going to say.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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OK, yeah, yeah.
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It was not even about that.
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It's worse.
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But I do have updates on that side.
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We can talk about it.
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I went to Portola Music Festival,
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and I made out with a boy in the crowd.
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I was a little tazer there.
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She made out with a man.
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I know.
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A man.
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A man.
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A man.
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A man.
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A gentleman's suture.
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So we're entering Romanticie Fall on a good note.
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Speaking of Romanticie Fall, Threshing Day came out.
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I'm already re-read it twice.
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You haven't read it yet.
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Tell everybody what Threshing Day is for the non-book talk
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earlier.
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Yes.
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So Threshing Day is the--
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I would say it's like 3.5 book of the fourth wing series
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by Rebecca Yara.
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So it is a series.
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It's like 16 different dragon bonding stories
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of the characters that we know from fourth wing.
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Yes.
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And it is really, really good fourth wing.
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Follows the protagonist.
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It's a first person narration, and it's Violet Soran Gayle.
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So we get to meet everyone else and their dragons
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and their interpersonal dynamics between them.
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It is--
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You've already finished it.
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I've read it twice.
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I've read it twice.
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Oh, yeah.
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Oh, my God.
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I have not even gotten it yet.
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I've only been home to your listeners for four days
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in Europe.
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So--
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And then I--
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Whoa, wow.
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Yeah.
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And then we immediately got sick.
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So--
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Yeah.
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But no.
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I need to read it, too.
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I've been texting Jessica every night where I'm like--
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Did she finish it, too?
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No.
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No.
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She's on chapter two.
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And I'm like, girlfriend, you're better than this.
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I like she's a doctor.
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I expect Sean to--
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Yeah.
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I expect Sean to be slow.
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Not Jessica.
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Jessica, you're listening.
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Public shaming in the pop culture junkie square.
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Yes.
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Public shaming in the podcast.
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Jessica was in London, and--
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Well, she was in a different town in Britain.
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And it took the train--
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Right, right.
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--tun.
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--and took the train three hours to go sing karaoke
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with me for one night.
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And it was--
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Did she stay with you, Rosar?
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She took the train back.
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She took the train back.
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She was with one of her classmates.
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And they missed their train and then
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had to take the next one and didn't get home until like three
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in the morning.
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And they were definitely there for like a doctor thing.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Where's it?
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As one does.
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Well, I think that we could keep gossiping
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for this entire podcast.
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But there is something I want to definitely gossip about.
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And that is the new documentary that just came out
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on a fooloo called Going Behind the Mirror, The Swan.
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Oh, so good.
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This was a documentary about a TV show called The Swan
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that came out in the early odds.
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So the early 2000s were a minefield for young women,
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as we've talked about a lot.
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With the media showing us extreme dieting culture
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and an unrealistic beauty standard,
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that very few people could meet.
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Fox decided to capitalize on the media's pressure
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to be perfect by creating a reality show called The Swan,
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which had a jaw-dropping premise, which
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was literally take, quote, ugly ducklings,
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women who were unsatisfied with their appearance,
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and put them through three months of extreme makeovers,
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including plastic surgeries, dental work,
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dieting exercise, quote, therapy.
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And sessions with a life coach to make them
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beautiful swans, the ones that they wanted to be.
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The show ran for two seasons in 2004
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and was very highly rated in its first season,
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despite getting a lot of negative breaths.
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So the hulu documentary The Swan Behind the Mirror
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has reunited a lot of the contestants, producers,
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and doctors from both of the seasons
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to tell us more about how they felt kind of before,
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during and after, becoming swans.
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Did you watch The Swan while it was on TV?
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I did, actually, by mom, and I watched it together.
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And it truly is one of those shows that is a car crash,
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that you can't help but watch.
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And it was so truly addicting.
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You're just like, oh, my gosh, what is going to happen?
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I feel like that was probably one of my first introductions
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to plastic surgery.
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And the pain that came with it, where I know it was a show
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that was ultimately promoting plastic surgery,
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where it was like, oh, OK, if you just have enough money,
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you can become beautiful, and all your problems
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will be solved.
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Look how happy these women are.
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But for me, I was like, I never want to feel that way.
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Those women are freaking going through it.
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And I think that they talk about it in the documentary
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a bit, but to have that many surgeries in the course of 10 hours.
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I've had a kidney surgery, and it was medically necessary.
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And the pain that I felt from one surgery--
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And that is going through your abdomen and things like that.
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I cannot even imagine how these women felt to have their nose,
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their face, their body.
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Head to toe.
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Yeah, broken.
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Their nose, like her cancels done.
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That's literally from the top of your head to your feet surgery.
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Yeah.
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And then to be covering through those with the dental surgery,
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like all of these things, I think that at the time,
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I was like, wow, this is crazy.
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So glad I never feel that way.
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I was watching it with my mother, but she was very much like,
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you don't need plastic surgery.
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You are perfect, the way that you are.
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And so, thankfully, I had that secondary voice in my head.
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Yeah.
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It's hard to know it.
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Look at that and see that.
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I'm like, well, they're happy.
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Dude, absolutely.
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I watched it too.
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And same that you said, it's like a car crash.
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It feels like a fever dream now, thinking back to watching that,
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and that it was actually on television.
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Along with that show, where they were on stage,
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and they'd have a laser pointer and point it like their cellulite,
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and their gray hairs, do you remember that show?
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Granny panties.
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Yeah, yeah.
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Holy shit.
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Granny panties.
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I do remember like the gray, circular motion,
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and just being like, God, don't.
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Yeah, we can.
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On the swan when it would yell like laser in on them.
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Oh my God.
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Yeah.
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I watched it, and I definitely kind of felt the same as you,
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just like, this sounds awful.
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I never want, I've never had a surgery now.
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Like, I've never been under the night.
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I've had like fillers and injectables in my face,
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and I had a wisdom tooth removed.
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But I've never had like a major, like, under anesthesia situation.
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It's because it scares me, and I don't, you know,
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thankfully I haven't needed it.
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But like, I do remember being a kid and her young lady,
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I guess I should say, a kid and wanting breast implants really bad.
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I just wanted huge knockers.
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Yeah.
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And I would be like, Britney Spears has huge boobs,
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and she's probably got breast implants, and my mom was like,
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just wait to go through puberty.
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Oh my God.
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Maybe if you have children, you'll come.
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But like, yeah, the way that it just made them seem like they
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were so miserable and ugly in the before,
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and then so happy and beautiful.
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And as we dive into the documentary,
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like, it has a lot of the contestants who are on the swan.
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And a lot of them were told to kind of like,
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play up their reactions when they saw themselves.
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So they don't let these women see themselves in the mirror
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for three months for the uninitiated.
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They take these women who apply to be on the show.
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Like 250,000 people applied to be a person swan originally.
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And they positioned it very differently than like what it was,
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right?
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So it was a show marketed like try out to transform yourself
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inside and out.
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Basically like you apply to be a part of this,
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and you can get any of the plastic surgery that you want.
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You'll get therapy.
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You'll get exercise training.
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You'll get a life coach dental work.
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And it will follow your journey of self love and becoming the woman
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you always wanted to be.
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And you know what?
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Free dental care for somebody who needs it and free therapy.
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Hell yeah, let's go.
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And so it's very understandable.
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And even plus pre-flussed surgery, sure.
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Like it's understandable that women who are feeling insecure,
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especially in an era where we fed off of women's insecurities,
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like just picked them apart.
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Like, of course they were going to apply.
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Yeah, if you're over 110 pounds, you're a fat cow.
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You're fat.
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Yeah.
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We don't believe that.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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No.
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And now again, listen to our episode on the coming back of skinny cultures.
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Yeah.
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Anyway, so they would take these women, put them in apartments,
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which these ladies would later call pretty prison.
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They weren't allowed to talk to their families.
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They weren't allowed to look in the mirror.
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Any reflective things like CDs, they take away from them.
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They were just kind of cut off from society in this lovely apartment.
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And they would go to the plastic surgeon and he'd tell them everything they needed to get
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to.
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All this took place over 90 days, right?
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Yeah.
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And so think about this, right?
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They are having insane plastic surgery.
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They're also forcing these women to go to the gym to work out.
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And insane.
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And twice a day workouts.
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So by the end of the 90 days, they were competing in this pageant.
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And so just think about that.
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Like people who get lipos, like BBL, things like that.
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Healing time is like six months.
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You're not even really allowed to sit for a while.
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And so like they're restricting calories.
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They're forcing them to go to the gym all while healing from a incredibly traumatic surgeries
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across their body.
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These women got, yeah, like a tummy tuck is a major abdominal surgery, right?
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I've had a lot of two come to us.
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Yeah.
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And they tell you, after you get like Botox and fillers that you can't go to the gym for
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at least three days.
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Like, you know, that's just for getting things shot into your face.
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You are not, and it shows the women at the gym, like you said, doing two workouts a day.
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And they're in full.
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Like they still have their bandages from their nose jobs, from their heads, wraps from
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their chin, lipo, their abdominal lipo.
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You are not supposed to be sweating and working out and stretching your body like that.
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Well, and we heard women talking about like how they were like, we felt unwell, like our
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faces were burning and all of this.
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But the only time we were allowed to interact with people outside of our like roommate that
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we had, because they were assigned with like one girl, because God forbid they each get
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their own fucking room.
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I know, right?
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That probably saved their sanity though, honestly.
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Yeah, true.
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Yeah, otherwise they were just completely alone.
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And it's one thing that came out of it, I guess, is good.
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Is all these women feel like they have like a little sisterhood now?
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They're like a trauma, or this one, they all trauma bonded.
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Yeah.
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So, you know, at least they had a friend.
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Yeah.
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And so the only other time that they were allowed to interact with people outside of their
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like roommate was with inside of the gym.
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And then they had this life coach who had come in and she was the executive producer.
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She came from more like a telemundo network where this style of show was quite common.
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So extreme makeovers coming in and so she kind of adapted that into an American audience.
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And she would come in again, these women just went through major surgeries and be like,
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you have to lose 30 pounds by the end of this.
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And it's like, well, why don't you just take the 30 pounds in the life of like what do you mean?
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Like, I mean, but it was all produced for television and she was really kind of like the like
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evil woman, the male trainer inside the gym was you know, a little intense as well.
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But the first season really didn't know what it was.
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They did promise like therapy, but it was therapy light.
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Yeah. And they did say in the documentary that like they really enjoyed talking to the
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therapist, but I think that was because they got somebody to just talk to, right?
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Yeah.
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And it was Nelly Gallant.
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She's the creator like anytime they talked to Nelly, of course, she's going to you need
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to lose 30 more pounds and she know what life coaching in tail and the plastic surgeons
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were just there to oh my god, the plastic surgeons in this documentary were such things.
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We need to talk.
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Okay.
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So bro, you probably know him from botched or real housewives of the OC.
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That's like it is.
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That's like the Millenium from bot.
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Yes.
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Yes.
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Yeah.
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So he is from botched.
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I think that Terry, do bro has always been a little fame hungry as well.
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He's like a celebrity plastic surgeon.
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And he is so charismatic.
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And he has always kind of played the nice guy.
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And within the show itself, he was the nice plastic surgeon and the other guy.
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What was his doctor?
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Dr. Hayworth is he was Dr. Hayworth.
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Yeah.
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He was the one that was the dick or the whole documentary disgusting.
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Disgusting.
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Dehumanizing these women, he compares them to toilets at one point where the blimmers
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come again and unclogging and even the documentary person who is like interview, the interviewer
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was like, did you just compare women to toilets?
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Yeah.
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And he like smiles.
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He's like, yeah.
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He thought that he was just performing miracles on these hideous women who just needed to
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be beautiful.
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So did you catch the one point where they start talking about season two and they come in
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and he's like, you know, ever since I started having dogs, I really developed empathy.
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And he's like, thanks to my second ex-wife, she was obsessed with dogs.
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So I got dogs and I see her so upset and it just makes me so sad for her.
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Yeah.
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I developed empathy after having dogs.
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I can see these women more as human beings because I really like my dogs.
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Fuck you.
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Yeah.
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Oh my God.
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It would come off.
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I would never want some man like that touching my body with a scalpel, right?
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You know what?
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It's women, my nose, laying absolutely not.
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Yeah.
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It was kind of implied that what the plastic surgeon said, you needed to get done, you were
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going to get done.
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You couldn't really talk back.
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There was one woman on the documentary, one of the swans who said, I don't want you to
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touch my nose.
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I like my nose the way it is.
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And they didn't do it.
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They needed her medical consent, obviously, and they didn't do it.
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But of course, she didn't get picked for the pageant and she even said that she's like,
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I knew I wasn't going to pick for the pageant because I wouldn't let them touch my nose
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if they thought needed an overhaul.
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They told her that they wanted her to be the oldest woman participating in a beauty
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project.
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And she was like, I don't give a fuck.
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You're not changing my entire face structure, yeah, literally.
21:33
And again, they kept these women so isolated.
21:36
So this woman was like, no, I don't want that.
21:39
And so she felt a lot of guilt about it because they were trying to do a double surgery on
21:45
her at once.
21:46
So they would have had Terry do bro and Dr. Hayward work on her where Hayward was on her
21:51
face.
21:52
Dobro was working on her body.
21:55
She refused and they did it to another woman who is heavily involved in the documentary.
22:01
And just think about that, right?
22:03
Someone is like sculpting the bones in your face, breaking your nose.
22:08
And then someone is like literally sucking fat out of your body all the same time.
22:15
And yeah, I mean, just an insane amount of trauma happening to the body.
22:21
And yeah, I mean, I think that even to this day, Dr. Hayward has no remorse, doesn't feel
22:28
bad.
22:29
He is a P O S.
22:31
I feel like Dr. Terry do bro was smart to not participate in this.
22:36
I think he's really kind of rehabbed his image since this one with botched and then his
22:42
wife being on real housewives.
22:45
But yeah, overall, I think that it's pretty disgusting.
22:49
We have some of these producers who are involved in season one, really realizing what they did.
22:55
And yeah, kind of the escalation from season one to season two.
23:00
So season one was horrible enough.
23:02
Yeah.
23:03
And then it was such a hit and it really just escalated.
23:07
How do we one up it?
23:08
How do we make it worse?
23:10
Let's take a quick break.
23:12
And then I want to talk about some of the most damning revelations that came out of this
23:17
documentary and just kind of the impact that it, you know, I don't, the viewers were watching
23:22
this crap.
23:23
So we will be right back.
23:27
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23:30
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23:59
So welcome back to our discussion about the swan and the documentary behind the mirror
24:07
this one.
24:08
We are going to talk about some of the most messed up things that came to light from this
24:13
documentary.
24:14
One of the most major ones is that a season two contestant almost died.
24:19
Yeah.
24:20
So that's that's kind of fucked up.
24:23
Just a little bit.
24:25
She says in the documentary, I almost died for reality television.
24:29
I feel like that's not even shocking anymore.
24:32
I feel like so many people.
24:34
Yeah.
24:35
Yeah.
24:36
So her name is Carrie Bravada.
24:38
She nearly died on set after waking up from anesthesia.
24:41
Her oxygen levels plummeted and her lungs filled with fluid rather than stopping production
24:47
to prioritize her life.
24:48
The camera crew filled the medical emergency until they were eventually ordered out of
24:54
the operating room.
24:55
So this is also the woman whose sister was also on this one, but she didn't know and they
25:01
weren't allowed to communicate with each other.
25:04
So that was kind of sad.
25:05
Yeah.
25:06
She almost died.
25:07
I mean, you can only be under anesthesia for like 10 hours max.
25:12
Yeah.
25:13
And they're doing fucking so many surgeries on these women at once.
25:17
It's like no wonder like my god is horrifying.
25:21
Yeah.
25:22
And just to give you guys kind of like an idea.
25:24
I know we've said like so many surgeries, but the average amount of surgeries performed
25:28
on each woman was 10 to 15.
25:32
And like we mentioned, like they were in back to back oftentimes done at the same time.
25:38
And they were either doing like liposuction, lase, sick, intense dental work within the
25:43
same ones or within days apart.
25:46
And your body really doesn't have a time to come back from that.
25:50
They were facing severe risk.
25:53
Like hemorrhaging, internal bleeding, fatal blood cells, like I think a Heidi Pratt, Spencer
25:58
Pratt, Heidi Montag.
26:00
She did something very similar.
26:02
You know, after the swan show where she had an insane amount of plastic surgery back to
26:08
back and all at once and really put her body through such as severe trauma and through
26:14
any surgery, like healing is so important.
26:16
And if you're kind of repeatedly doing that.
26:19
And it just made it so normal.
26:21
And you're like, well, I saw 15 women go through it.
26:24
It should be fine.
26:25
They healed in 90 days.
26:27
Yeah.
26:28
They didn't really set makeup.
26:30
Yeah.
26:31
Yeah.
26:32
Absolutely.
26:33
And so, you know, there is movie magic happening there.
26:35
And it's a fine line of, look how terrible this was for them.
26:39
But now they're beautiful.
26:40
And look how good they look.
26:41
Yeah.
26:42
It was worth it.
26:43
Beauty is pain.
26:45
A lot of these women faced long-term consequences, like specifically on like dental
26:51
surgeries and things like that.
26:53
Like they just immediately were like, everybody gets veneers, inventors have a lot of upkeep
26:59
and maintenance and yeah, dude, it was difficult.
27:02
That takes us right into the next horrific thing that came out about this was the dental
27:07
damage.
27:08
The dental overhalls were described by director Aaron Lee Carr as the most brutal element
27:13
of the show.
27:14
Healthy viable teeth were aggressively sought down to stubs or completely extracted to
27:18
make room for veneers.
27:21
Essentially every single woman on this show got veneers whether she needed them or not.
27:25
And years later contestants are facing severe physical and financial consequences from these
27:32
kind of rush jobs of these veneers.
27:34
The dentist who did them is not even practicing anymore.
27:37
She lost her license.
27:39
Yeah.
27:40
Wonder why.
27:41
Right.
27:42
So, some of these women needed full dentures by the time they turned 45 because their natural
27:47
teeth are rotting underneath the veneers.
27:50
Another contestant said she spent $10,000 just maintaining the work that they did to your teeth.
27:56
That was absolutely unnecessary.
27:58
So that's horrifying.
27:59
Yeah.
28:00
And it's not just veneers, right?
28:01
Like they were like shaving down their gums like a really, really intense surgery.
28:08
And I feel like nowadays veneers are very normalized and common.
28:14
But to get veneers, you lose your natural teeth forever.
28:18
So it is almost like a sinking pit.
28:21
You have to continue as high keep replacing them.
28:24
And then once those little nubs of teeth are gone or rot it or whatever, like you are, you
28:31
know, out of teeth moving forward, right?
28:34
There's so many celebrities who I'm, we talked about this for.
28:38
I miss normal teeth.
28:39
I miss celebrities with just natural teeth.
28:42
I love Kirsten Dunst teeth.
28:44
Oh my God.
28:45
I know.
28:46
She never touches those.
28:47
But yeah, everyone's just got little chiklets now for teeth.
28:50
Yeah.
28:51
Yeah.
28:52
And it's tempting, right?
28:53
Like you always see things and you're like, oh, that would be nice.
28:56
But with most things, there's always a consequence and not a consequence, but a potential
29:02
downfall.
29:03
Oh, for sure.
29:04
With an plastic surgery or adverse effects.
29:07
100%.
29:08
You mentioned the agent that all the ladies competed in when they were first put into this
29:13
show.
29:14
They weren't old.
29:15
They were going to be an effigient.
29:16
They all kind of formed this bond with each other because all they had was each other, right?
29:22
They're roommates and in a gym like you mentioned.
29:24
And then further down the line, they were told, oh, there's going to be an elimination.
29:29
And they pitted them against one another oftentimes with like their best friend on the show.
29:34
One of them was eliminated for not being good enough or for not getting that nose job.
29:40
And then they had to do this beauty patch.
29:42
Which involved a lingerie portion, like what beauty pageant has a lingerie portion in it?
29:49
Like, no, that's not a thing.
29:52
Yeah.
29:53
And within the first season, like halfway through, they decided that they wanted to add in this
29:59
beauty pageant and try to put these women against each other.
30:04
And so this was the level of psychological torture that these people were doing.
30:10
And like, we have, what's his name?
30:12
It's either Arthur Smith or Kent Weave.
30:14
They're both producers on the show.
30:15
It was a very controversial box reality TV producer and just kept trying to raise the bar.
30:22
And this was his idea.
30:24
And thankfully, these women's relationships persisted and they have each other throughout
30:29
it.
30:30
But really, season one women really didn't know what they were going into.
30:33
Season two, I would say the same thing because every reality TV show in the 2000s wanted
30:39
to one up the other shows and then continue to one up itself.
30:45
And there was always a thing about elimination.
30:47
I mean, I guess that's very popular in reality shows even today, even cooking shows or baking
30:52
shows.
30:53
You get eliminated until you find a winner.
30:56
But I think these women, because they had such extreme physical search are now done today.
31:04
But is his name Mike Jarnal?
31:06
Mike Jarnal.
31:07
Box reality TV programming and continuous push producers to be more intense and continue
31:13
to play with people's lives ultimately like we saw with Carrie.
31:19
And I think that it is such an interesting show to look back on.
31:25
I mean, the amount of psychological damage that these women went under the first season
31:31
winner in the pageant, she was just like, I don't even want to win.
31:35
I don't want to be labeled as a woman.
31:37
She was the runner up.
31:38
I tried to find information on the woman who won and she's gone off the grid.
31:43
Like she wasn't in the documentary either.
31:46
And I think that's just, yeah, I mean, she's, these women have had their entire lives changed.
31:50
I mean, they're all beautiful now, but you they definitely look like women who have had
31:53
some work done, which is, you know, totally fine.
31:55
But like they're watching these videos of themselves in the pageant and on the show and just
32:00
crying.
32:01
I feel bad for her that she thought she was so idiot.
32:04
That she had to reconstruct her entire face on television and her entire body really.
32:10
Those women were just moms, right?
32:12
Yeah.
32:13
And like military women.
32:14
Yeah, you didn't need to look like Britney Spears.
32:17
Yeah, but that's what we were told back then.
32:19
Yeah.
32:20
And I think we've talked about this so many times with like the rise of like fascist politics
32:25
becomes the rise of women having to be more skinny and have bigger boobs and like
32:29
they're more commodified or more dehumanized and just boil down to our appearance.
32:34
And I think we're seeing that now when we saw that like in the early arts.
32:38
So do you think a show like this would ever lie nowadays?
32:42
No, I don't, I don't necessarily think so.
32:45
I think that, you know, just to bring up like botched, for example, I think that instead
32:52
of we're going to pay for all your plastic surgery, it's like you are someone who is obsessed
32:58
with plastic surgery and look how stupid that was of you.
33:01
Like I think it's changed in a way, but I do think that we have rather than a plastic surgery
33:08
like health and fitness like, yeah, like all these people who are so dedicated and if you
33:13
were just dedicated enough, like you could get there too.
33:16
You know, we don't have the biggest loser anymore, but like it's evolved into different
33:22
formats.
33:23
And I think that something will rear its head back around, but less crazy of like life threatening.
33:30
I totally agree.
33:31
I hope it never comes back.
33:32
No, oh my God, no, I agree.
33:34
I don't think that it would ever lie in like the format that we had to grow up watching
33:39
it.
33:40
Thank God for all the other 10 year old girls.
33:42
I mean, not 10.
33:43
In 2004, I was a freshman in high school.
33:47
So I was right in that.
33:48
Yeah.
33:49
But like, thank God that, you know, girls that are that age now don't have to watch this.
33:53
But they have so much other stuff that they have to watch.
33:56
And I think you make a good point with like the health and wellness thing.
33:59
I could totally see a like don't die.
34:02
How to rewind age.
34:04
Or the Rex.
34:05
Yeah.
34:06
Yeah.
34:07
Let's get you as well as possible and as healthy as possible.
34:10
We take 10 women who want to transform their lives from the inside out.
34:16
Yeah.
34:17
That's like all the social media now.
34:20
Yeah.
34:21
It's just the things instead of a reality show that we see in little clips on TikTok and
34:25
Instagram now.
34:26
So it's boiled down to the attention spans of, you know, young ladies today.
34:31
So big peptide.
34:32
They're common.
34:33
They are common, man.
34:35
Yeah.
34:36
We can 10 women on O'sympic and give them therapy and change their lives.
34:42
That's the tanning ever.
34:44
We give them the tanning peptide.
34:46
Oh.
34:47
The skinny peptide.
34:48
Yeah.
34:49
Just put them all in there.
34:51
Nobody takes this.
34:52
Somebody's going to be watching.
34:55
We're kidding.
34:56
Yeah.
34:57
We're kidding.
34:58
We're kidding.
34:59
Mike Darnell is listening to the show and he's like, damn, these girls are on something.
35:02
He's like, "We are on something.
35:03
We are on something."
35:04
Right that down.
35:05
Right that down.
35:06
So thank God this one is gone and has sung its swan song into pop culture graveyard where
35:17
hot or not and all of those disgusting shows can live in pop culture held together.
35:26
Any last thoughts Olivia on this one?
35:29
No, I think that among most things within the 2000s that was a very sad time and I don't
35:40
think that our want to watch car crashes in real life or tragic things and kind of throw
35:49
stones at other people has gone away.
35:52
I think that it continues to persist within human nature.
35:56
It's the little leaps that we do see made within reality TV.
36:02
You know, it's a it's a teeter.
36:05
And so I think we'll continue to see that maybe in a little bit more of a politically correct
36:09
time for now, but in 20 years we'll look back and be like, "What the hell were we doing?"
36:15
And so yeah, I think that the more that we can continue to be like, who benefits from
36:19
this and who wins from this level of messaging against women will always be the North Star
36:26
in pop culture.
36:29
Yeah.
36:30
Well said.
36:31
Remember, it's always the capitalists that win.
36:34
Yeah.
36:35
And you hate yourself.
36:36
They win when you hate yourself ladies and gentlemen.
36:39
Yeah.
36:40
So I think that is a wrap on this episode deconstructing the swan.
36:44
Remember junkies, we think you are beautiful just as you are and however you choose to present
36:50
yourself.
36:51
Olivia, where can our lovely listeners find you on social media?
36:56
You can find me on Instagram @livimariez, L-I-V-I-M-A-R-I-E-Z.
37:04
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37:15
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