Bridalplasty: The Reality TV Show That Mutilates Brides

There are two things our society tells women they need to be happy: beauty and a man.

In the extreme, this means women go under the knife, trying to make their bodies conform to our ridiculous beauty standards. A premium is placed on weddings and how the bride looks at the wedding. Feminists were horrified when these damaging obsessions became reality TV shows like The Swan and My Fair Wedding. Now, E! Entertainment has taken the next logical step and combined them into one massively-sexist show: Bridalplasty.

Brides-to-be compete in wedding-themed contests like writing vows, then the winner picks a desired surgery off her “wish list,” anything from a nose job to liposuction to breast implants. The husband-to-be does not get to see his surgically altered bride until she walks down the aisle. Each week a woman is voted off, so the audience gets to see women scheming and backstabbing, maybe even some cat-fights.

Here's a taste from Jezebel of the first episode: "The contestants had to race to finish a puzzle, by covering up their old 'gross' bodies with Photoshopped versions of themselves. The women who finished their puzzles in a timely fashion were allowed to attend an "injection party," where they would be able to get a bunch of fillers and Botox." The last woman to make it into the injection party wept for joy.

Bridalplasty is yet another in a long list of shows which lure audiences with insecure women who fight and cry and mutilate their bodies to "fix" the things we tell them are wrong with them. In an interview with CBS, the show's plastic surgeon argued that as a reality show, they are only documenting what many women already do to look good for their weddings. Of course, he fails to mention that it's a vicious cycle which combines shaming women about their bodies only to shame them again as public spectacle when they try to attain a perfect body for a perfect wedding. While the audience is most certainly mocking these women, the show is also reinforcing the notion that women should surgically alter their bodies. As the surgeon told one woman on the show, "You have perfect breasts ... for doing a breast augmentation." In the same interview, host Shanna Maokler's attempted a second line of defense: “It's not like we were trying to Heidi Montag these girls.” The thing is, I don't even think that's true.

There's not much more to say that hasn't been said before about shows like this one, except that this goes so much farther than many thought the TV industry would dare to go. But in some conference room in Los Angeles, producers, developers, creators, and executives -- probably most of them men -- decided that they should make money by exploiting those themes which truly undermine women's sense of self-worth: judging women's bodies and relationship status and mocking their insecurities. In a way, those who put on these shows bear some responsibility for the fact that women want to publicly mutilate themselves in the first place. Tell E! Entertainment not to renew Bridalplasty for a second season.

Photo credit: soundlessfall

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