By MORGAN DANNA
COLUMNIST
If you believe you have witnessed the good, the bad, and the ugly of reality television, I would like to challenge this thought for just a moment. I thought I had heard it all when it came to these ridiculous programs, but I was proven wrong by one show in particular: Bridalplasty.
Bridalplasty is a show that features twelve engaged or already married women all vying to win an all expenses paid dream wedding. Although this in itself does not seem like an absurd premise for a show, there is a twist. Along with this dream wedding, the winning woman also receives every procedure on her “plastic surgery wish list.” For many of these women, this list, which they created at the start of the show, contained upwards of ten different procedures.
The show understandably aired for only one season, running from November of 2010 to January of 2011. As each week of the show progressed, the brides competed in challenges and the winner of each was rewarded with one surgical procedure from her wish list. This woman would then spend the week on medical leave to recover and would therefore not participate in the subsequent challenge. On the flip side, the two brides-to-be who performed the most poorly on the challenges would be in danger of being eliminated. This decision was ultimately made by the other women who voted each other off, leading to a hostile and manipulative environment made all the more outrageous by the bandages covering the bodies of the scheming ladies.
Since many of these women were fairly newly engaged, the show did allow their fiancés to visit and help them in particular challenges. Part of the show, however, required the men to remain oblivious to what medical procedures the women had undergone, so the poor visitors were forced to wear blindfolds and remain in the dark (literally) as to what their loved ones had undergone. Surprisingly, in the pre-show interviews, all the men who were spoken too seemed strangely unconcerned by the principle of the show and the possibility of their future wives undergoing excessive plastic surgery.
As Bridalplasty’s host Shanna Moakler explains, the show is the contestant’s “quest to become the perfect bride.” The entire season does its best to glamorize plastic surgery and impress upon its viewers that you cannot have a true dream wedding if you do not first surgically alter your body. Ultimately, Bridalplasty utterly shocked me by bringing reality TV to new extremes I never dreamed television would extend to. The fact that this show existed, for however short a time, points out a true low point in the entertainment industry and I sincerely hope that there is no show out there more ridiculous than this one that I have yet to be exposed to.