i'm not the biggest fan of reality television. In fact, i'd go as far as to profess my absolute loathing for the genre. i find it abominably boring, pretentious, devoid of any entertainment value whatsoever and just about as intellectually stimulating as a bowl of cooking lard. It's not for my lack of trying to watch either. i did try. Really, i did.Once. And if i could find a way to claim back that wasted, soul-depraving half hour of my life in its entirety, believe me i would've done so. A long, long time ago. i can't for the life of me recall what show or indeed which episode therein had so instigated a reaction in me so much akin to that of the turning of one's nostrils up in the presence of a decidedly toxic and stomach-curdling pong, but suffice it to say that it had from that moment on turned me off of the purgative genre for good. Thank God, the ancestors and good genes for a brilliantly pedantic pair of nostrils.

One might deem it rather unjust to base an all-encompassing opinion regarding an entire genre upon a brief half-hour's sitting, but to that critique i offer a short rebuff: it may walk like a duck, it may look like a pheasant, and it may very well run like an ostrich too. But by Jupiter it sure tastes like chicken. You see, once you've seen one (reality shows i mean, not the fowl),you've seen them all.

One can thus imagine my gack-shock-horror just the other day when i had the torturous misfortune of having to sit through what would be my second half-hour lost entirely to yet another piteous attempt at entertainment by a so-called reality (humph!) show. Be in the firm knowledge, however, that the experience was involuntary and totally out of my control, and is the main reason behind my continual and fervent belief in the tactics of successful remote control concealment when leaving your throne in front of the television;- entirely necessary precautionary measures done in order to avoid what can only be described as a domestic coup d'etat to wrestle away control of the aforementioned remote by marauding female siblings or sub-plotting other halves. Alas, short of taking it with you to the ablution facilities, there are only so many places one can hide a remote that haven't already been discovered and scavenged by the band of rebels.

It was following one such incident that i made my unpleasant introduction to Dr. 90210. For those as intentionally ignorant of the genre as myself, this show is a series that focuses on plastic surgery in the wealthy suburb of Beverly Hills in Los Angeles, California and features interviews with the patients, semi-graphic footage of the surgeries, and before and after footage of the patients. The episode i was forced (you might ask why i didn't just do something else while waiting for the rebel scavengers to vacate the throne room, but it's very hard to find a patch of drying paint to watch, however much i would've loved the experience) to sit through, focused on three individuals- two sisters and an additional lady, each seeking some sort of aesthetic surgery to have performed about their person.

The one sister, a slender high school student of about 17, has already had a nose job done and is now looking to have her breasts enlarged.Still well below the legal drinking age in most countries, but wise enough beyond her short years here on Earth to know that self-esteem and pride about one's appearance don't come from within one's self, spirit or soul, but rather in the form of a face-masked man in green loose-fitting slacks and a shiny, sharp scalpel. Somebody hand her a medal, please.

Her older sister, who can't be her senior by any more than a couple of years, is overweight. Nothing a bit of exercise and nutritional self-discipline couldn't fix, you ask? Please perish the thought, what year are you living in anyway, 1995?? No, think more along the lines of a wonderful buffet combo of body shaping liposuction, Abdominoplasty ( tummy tuck), breast augmentation and gastric by-pass surgery (hold the fries and onion rings though, thanks).All this in one sitting, of course.

You might well enquire about the girls' family's thoughts on this. Their mother is an anaesthetist at the clinic where both girls are having their restructuring done. Oh and she's perfectly fine with them wanting work done on their bodies so early in their lives. No problem with it whatsoever. Why should there be? It's not like she's their moral and conscientious compass in life or anything. Go figure.



The last patient in this episode is a lady who, if there were a spectrum graphically displaying the extent of absurdities relating to cosmetic surgery (1 being "minimal" and 10 being "extreme"), would be perched comfortably under the number 100. She apparently has an addiction to cosmetic surgery (otherwise known as BDD, or Body Dysmorphic Disorder) and doesn't know it yet. She's been under the surgeon's knife dozens, upon countless of times, and still finds something about her body that she doesn't like and wants changed. In fact her parting scene involves her talking to the camera (us) about her last cheek implants that went wrong and made her look like E.T., oh and by the way, she wants work done on her pinkie toes because they're too "chubby". Right. Somebody clearly needs to be phoning home for help. Or Dr Phil, if the line's busy.

By the time the end credits rolled up, i must admit i'd taken pity on these three individuals. Maybe it's because i realised that however stupid i might have thought their reasoning behind whatever decisions they made to go under the surgeon's knife, they were sculpting their bodies not for them, but to what they thought we wanted them to look like. "We" being society. So, effectively, they were victims of their own society.Victims of society's barbaric view of what a beautiful human being should look like. And if that weren't enough, we commercialised, packaged and glorified the entire process of the ugly duckling turning into a plastic swan into one high-gloss, 30 minute show (minus commercial breaks).

Just the other day (roundabout 186 BC, to be absolutely precise) the Romans would throw people they didn't really fancy into the arena of the Colosseum and watch as hungry lions made short work of them. The difference between now and then? We've evolved, you say? We've changed, you quip? We're not like that anymore, you retort? Not likely. The human being hasn't changed for thousands of years. Given the right environment, we're still as barbaric as ever. The difference is that today we can throw the word "television" behind anything, and it instantly becomes something that we can accept. Something we can adapt to. Something we can enjoy.

Just in case you were wondering, i've got a different opinion on reality television to what it was before i'd watched that episode of Dr 90210. No, i still loathe the genre.

But now more than ever.

Pedantic Nostrils & Plastic Swans