In a new documentary, film-maker Erin Lee Carr lifts the lid on the 2000s TV show that shocked America<\/p>\n
It was in 2003, while listening to country radio, that Kelly first heard the casting call: \u201cHave you dreamed about plastic surgery but never thought you could afford it?\u201d She immediately turned up the volume. The pitch sounded too good to be true: free cosmetic procedures, a nutritionist, self-esteem work \u2013 one \u201clife-changing opportunity\u201d that \u201ccould transform everything\u201d. Kristy, Cindy, Tawnya and Beth heard the call, too: the chance to overhaul oneself from the outside in, fulfilling the implicit but omnipresent promise that if you just lost a little weight and just tweaked your face a bit, your whole life would open up. You, too, could be an ugly duckling transfigured into a swan.<\/p>\n
The catch? It would all be filmed for television, of course, for a short-lived show that some have called one of the most sadistic of all time: The Swan. The Fox reality program, which ran for two seasons in 2004, brought the spectacle of intensive plastic surgery \u2013 the endurance of extreme pain and humiliation in pursuit of a narrow beauty ideal \u2013 to US living rooms with shocking bluntness: bandages and bruises, surgical cannulas pounding into flesh, curt assessments of lumps and bumps and \u201cmasculine\u201d teeth that must be corrected in pursuit of a better you. Even among similarly thin-obsessed programs from the infamously ruthless Wild West of early reality television \u2013 America\u2019s Next Top Model<\/a> and The Biggest Loser<\/a>, to name a few \u2013 The Swan stands out as especially cruel, at once hopelessly bought into punitive beauty standards on-screen and shamelessly manipulative off it.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/ec80dc8b3ab95845db59b9ef3ada8c34454b1565\/615_0_2697_2160\/master\/2697.jpg?width=140&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=1f55a692b01efc4e5a551a27b607b2e8\" "\\"The")
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