Beauty Colosseum
September 27th, 2006 by James
Last night Fuji TV aired another special in its series of “Beauty Colosseum” cosmetic surgery showcase series (ビューティー・コロシアム’06史上最大最高大激変SP). It’s similar to the plastic surgery shows that they have in America, in which contestants send in tapes showing how god-damned ugly they are and beg for the TV program to pay for a fancy surgical makeover, only “Beauty Colloseum” has more Japanese-style pizazz. Here’s an example:
I am so fat and ugly! I need your help!
Somebody put a picture of a squid beside this fatty so we can see how she’s all wide and fat like a squid!
Now let’s look at her 1 year later (after a crack team of cosmetic surgeons, hair stylists, and makeup experts were finished with her)
When she stands next to the image of herself one year before, you can see that she’s much better looking. How much did it cost?
Her transformation cost 4,610,000 yen!!! (about $39,500 !!) The show’s host, Akiko Wada, is shocked!
Let’s look at a couple other cases from last night’s program:
This woman had a face that not even a mother could love (her mother abandoned her when she was in elementary school).
After a year of work, the celebrity panelists are amazed at how much better she looks! Let’s see:
She lost some weight, and her teeth aren’t so hideous.
It only cost 1.75 million yen! (About $15,000) Afterwards, she was reunited with her mother and seemed happy.
Finally we have this girl. She was so ugly that her boss told her to sit in a corner so he wouldn’t have to look at her face. Now that 2.51 million yen ($21,500) has been spent to make her look better, she’ll be treated like a human being at work! Fantastic, isn’t it?
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Uggh, I hate that show! In the Spring they had a special where some young lass had been dumped by her boyfriend for being too fat, so she wanted to slim down so she could win him back.
Being so thick as to think that a guy who is so shallow as to dump you for being a few kgs overweight is worth trying to get back is hardly an admirable personality.
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Yea, this show made me sick when I was watching it too. The girl with the teeth sticking out got pitty from me, but not the rest. But what got me even more, was how it was sponsored by the cosmetic surgery ‘hospital’ that did all the work on the ‘contestants.’
Did you see the commercial they aired for themselves? “If I was my nose was only a little taller… If my this, if my that was just a little this or that…” And the message at the end? “Help bring peace to the world.” World peace? Plastic surgery? That’s disgusting.
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I think this is essentially a Japanese version of the Fox show “The Swan” which takes locks women up for 3 months and has them undergo diets, exercise routines, dental work, counseling, and plastic surgery so they can more closely resemble societal ideals of beauty. I haven’t seen the Japanese version but the focus of “The Swan” is on the fact that these women have low self-esteem and hate themselves because of how they look, not that others shun them because of their looks.
I think both shows are a reflection of the loss of shame over being shallow in most cultures. That is, instead of people being taught that judging people harshly on their appearance is a sign of their own character weakness, they’re taught that everyone does it so you’d better do whatever it takes to look better. In essence, the responsibility to change is now on the judged rather than the judgers.
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Dude! You missed the one about the woman they called Frankenstein. She was seriously hideous and now looks semi normal, although she is real tall. i would like to see them like 2 yrs later to see if they have enough staying power to continue doing their ultra modern make-up and dye jobs…
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Haha, I remember the Frankenstein one. She was pretty ugly, but her teeth weren’t shooting out of her head.
I imagine that a lot of the overweight girls who lost weight regain their weight after the show. It’s also unlikely that they’d be able to afford expensive hair treatments, but who knows.
I see plastic surgery commercials and advertisements all the time. I’m guessing it’s probably just a matter of time before Japan catches up to South Korea in plastic surgery.
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