What was up with Kelly? She’s only humped her boyfriend 7 or 8 times in the past three years?! Not because he doesn’t want to do her, but because she felt “unsexy”?!?
Sheesh. And I thought I had self-esteem problems. Why bother having a boyfriend if you’re not going to shag him?
Well, to some people there’s a whole lot more to being in love than “shagging.”
I thought both women ended up beautiful. I was very glad to see that the transformations included lots of therapy sessions to work on the inside as well as the outside.
I hope the girl who won (I can’t recall her name right now – Rachel?) kicks her self-centered, cruel husband to the curb when she gets home. What a horse’s ass.
Yeah, but without the shagging, it’s going to get awfully frustrating awfully fast.
No kidding! I wonder if Rachel’s husband married her because she had self-esteem problems, and now that she’s gonna become confident, he’s not going to want anything to do with her any more. (Good riddance, if that’s the case.)
Oh yeah, and before I forget:
Most likely, all the women on this show are going to have serious self-esteem issues. Women who are comfortable with themselves generally aren’t going to want to go on a show whose premise is “extreme makeover meets Miss America.”
I watched this show because my wife had it on.
It occurred to both of us that neither woman looked particularly ugly, just a little plain. And the total lack of self-esteem both of them had meant that they didn’t make the most of what they had. I’m certain they didn’t dress well, do much with their hair, use cosmetics effectively, or exercise much before this program.
They both looked very good at the end of the show.
The prodecers seem to be shoosing plain girls with no self esteem so that such a transformation can be possible. Truly ugly women, obviously, need not apply.
oops, producers and choosing, obviously.
I completely agree, which is why I was so glad to see that the producers weren’t approaching this from a strictly “cosmetic makeovers will change your lives” attitude, but including regular therapy sessions as well as diet regimes (with support groups, like Weight Watchers) and exercise programs with a professional trainer. It’s clear that these women are already possessing some beautiful features and even a simple hair, makeup and wardrobe change could have sufficed to make them more “eye-catching” than they routinely carry themselves.
Looking at some of the upcoming contestants on the home page, there are quite a few who don’t even appear to need basic cosmetic surgery – they’re flawless as they are, they just need traditional makeovers to learn how to properly shape their eyebrows, wear makeup, do their hair, etc. Andrea M, Cindy I and Debra W & Tawnya C, for instance, are stunning beauties. I can’t see a single flaw that plastic surgery could improve on their faces. Sure, Debra has a teeny bit of a hook to her nose, but if you start changing her face around, she’ll lose the beauty that comes with her ethnic features and her face will lose its character.
Others could stand to have minor nips and tucks done, for instance, Sarina V could benefit from having excess skin removed from her eyelids, making them look less droopy, but even in spite of that, she’s still an extremely pretty woman. Just comb her hair and put some makeup on her and she’d be a knockout.
I thought that Kelly ended up bearing a strong resemblance to Sarah Michelle Gellar. Seriously, I thought she could have passed for her sister. My husband called me this morning to tell me she was on some Fox show this morning, and that she’d lost more weight and cut off the Miss Piggy hair (that isn’t a slur against her, just that hairdo they gave her), and that she looked even better. I’m happy for her.
And yes, Rachel needs to leave that man so fast that there’s just a Rachel-shaped hole in the front door. That man is an asshole.
Oh my Og! Kelly is scary looking now. I’m sorry, but she looked freakish to me. Rachel definitely looked better, although I don’t know what it is about putting fat in one’s lips, but it always looks obvious. On every makeover show I’ve seen, the surgeon goes way too far with the lip enhancement. I have very thin lips and wouldn’t let anyone near them with a syringe full of my ass-fat! Yikes. It looks like they both got punched in the mouth recently.
I thought Kelly ended up looking like Anna Nicole Smith to some degree–it might just have been the hair/huge boobs combo. I didn’t know why they gave her breast implants; it seemed to me that once she lost a little weight around the middle, that her chest would look larger in comparison. I thought it was really sweet at the end when her big brother was crying because he was so amazed. Kelly’s sister looked really pretty, too, so I wonder if she couldn’t have just asked her for advice instead of the whole plastic surgery deal.
I really feel bad for Rachel, with her unsupportive husband and father. I liked her attitude a million times better than Kelly’s, and I really want Rachel to succeed–not just in the pageant, but I want her to get rid of her husband and find someone new.
I found this article after I posted (it’s unnecessarily harsh, in my opinion, but whatever). It said not all of the women opted for surgery, which I think is somewhat admirable.
It seems like a lot of the articles I found are criticizing the fact that not every woman is eligible for the pageant. To me, the pageant doesn’t even seem important; it’s just the icing on the cake. How is it not enough to get your entire body redone, plus therapy, plus being on TV for free?
The one surgeon certainly was a jerk to Kelly when he told her to snap out of her depression. As much as I didn’t like watching her cry over everything, I think he needed to be a little more sensitive.
I don’t like the format, where we focus on two women each week. I’d rather be introduced to several of them at once, and see the different stages (healing, working out, therapy, nutrition) more in-depth.
Plus, the “in thing” for beauty queens these days is to be rail thin with only A-cup or B-cup boobies. Giving her gigantic melons actually reduced her chances for being chosen for the pageant.
It must run in the family. 
I only saw the… well, on Trading Spaces they call it the "reveal, so I’ll go with that – I only saw the “reveals.” I’m not going to be able to watch this show – maybe it’s just me but these extreme makeover things freak me out. I mean when someone get such a looks-altering makeover that they aren’t even recognizable any more. It’s one thing when a person has a serious disfigurement – I believe (although I’ve never seen the show) that this is often the case on Extreme Makeover – but there was nothing really wrong with these two women’s looks. I have a girley affection for old-style magazine makeovers – a new haircut, tweeze the old eyebrows, update the makeup; and the subject still looks like herself, only an enhanced version. But this. When the one girl said, “Is that me?” It just gave me the willies. I’m not beauty pageant contestant, but I would mourn the day I no longer saw me in the mirror. Am I the only one?
You are not the only one, Jess. While watching this last night (caveat: My friends and I got together for Survivor and this was the only thing on after that. I’m appalled we sat through it.), I made the declaration:
After watching several of these makeover shows, I will never, never, ever have liposuction. I don’t care if I have cottage cheese cellulite all over my entire body… I will NEVER have liposuction.
Just watching it makes me so icky creeped out, I couldn’t have it done.
Obviously the contestants were pleased with the outcome, but I would have thought they would do more “enhancement” and less “overhaul.” Neither of them looked like the same person at the end. They both had a rather phony look, too. But I did see a peek at Kelly after she’d lost more weight and toned down the make-up, and she DID look like Sarah Michelle Gellar. It was rather spooky. I thought she looked much better with a less made-up look.
There’s just a shallowness to this whole thing that really bothers me. I guess if I was as unhappy with my looks as they were, it wouldn’t seem so bad, but it just seemed like way too much. Unnecessarily. I think they could have achieved a LOT of the same look without surgery. Just diet and work-out and learning how to do make-up. And I didn’t like the way the doctors said, “Man do we have a LOT of work to do on you!” Thanks for nothing, asshole!!!
My wife insisted on watching this show.
I found it deeply disturbing and thought both the women looked hideously freakish at the end.
We find that Rachel’s father completely undermined her self-esteem at an early age, and this panel of “experts” (who are these assholes, anyway?) comes up with with a plan: “First, let’s mutilate your body until you are unrecognizable, then, when you are lying in pain having post-operative second thoughts, we’ll send in some clowns to berate you for being a cry-baby.” This is some serious sick shit.
Rachel could have used some exercise and a better hairdo and looked just fine. As for her self-esteem, some sessions with a real psychiatrist might have done wonders. Real personal change happens from the inside out.
I sympathize with her husband. Who knows if he didn’t feel the same way I do? Perhaps he hoped she would realize her real beauty and not go to this nightmarish extreme.
The thing I found creepy about Kelly is the fact that she has the most fake looking smile I have EVER seen. Maybe it hurts her to smile now or something, it certainly looks it.
I thought Rachel looked wonderful and that her husband was a monkey’s ass. But it seems as though she has caught on to that fact.
“I come home, and then I go to work. I come home, and then I go to work. I come home, and then I go to work.” What the blazing fuck was that all about? What an unbelievable conversation. Even if her husband didn’t agree with Rachel doing the surgery, he could have at least asked her how she was doing, or even acknowledged receiving her letter. I was stunned.
I still haven’t decided how I feel about the show, other than “extremely uneasy.”
I caught most of this show. I was pretty much as disgusted with it as I thought I’d be. I have nothing whatsoever against plastic surgery, I figure it is just along the lines of tattooing and piercing, or even the innocuous “buying clothes I like”. But this show put a spin on it that really eats me up.
I don’t care how somone goes about improving their looks, really. But the way these women were talked about–and really, the way they must have seen themselves to be a part of this show–is really f’ing depressing.
Properly? See… this is what I don’t like. I hate media-beauty. It turned Sara Michelle Gellar into a stick. It fetishizes youth, hairlessness, and being underweight. If that’s what comes with plucking eyebrows, I want no part of it.
A woman is most beautiful to me right when she wakes up in the morning. That’s who she is, that’s who you sleep with, who you marry, etc. I wish the rest of it would go away already.
To be fair, though, I don’t think we heard the whole call. We certainly weren’t treated to their other phone calls either, which might have been lovey-dovey.
I’ve been away on one week business trips, and had the calls with my wife get testy. It happens. Makes for great TV, too.
Let’s remember, these women were, essentially, dishrags. Neither one had what I’d consider a healthy relationship, based on what we were allowed to see. Rachel’s husband, we all can agree, was kind of a dick. Kelly only begrudgingly allowed intimacy in her relationship with her boyfriend because she felt too unattractive to be intimate.
This was a fun show to discuss here, but I don’t know if I can bring myself to watch again. These women weren’t terrible looking at the outset, IMO, but they were goddamn trainwrecks emotionally.