"Made" into an Automaton

Husband and I woke up early this morning and headed over to the gym to get a jump on the day.  One of the TVs in the gym was set to MTV, which was airing a rerun of Made.  Made is an interesting show in which high school-age teens tell MTV about a personal goal.  MTV hires a coach and sets them up with various experts to help them achieve whatever it is they set out to do.  It’s usually highly entertaining, filled with trials and tribulations, victories and setbacks, blah blah blah.

This morning’s episode was about a girl (Steph) in Arizona who wanted to be Miss Teen Arizona.  Her obstacles were multiple: 1. she had an interesting personality; 2. she was short; 3. she wasn’t “feminine;” 4. she had bad teeth; and 5. she was “curvy.”  Steph had a reputation at her school as a freak because she wore a lot of black and chains, liked “Lord of the Rings,” and was a “band dork.”  In other words, she was totally cool.  Of course, to win Miss Teen Arizona, she had to lose as much of that as possible.

Her Barbie coach did her best to stamp out any traces of individuality in Steph, but fortunately did not succeed entirely.  She did help Steph become more open to “normal” kids and to have a friendlier attitude in general, so that is good.  But of course there were the obligatory makeup, waxing, and fashion sessions that led Steph to look like any vacuous anonymous chick out there.  The saddest part is that the new “fashionable” Steph looks awful parading around in mini skirts and high heels.  If the coach insisted that Steph not wear her goth clothes, could she at least have helped her pick clothes that flatter her figure?  What a fucking awful coach!

The end result was predictably that Steph did not win the pageant (because she looks like me, people! Which is to say she is short, looks like she eats on a regular basis, and has not had cosmetic dental work!), but was happy because she felt people could now see that she was beautiful and feminine.  GAG.  PUKE.  VOMIT.  At least she was not a total automaton at the end and still valued the quirky aspects of her personality.