UGLY DUCKLINGS
The Gift in the Box, part 3

So I'm discovering that my friend Donna isn't the only one chronicling this topic. Debra Saunders chimes in during her Townhall.com column today.

As the Web site about-face.org notes, "'The Swan' is one more way women and girls will get the message that they are not good enough unless they go to extremes to fit into an increasingly narrow ideal (and even then ... not everyone will win this beauty pageant!). It's alarming that cosmetic surgery is becoming 'normal' through media messages, and 'The Swan' is the worst perpetrator yet."

Some message: The key to inner harmony is in outer packaging.

"When you think of 100 years ago," Bruin noted, "the way women bettered themselves was to learn piano, learn to sketch," maybe cross-stitch. Women bettered themselves, that is, by improving their minds.

But in today's skin-deep, no-wait world, self-improvement means seeing a plastic surgeon. Nip and tuck.

The storybook swan is meant to assure awkward children that a beautiful being dwells inside them and that they will grow into that person. TV's "The Swan" is the shortcut, and it only applies to people with a ticket to a plastic surgeon. Girls don't grow into beautiful women; doctors make them beautiful.