Fire, no sleep, and someone needs to get fired.

[thesilversiren]

Right now there’s a fire burning up in the hills between Whittier and Hacienda Heights (they’ve dubbed it the Colima Incident). It started yesterday afternoon and is apparently contained- of course, I had to wait until this morning to find that out. I wish that local news would keep up with these things around the clock. At least for the community nearby. The weirdest thing is that it’s along the I drive daily coming back from the preschool, so it’s a little odd to think that we were just there hours before it started. Today, we drove back the way I usually drive there, as I wasn’t sure if the road was open at all- since it was just below the road.

I should apologize upfront for the rambling. Most mornings I wake up around 3 am when our cat Zorro decides that he wants to talk to me. Sweet cat. Loveable cat. He’s almost like a dog. But he’s a talker. So while he sleeps during the day, he wants someone to pet him and talk to him at 3 am. Usually, I’d just kick him out of my room. But this morning, just before the meowing started, my oldest son came into my room and said that he wanted to sleep in my bed. I asked if he wanted to go back to his, he said no. He petted Zorro and climbed into bed beside me. Unfortunately, the more Zorro meowed, the more awake my son became. Finally, I told him he’d have to go back to his bed and I’d give him some milk to get back to sleep. Which he did, and I sort of drifted back to sleep.

Sadly, I was up all too soon, and zombified. I had planned to leave 15 minutes early and grab some Starbucks on the way to the preschool, but it was overcast this morning- and getting sweatshirts on them boys ate up enough time that I had to skip it. Thankfully, I was awake enough to function properly (just not enough to do something that required a lot of brain power, like writing or complex mathematic equations).

Now, to the thing that’s been bothering me since yesterday afternoon. Every so often, there’s a reality show where you just want to wonder how someone greenlit it and still has their job. Remember The Swan? The reality show where women underwent massive surgery and one was crowned The Swan (ala the Ugly Duckling story). It made the Extreme Makeover series look tame.

E! announced its new series- Bridalplasty. Where twelve women will live together and compete against each other to get surgeries completed so that they’ll be perfect for their wedding day. Nothing minor, either. The champion gets all their surgeries and the finale will show her journey and culminate in the unveiling. While coincides with the traditional unveiling of a woman… her wedding. That’s right. The first time the groom sees his “new wife” will be as she walks down the aisle.

I’m not even sure where to start with how wrong the show is. The idea that it’s giving women the idea that it isn’t enough to have the perfect wedding, that you should have surgery to be perfect, too? I’m all for losing a few pounds before a wedding, or even dying your hair the color you always imagined it’d be. But when you start realizing that the age most women get married in is still the 25-35 age range- doesn’t that seem a little young for drastic surgery? We aren’t talking a single procedure. We’re talking work in the Heidi Montag range- multiple surgeries, veneers and so on.

Honestly, I can understand having something that you aren’t thrilled with. I feel like I have a weak jawline- so if I’m not especially careful about how I hold my head in pictures, I wind up looking like I have a double chin. Which I don’t have. But you know- if there was a way to fix it, I totally would. (Enjoy the bad picture of me, I’ll just stick to enjoying that my littlest photobombed me)

But you know what? I honestly don’t know how you can possibly marry someone if you don’t know what they look like anymore. Major plastic surgery is a big deal- altering your appearance that much isn’t done without a lot of therapy. How you can you marry someone immediately after that? I seems reckless and honestly something that I find to be just appalling.

So E!, I’m sorry. I didn’t watch your network much, but I went to your website daily for entertainment news and fashion police pictures. But no more. I can deal with reality shows about people who’ve done nothing- I just won’t watch it. But this is just dangerous stuff- both to the women who participate and those who watch and realize that they want to do the same thing.

Originally published at American Whitney. You can comment here or there.