I’m sat
What goes around comes around, especially when it comes to fashion and TV. In an era when just about every nostalgic favorite is getting rebooted, reimagined or revisited, some old-school shows are returning in a very different way: under the microscope.
Remember Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model, which peeled back the glossy curtain to explore the controversial and problematic realities behind the hit series? Well, another 2000s reality show is getting the same treatment. Enter Hulu’s The Swan: Behind the Mirror.
If you need a quick refresher on The Swan, the original series debuted on Fox in 2004. Across two seasons and 18 episodes, the show centered on women who were told they could completely reinvent their appearances and, in the process, their lives. The women were dubbed “Swans” after undergoing a lengthy and seriously intense makeover process.
The format was pretty straightforward, at least on paper.
Two women were selected for each episode and essentially disappeared from their regular lives for three months while they worked with a team of professionals. That team included everyone from personal trainers and therapists to dentists and cosmetic surgeons. At the end of the process, the two women would be compared, with one advancing to the season-ending beauty pageant.
That pageant determined the ultimate winner. Contestants were judged on their transformations, and the woman who earned the most votes for her makeover was crowned “The Swan”. Looking back at the premise more than two decades later, it’s easy to see why the series is ripe for a closer examination.
That’s where The Swan: Behind the Mirror comes in.
The new Hulu documentary brings several of the women back together and gives them an opportunity to revisit an experience that was far more complicated than the glossy makeover montages suggested. Through new interviews and behind-the-scenes access, the documentary explores what happened during production and how the experience continued to affect the women long after the cameras stopped rolling.
As a millennial who remembers watching at least a few episodes of the original, I’ll definitely be tuning in to see what really happened behind the scenes.
The Swan: Behind the Mirror is streaming now on Hulu.
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