make me over

I dreamed that a boy I use to date had gone on one of those extreme make-over TV shows. You know, the ones where the participants go through a heap of surgeries, go on diets and workout plans, get stylists for hair/ clothing/ make-up. Yeah the whole works.

In my dream, I was watching on the television as they introduced him and discussed, at length, how his physical appearance had limited him throughout his life. They showed 360 degree pictures of him in his underwear, looking gaunt, slouching, his glasses on, his acne in full effect. It didn’t look like the boy I knew, though I realized as I was watching that this is how the creators of the show wanted him to believe the world sees him.

I will skip the details of the surgeries – but rest assured that he ended up looking like a plastic version of himself. Chin implant. Weight lifting. Pectoral implants. Acne peels. New pants. The layered look. Highlights. A new ‘edgy’ boy with a stronger jaw and a hint of eye liner.

At the end of the show, he got to come out and present himself to his friends and family. There were lots of people waiting to see him. They were all so excited, thinking that he would no longer be a depressed, passive-aggressive, self-victimizing, unmotivated, annoying, deadbeat jerk now that he had been made over.

As I watched people cheer him for him, I looked into the faces in the crowd and realized that none of those people knew him. They were fake. They were extras hired to cheer, swoon, cry, and endorse his ‘new look’.

As they interviewed the plastic version of my ex boyfriend, it became astoundingly clear that the make-over had only accented the things that I had always disliked about him. The credits rolled, and my hatred swelled. Pectoral implants or not, this was not a person I wanted to know… and he may be a person I regretted sharing myself with.

… and then I woke up.