Nip Tuck. vanity, we make it look good.

Deeply Superficial, haha yeah thats it. 

The show Nip/Tuck, A show i felt i should write a little about. 


Every episode starts with the line "so, tell us what you don't like about yourself." (perhaps this is what we should start ask people who we just met, instead of the usual, so what do you do?) It is a question that could be associated with a therapist, which they are clearly not. This imposing question is the reverse of the genuine display of compassion, It isolates away the concept of humanity and instead reduces someone to the comical value of their most distressing traits.
The question itself is at a ironic distance from social normality. This is much like how Woody Allen is always revealing what he doesn't like about himself, showing a formal acceptance. But with the patients of nip/tuck, they have not. This to is ironic and further removes them from the realm of humanness. But despite the bleakness of this position, i believe there is something inherently beautiful about western vanity.


Beauty like money is a fetishistic item, its hard to understand how it works. We know that for a lot of people it is quite consuming. None of us are sure if we have enough so the easiest solution is just to accumulate more. We shape ourselves around those we consider to possess it. Nip/Tuck tries to reveal the desperation and ugliness that can be observed with this almost normal cultural obsession. The show makes use of the myths and stories seem to never tier of being told among us. This is sort a synopsis of our postmodernist times, where the most interesting elements survive and eventually all else loses it time share. Leaving us with a surplus of bizarre happenings. Although most of us possibly only experience a couple of these in our lives, by proxy we all hold onto many more and in a way are more and more likely to repeat them in slight variations. But the point I'm trying to make is that this exaggerated vanity is a shared desperation, the fact that appears ironic proves that we have admitted this and hear in lies the beauty, Western vanity is met with indifference and indifference is always ironic. Ironic in that the position held is one maintaining a distance from pathological vanity, while acknowledging it as a valuable part of our culture, a part all of us contribute to.  


Tommy.