Reality TV Makes me Cry

Dear Katie,
That reminds of me of the now defunct MTV show, "I Want a Famous Face." At first, everyone was outraged because they thought MTV was paying for people to deform their faces to look like the celebrities promoted every day on the channel. The important information that MTV failed to publicize properly was that these people were going to get the surgery no matter what, and MTV was just there to document their transformations.
The episode that I remember best was about a "boy" named Jessica. I quote marked "boy" because Jessica was in fact a man who lived his life as a woman and was getting surgery to look like Jennifer Lopez. When finished with the surgery, Jessica looked more mannish than she/he did originally, and the damages were irreversible. A lot of people give MTV slack about their programming, but Jessica's story was only one of many from MTV's news and docs productions that left me thinking and crying. Don't forget the crying.
There was a more recent show on MTV called True Life: I am Obese. I was having a particularly low self-esteem day, as girls tend to do once a month, and I could barely see the tv screen because I was crying through the whole show. There was a boy, a big big boy who was a senior in high school, who just kept eating and getting fatter with the hopes that he could get gastric bypass one day. At one point, he was sitting in a pool. wearing a bathing suit and a shirt, waiting for nobody to look at him so that he could get out of the water. Another lady weighed about 600 pounds because she got this horrible disease that left her unable to move. Her husband was caring and wonderful, and as a favor/gift to him, she agreed to go out to dinner. He had to push her around the restaurant in a wheelchair, and throughout their meal, the other dining patrons were staring at them and making hurtful comments. As if this lady didn't have it hard enough.
I guess the bottom line is that reality tv is a powerful tool, but with shows like "The Gauntlet," "Next," and "Flava of Love" (which I love) that power will remain unused.
Love,
Brianna