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The Transformers by Sarah Fidelibus, San Francisco, CA
President Obama reminded us in his address to a joint session of congress on Tuesday that, "[A]t every moment of economic upheaval and transformation, this nation has responded with bold action and big ideas." Now is the time for both, of course, and our current circumstances present us not only with some of the toughest challenges we've faced in nearly a century, but also the greatest number of opportunities to truly transform our nation into what we want it to be going forward.

Though the idea of making the most of these opportunities seems daunting at the outset, one might expect each of us to rise to the occasion, because there are few things Americans love more than a grand transformation. Our glut of "from bad to best" television programming alone stands as evidence of the American obsession with new beginnings and renovation. And thus, for two seasons out of every year, Tyra Banks rounds up thirteen "average" young women, and-through the aid of make-up artists, hair weaves, brief lessons on runway walking and no shortage of airbrushing-transforms at least one of them into "America's Next Top Model." Meanwhile, on another channel, Ty Pennington shows up on the doorstep of some "deserving" family, guts their dilapidated house and then rebuilds it, taking care to add three times the space, top of the line appliances, and enough home accessories to make the structure less like a home and more like a Pier One Imports showroom. Ty's not coming over for "just" a makeover, after all; he's going extreme on your homestead.

Pennington's show is a spinoff, of course-it's the "home edition" of its popular progenitor, "Extreme Makeover," in which "lucky" contestants all over the country had their wildest plastic surgery dreams fulfilled: crooked noses were shaved or filed into something more refined, or broken and reset if a mere filing wouldn't do the job. On top of that, participants got their yellowed teeth bleached and crooked ones pulled or realigned; any chompers that couldn't be fixed with more modest methods were instead covered with "porcelain veneers" which ultimately posed as a perfect set of pearly whites.

"Extreme Makeover" is no longer on the air, but its spirit lives in on TLC's "10 Years Younger," where nominees have their wrinkles botoxed hair colored, and vision corrected (so that they will not be condemned to a life of unsightly eyeglasses). As was the case with "Extreme Makeover," at the end of every episode comes what every transformation-aimed show now refers to as "the reveal"-the moment the transformed reintroduces him or herself to friends, co-workers, and family, most of whom weep at the sight of the new and improved brother, girlfriend, mother, or friend.

And why shouldn't they weep? There is something undeniably appealing about watching the act of transformation, whether it applies to "this old house" or "my aging cousin." If a once crumbling kitchen not even fit for the rats that infested it is going to become tiled in travertine with a granite island and six-burner Viking range, or if a fifty-something man who has lost all his teeth prematurely is going to-in a half hour's time-appear on our television set with a smile that could melt Anne Coulter's icy heart, why wouldn't we watch these phoenix-like rebirths?

That's the problem, though: as fascinated as we Americans are with the process of transformation, we tend to prefer watching that metamorphosis rather than performing it ourselves. One could say this is because we're just lazy, and to some degree that may be true. People don't take diet pills for their health benefits, and meal replacement shakes aren't popular because they are tastier than the meals they take the place of. We love them because they promise a quick and easy solution for what is normally a long and difficult process. Why spend months losing that seventy-five pounds when you can take it off "like that" with a little pellet that will rev up your metabolism? And why spend the time to get informed about how to change your eating habits if you could shed pounds simply by replacing breakfast and lunch with a chocolate-flavored drink?

Of course, it's also a possibility that the truth might be more complicated than that; it usually is. We may be a culture that values speed and convenience, but that alone does not mean that we are, at our very cores, just a bunch of lazy jerks. Often "laziness" is simply a lack of confidence masquerading as a lack of drive. And so people who give up breakfast and lunch for a couple of cans of Slim-Fast more than likely are not lazy, but instead might simply believe that they could not lose weight "on their own."

Whether we do lack confidence or truly are just lazy, we need to get over it. The "bold and big ideas" President Obama spoke of are not all that this country needs right now; we need bold action as well. And because this transformation will not be televised, we will need to be participants-not spectators-in the process. To citizens who still seem almost paralyzed by eight years of being shut out of decisions that brought more destruction to America than transformation, it may be difficult to imagine what any one of us could do to hasten the arrival of a new and better era. Once again, it's not that we are lazy, but that we lack confidence in our ability to effect any great change. And indeed, any one of us alone is not going to fix the myriad of troubles that currently plague these United States. Even an "Extreme Makeover" requires a whole team of individuals to accomplish, and our country is in need of the most extreme makeover ever. To accomplish it, we will need to turn to each other-for ideas, for resources, for support. Though we may not be exactly sure at the outset what we could contribute to the transformation ahead, we at least owe it to ourselves to find out because, as the last eight years have shown us, the alternative to active participation-watching from the couch and thinking, "Jeez, I hope those people with the bone saws know what they're doing..."-puts us more at risk of woeful disfigurement. And I don't think that's the kind of "reveal" any of us have in mind.

Sarah Fidelibus is a lecturer in the English Dept. at San Francisco State University, where she teaches rhetoric and writing.

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