In 2013, Fox announced plans to revive the series as a two-hour television special titled Celebrity Swan, but as of 2018 it was no longer in development.

[2][3] Each episode of the series followed two self-proclaimed "ugly ducklings" who, over the course of a three-month period, experienced an extreme makeover from a team that included a personal trainer, therapist, dentist, and cosmetic surgeons.

Gillian Flynn of Entertainment Weekly claimed the series was "a misogynistic mix of TV's twin vices: commercialism and conformity.

"[6] USA Today's Robert Bianco believed the series to be "[h]urtful and repellent even by reality's constantly plummeting standards," further describing it as an advertisement for plastic surgery.

[8] Gaby Wood of The Guardian criticized the series's premise, stating, "the winner on The Swan is the woman who is thought to have undergone the greatest 'overall transformation' — in other words, the one who appears least like her former self.

[10] Journalist Chris Hedges also criticized the show in his 2009 book Empire of Illusion, writing "The Swan's transparent message is that once these women have been surgically 'corrected' to resemble mainstream celebrity beauty as closely as possible, their problems will be solved".

[11] Feminist scholar Susan J. Douglas criticized the show in her book The Rise of Enlightened Sexism for its continuation of a negative female body image, claiming that the series showed "the narrow physical standards to which women are expected to conform, the sad degree to which women internalize these standards, the lengths needed to get there, and the impossibility for most of us to meet the bar without, well, taking a box cutter to our faces and bodies".

[12] Author Alice Marwick described the show as "body culture media", in which plastic surgery is framed as "a morally correct solution to personal problems".