Damn Cable
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| practicing for our next beauty pageant |
1) I may be a self-sufficient, perfectly grown thirty-two year-old woman with a child of my own, but I (apparently) will never be too adult to allow my mother to fetch me a snack as I read on the couch.
2) No matter how long you’ve known someone – say, since birth – there are always parts of yourself you’ll be surprised they don’t know about. For instance, my mom seemed shocked to discover that I adore malted milk balls. Her unfamiliarity with this most-basic part of my character was as unsettling to me as if she’d only just learned I was allergic to peanuts or deathly afraid of dogs. Doesn’t everyone know I love Whoppers? OK, so maybe I haven’t eaten one in years, but that’s only because I know what’ll happen if I’m near an open carton. (Sure enough, almost as if to prove a point, I pretty much finished off in two days the carton Mom bought for us to share.)
P.S. So maybe my parents don’t know everything about me, but at least they can rest assured that my laziness and compulsive chocolate eating habit is unchanged since the days of junior high, when (for instance) I spent one summer doing nothing but reading and supporting my two-pound-a-week-Reese’s-mini-peanut-butter-cup-habit. (Oh, come on: I was giddy and young, with a brand-new stack of Madeline L’Engle books and money from my babysitting job burning a whole in my pocket. DON’T JUDGE ME.)
3) And the final, and most self-affirming realization: Thank God We Don’t Have Cable.
Bee and I, in fact, don’t even have TV. I mean, we have a TV, but we don’t have any channels. We’ve never had good reception in our house, and, when the digital-switchover happened in our area a few years ago, we just didn’t do anything about it. Hence we now have NO reception.
We’ve actually, in fact, become a little Amish in our technology use of late: our main phone is a shared land line; we don’t have TiVo; and our version of watching instantly-streamed movies is to drag our couch to the kitchen, turn up the computer’s internal speakers, and watch something off of YouTube. We call it ‘Poor Man’s Roku’.
Occasionally we miss real TV, like when everyone we know is into the Next Big Show and we have no idea what they’re talking about. But, for the most part, we’re happy not to feel like we have to clear our schedule every Thursday at seven so we can watch our favorite show right then. Don't get me wrong: I’d like to like a show, but my life’s really no worse for not knowing what’s going on in the world of 'Mad Men' or . . . whatever else is out there right now.
And, really, there’s so much CRAP out there, particularly among the reality TV shows, that it kind of disgusts me to be American. Apparently, however, it doesn’t disgust me enough not to get caught up in it, which is what happens every time I spend a few days at my parents’.
This week, I learned all about the glorious world of ‘Say Yes To The Dress’, ‘The Millionaire Matchmaker’, and ‘Toddlers and Tiaras’. Yes, I am a TLC and Bravo whore. I TiVo’d every episode I could get my hands on for four days, along with my long-time favorite ‘What Not To Wear’ (but let’s leave that one out of this, OK?).
I spent the mornings transferring some to videotape (now that's old school!) to bring home; the afternoons silently cursing Mr. C’s refusal to adhere to ‘quite time’ in the next room as Mom introduced me to a new show in which to get sucked; the evenings impatiently waiting for dinner to be done, bath time to be over, and Mr. C to be safely in bed so I could return to my new friends. Then, damn it, I’d stay up past midnight to watch ‘just one more episode’, going to bed in the early morning hours, sleeping fitfully as events in each show replayed themselves in my mind, waking – bleary-eyed and groggy – loathing my new habit but eager to succumb to it all over again.
Watching reality TV is like watching a train wreck, for sure. And I just couldn’t stop myself. However, I did find that the shows actually made me think, instead of just being for pure, mindless fun.
What I thought most about was the ‘reality’ behind reality television: how much of these shows that seem to be on for ‘shock value’ are truly scripted, for instance. I mean, if the Millionaire Matchmaker tells her clients not to go out and do a certain thing, why does each one consistently go out and ignore her, causing her to consistently react with rage and kick them out of her Millionaire’s Club? And isn’t it just a teensy bit odd that she wore the same outfit in the same setting as she discussed first what she feared her client’s problem would be on a date and then, afterwards, how said problem – shockingly – did indeed occur?
I also wondered how much things are taken out of context, or how much viewers are not allowed to see because it wouldn't be as shocking. For instance, on ‘Toddlers and Tiaras’, how much of the toddlers’ meltdowns are due NOT, in fact, to their overbearing moms, but actually to the fact that they are TODDLERS? Are the cameras not showing us all the times the moms are supportive, and are just instead showing us the instances when the moms are firmly scolding their screaming children to behave? I mean, I sometimes must firmly scold Mr. C because he’s being a brat; will I be on the TLC channel next? (‘The REAL Toxic Housewives of North America!’)
I’m not condoning the whole beauty pageant thing; some of those moms were definitely pieces of work. But maybe (and don’t take this the wrong way, Child Protective Services) it’s sort of like dog training, where the participants find it incredibly fulfilling to have a task to learn and perform and then be rewarded for. Otherwise, the kids (and dogs, for that matter) would just sit around on their butts all day and watch Disney instead. Which is what Mr. C is doing right now.
Hmmm . . . I suddenly realized that -- with some intense training in big hair and over-done make-up -- I could make a fantastic stage mother. Are there beauty pageants for little boys?
I'd better sign up for cable so I can find out.
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