I watch a lot of poor quality television, and while I stand by my Designing Women, one bargain basement I won’t venture into is the exploitative dankness of TLC.
The TLC network is a Bristol Stool Scale of mediocrity and while it stands to reason that eventually, they will choose to replace at least one component of their overweight, pregnant, little person trifecta with actual substance, it now seems more probable that they will just combine them all and mix in the ups and downs of owning and operating a frozen yogurt shop.
But, until they find their new star of Twist and Shout: Pregnant, Obese and Little, they will have to do what they can to glorify pregnancy and parenthood through average women. Reading through the casting description reveals that this will be a “web video series,” which is second only to internet petitions in efficacy, and will likely consist mostly of women displaying their morbid collection of unused baby paraphernalia on suspiciously nice couches.
I admit, my knowledge of TV production is so crippled that well, TLC would probably want to come film it and turn it into a desperate quest for ratings. But, I do know that using women to film their own experiences while solidifying a lucrative deal with Church & Dwight in exchange for closeups of the golden shower that their First Response pregnancy tests will receive is pretty savvy. Savvy here means the same thing it does in TLC’s show description – shameless.
However, in their defense, subtly perpetuating the intrinsic xenophobia and subordination of the Quiverfull movement is a full-time job. So while TLC is still actively searching for ‘triplets or more’ in a casting for Make Room for Multiples, it’s only fair that women who can only produce one uninteresting, non-obese baby at a time film their own “emotional passage to pregnancy.”
The best part though is that they use a gmail address, which clearly reflects all the foresight you can expect from a network that boasts a show dedicated entirely to babies being born in toilets. Come on TLC, I use gmail and it’s usually just to order pizza online. Get your shit together or at least honor this colossal joke with a hotmail account.
A few weeks ago, I found a new hobby. For an hour or so every night, I would collect a handful of the most illiterate and horrifying Craigslist personal ads imaginable. Then, I would send the links to my boyfriend and before bed, he would read them to me as phonetically as possible in order to really emphasize the I am so fucking desperate I can’t be bothered to spell-check this well and mostly because my internet access at the library is about to expire quality of each ad. As bedtime stories go they had everything – a fallen hero (or more realistically, someone who never got up in the first place), usually some sort of infidelity that required a clandestine meeting, and of course, the deeply disillusioned idea that their dick was worthy of a honey baked ham, much less a woman with an equally savory, but somewhat less edible, vagina.
Like many of my hobbies, it was short lived and able to be done from the couch. There are really only so many times you can laugh at the fact that an alarming number of people don’t know that there is a difference between ‘woman’ and ‘women.’ Oh, and not surprisingly, seeing the cock and balls of men who seemingly traded in all of their potential for extra hair on their taints can put a damper on your sex life.
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I am rarely ever able to take advice. And, despite what you may be thinking, this isn’t a roundabout way for me to say that I listen to Papa Roach and fasten my pants with a belt buckle shaped like a gun. Instead, it’s a way to express that sometimes I am just a different kind of moron.
When I was in middle school, I made myself look like Eddie Munster’s twin, only with more hair product and eyeliner. My dad, as delicately as could be, suggested I go the more natural route. However, that only caused me to increase the amount of hair spray I used, which curiously seemed to have a direct relationship with the number of people who would be willing to see my boobs.
When I was in high school, my parents pleaded with me to take driver’s ed so I could get my license and have a life outside of watching Shipmates and fashioning dildos out of tampons. I refused, mostly because I was too busy taking Latin online. As a result, I got my license at the age of 21.
When I was in college, I was urged to major in anything other than Art History in order to ensure that my degree would mean more than my ability to offer up the history of the paper it was printed on.
But, I own my mistakes. I would even go so far as to say that I cuddle my mistakes at night and seductively whisper in their ear that they’re not mistakes in my eyes and they’ll be all like ‘You’re just saying that’ and I’ll just kind of smile since they have no idea. Because for me, my mistakes comprise a chain of the happiest accidents I could ever hope for. I was hideous for years, which meant that it didn’t matter that I had no life in high school, which then led to me majoring in Art History because really, the only thing more tailored for losers would’ve been ‘Anime’, and here I am – grateful for all of it.
This is why I think Steven Ward should be hung by his scrotum from a meat hook and forced to drink Clamato while watching re-runs of Night Court. If you’re unfamiliar with the name, I don’t blame you. But, Steven Ward is a self-proclaimed matchmaker who asserts that he is, “on a mission to bring love into peoples’ lives one soul at a time.” Since bringing love into peoples’ lives goes hand in hand with having a reality show on VH1, guess how I know about this poor man’s Matt LeBlanc?
They're totally fucking.
He, along with his mother JoAnn, host Tough Love – a show full of so much bullshit, it makes Dick Cheney look like the kind of guy you’d go out drinking with and trust to drive your car back at the end of the night. The premise is simple – assemble a group of women who can’t find men because of commitment issues, career obsession, body image or all of the above. Then, he fixes them by instructing that they all stop being such sluts. With its assumption that women need to take it upon themselves to keep a relationship or risk being thrown away like an old pair of underwear because the elastic has broken, Tough Love is a feminist’s worst nightmare. Luckily, I’m not a feminist. I’m just kind of irked in a way that makes me uncomfortable. The differences may be negligible, I understand, but I don’t want to harp about slut shame or how this show, along with Tucker Max, hurts society.
My issue is that choice is stripped of these women all so they can find a man with just the right amount of tribal tattoos as to be bad ass, but at the same time employable. They are advised on how to conduct themselves in the company of men (usually this means that they don’t say anything at all) and since most of these women are both dependent on alcohol and estranged from their child’s father, it is not pessimistic of me to assume that they will make mistakes along the way. The biggest one most likely being that they signed up to be on a VH1 reality show. But they’re Steve Ward’s mistakes as delivered to him by the umbilical cord he undoubtedly still shares with his mother.
Point is – never take anyone’s advice seriously. Unless of course it’s coming from a 20-something who just ate a sleeve of Oreos in her Snuggie. Only then does it make sense.
I went to the post office today. Do you know all the hoops they make you jump through before renting a PO Box? I’ve felt more at ease during a pap smear. But whatever. I choked down my discomfort and approached the woman with a sassy I’m-not-50-yet haircut so I could receive mail as Vagina Drum.
She immediately noticed that I, like a dumb ass, authorized my own proof of residency on the form and flatly told me, “That’s not your job.” Yeah OK I know that now, but it wasn’t her job to make me feel like Corky that time he got behind the wheel of a car and almost killed his entire high school. Unlike a pap smear, I couldn’t comfort myself with the fact that she’s probably seen much worse, because coming off as someone who is paying for her genitals to receive mail is like rolling out the droopiest set of beef curtains ever.
Eventually she handed over the keys and promptly told me she was going on her break (to fan herself, I guess) so I would have to seek someone else for help in the event that the keys didn’t work. Spoiler: they did.
Which is why I can tell you that I am now able to receive mail without fear of anyone coming to my physical address and stealing my Troll doll collection. The address can be found here or copied down here:
VaginaDrum.com
P.O. Box 6331
Bend OR, 97708
I accept all forms of fanaticism and contempt. Also a plus: drawings that depict me riding some sort of large cat while doing really cool and awesome things with Justin Timberlake.
