Real Housewives Parenting Horrors
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by Stefanie Wilder-Taylor (Make Mine A Double)
A lot of people don’t enjoy
voyeuristic television the way I do. There’s a certain type of
person who can’t stomach shows like Sex Rehab with Dr. Drew, MTV’s
My Sweet 16 (remember that hot cup of crazy?) or that good old
syphilitic romp-fest, Rock of Love. The haters probably fall into
one of three camps; either they don’t find the insanity of the
“reality” TV genre engaging enough and prefer to curl up with every
single incarnation of CSI or they are deeply saddened by the
staggering dysfunction portrayed in most of these shows and thus
choose to avoid them altogether or else they just have no taste.
Maybe there are other camps, with other non-reality fans but those
are the only two I can think of right now. Look, I’m not a
sociologist okay? I’m just a writer with a lot of opinions and a
cup and a half of coffee in me. No you relax! I’m fine!
Anyway, the point is, I absolutely live for these shows and was
practically drooling last night because the second episode of
Housewives of Orange County was on. This particular franchise of
the Housewives Empire is laden with superficial bimbos who can
barely scratch a sentence together and I relish every escapist
moment. At one point I had to just sit back and silently praise the
executive producers for delivering such a highly watchable show to
its loyal viewers. I mean, when Tamra, the self proclaimed “hottest
housewife” calls Gretchen, the housewife who was engaged to an old
guy but was allegedly cheating on him while he was dying of
leukemia, a cheating w---- and Gretchen half heartedly tried to
defend her honor by telling Tamra to shut the bleep up, I almost
spilled my Diet 7-Up. Bravo, Bravo network. So no one was more
surprised than me when my love for this show almost got ruined by
the sheer fact that I’m a mom. Here’s where the train went off the
tracks: Lynne, the newest housewife who seems to have a serious
Vicidon problem (or maybe I’m reading that into the way she seems
slow to process the simplest information), goes into a surgeon’s
office with her two teen-aged daughters to get a consult for a face
lift for herself…and a nose job for her already perfect yet
obviously self esteem challenged daughter. First Lynne sits in the
chair while Dr. Ambe, the go-to OC plastics guy, tells Lynne that
her eye lids and jowls are her main problem and with his help he
can make her look twelve years younger. I watched in disbelief as
Lynne says straight to camera, “I think my obsession to stay fit
and young is a positive goal for the girls so that when they get to
be eighty they’re gonna look as good as me.”
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Raising preemie twin girls plus a sassy preschooler while
trying to make a book deadline isn't for wussies. In her
Mommy Tracked column,
Make Mine a Double, Stefanie Wilder-Taylor takes imperfect
parenting to an art form. Each week she breaks the pristine laws of
the mommy manuals as she reveals how she attempts to parent her
three children through instinct, intelligence, and a lot of trial
and error. She is the author of Sippy Cups Are Not for Chardonnay, Naptime Is the New Happy Hour, and It's Not Me, It's You: Subjective
Recollections from a Terminally Optimistic, Chronically Sarcastic
and Occasionally Inebriated Woman. She’s appeared numerous
times on The Today Show, is a member of the Us Weekly
Fashion Police and writes on her blog, Baby On Bored.
