It’s funny what you watch when you’re sick. My youngest had the flu, we battled a 105 fever that was probably the most stressful night I have had with my sons. We got through it, but of course, being the devoted mother that I am, I felt it my maternal duty to lift the disease (amen) off my child (hallelujah). So, he’s well and I am sick. The boys went off to their dad’s house for spring break and I settled in on the couch with my juice, Zicam (awesome awesome awesome – it will make you feel better I promise – get the mint cough mist), comfort food of boca chicken nuggets, Vienna vanilla fingers and Fresca.
I came across a show, Trading Spouses – meet your new mommy, on (retch) fox. I was actually laughing aloud at parts but it soon turned more philosophical and reflective for me.
I’m sure you know the premise. Absolute opposite families switch a parent for a week to experience life on the other side, and at the end allot $10,000 to the other family as the other family’s parent deems fit. This week they had a family with a patriarchal caricature – super competitive dad pushing his boys beyond their limits and in directions of no interest to the youngest, with a subservient trophy wife. I can’t judge women who take this role. I am not them, and this woman has managed to have a successful 17 year marriage to this mini-man, which is a heck of a lot better than I did. The other family, initially to me, looks like something out of Deliverance. No joke. The wife from the other family said the husband reminded her of Charles Manson, which he actually did.
I was howling out loud at parts – with the earthy mom’s decision to have some bare foot ritual of new beginning with the two sons and the dad – asking them all to put their bare feet together – and the youngest delicately placing his big toe on his brother’s desperately avoiding contact with his new McCoy mommy. She seemed bizarre at times but it changed for me.
At one point, at the Frazier home which is surrounded by farm animals living happy and free, the family pet turkey Clyde gets hit by a car. The dad, seeing that their beloved turkey is dead, scoops him up, inspects him and says – he will honor us, we will honor him by being dinner. Fair enough. They cook him up, the Cinderella mom eats a sandwich and then they tell her – we’re glad you enjoyed your Clyde sandwich. She is horrified. Where I come from we don’t eat our pets! We don’t eat road kill!
And that’s when I realized – this is America.
The image obsessed, patriarchal Zandi family with their opulent surroundings, pushing their kids competitively is one side of America and the earthy, poor, not too concerned with appearances living off the land Frazier family is the other side. What pisses me off is the snobbery. There was no effort by this woman to get to know these people. She saw the ramshackle house, the animals, the less than pristine living conditions and she went into a deep depression. She didn’t care if these people were happy, kind, compassionate, loving. She didn’t care about anything but the looks of things. We don’t eat our pets! She exclaimed. That was so telling. Because that is what business is depending on when implementing its marketing and it’s conduct. No no no! We don’t eat our pets! We don’t care in a loving and kind way for the animals we eat, making them a part of our family until their demise at which time we honor their passing by making their body a part of ours. We would much rather shove them into concrete, dark, cold prisons to be tortured out of sight with no kindness or warmth from those in charge of their care. No! We would much rather be able to not know that they are crippled, slammed against walls, sodomized with electric prods for the fun of it, beaten mercilessly because they cannot walk fast enough or at all, starved, castrated, injected, tormented, thrown in the garbage while still alive, babies torn apart. That’s so much better than eating something that has had a full and happy life being treated with dignity whose end came by way of the motorized industrialization not by nature. This is what the problem is with our country. Image is everything. How it looks is more important than how it is. This is why the whole Enron thing was allowed to happen. This is why bush has been allowed to devastate this country because those around him understand marketing. They understand that if you put a good name on it, people will say oh! Look “Healthy Forests” legislation! We want healthy forests! That sounds great! But if you look beyond the name, look beyond the image you will see that Healthy Forests is the biggest joke around. Its name was purposefully created to distract away from the absolute fact that this is about clear-cutting and the DESTRUCTION of our national forests. But it’s image that sells.
At 43, I’m supposed to believe that forty is the new thirty.
Say what?
I finally get here, and I have to go back? Why do I have to look different than I really am? I’m forty three. It took me a long time to get here, and the outer me tells a story. A long, full of life and living story. I know I have the ability to erase many of those indicators, but why? What exactly is the point? Am I supposed to be ashamed that I don’t look thirty anymore? I’m not thirty. I’m forty three. The only reason we are being made to feel uncomfortable with our appearance is simple. Someone is trying to sell us something. From Neutrogena to Lancome to surgeons to hairstylists to magazine editors – someone is trying to sell us something. Do you buy it? I sometimes lament different things. I look at someone on a cover of a magazine and think – no way is she forty five! But been there! Done that! I know what really happens in fashion photography. Wasn’t it Christie Brinkley who said I wish I woke up looking like Christie Brinkley!
I will not buy that forty is the new thirty. I don’t feel thirty. Thirty was fine, but I can spend the rest of my life looking back like Uncle Rico in Napolean Dynomite – wishing for the impossible. What a supreme waste of time.
Back to trading spouses. I came to love the earthy Fraziers. As nutty and a little backward as they might have seemed initially, they are sincere, salt of the earth people. Sure, mom could have benefited from braces and some teeth whitener and dad could have used a shave and a haircut, but give me the Fraziers over the Zandi family any day. The Fraziers are a team, equal partners, who love the land, love each other and love their son. The Zandi’s love stuff. Their house is beautiful. Grand. Emaculate. But I would rather live with the Fraziers than the Zandis. The Fraziers were real people.
The problem right now is that a lot of the stuff that is meant to make our life better – be it tangible like cars and factory farming or intangible like marketing – we are discovering that these things are destroying us. Destroying our environment. Destroying our bodies. Destroying our souls. Is that dramatic? I guess. But there is nothing more soul destroying than insatiable consumption of natural resources and the incarceration of billions of animals. Animals are as close to God as we will ever get. They are as they are meant to be. It is only humans that feel the need to run rampant through this world. Does that make us smarter? More reasonable? Stronger? How pathetic we are! Truly! We have all this power and we wield it so negatively. I dare anyone that eats animals even occasionally to view what is the truth about their meat. What is being caught on film with such unprecedented regularity now is not aberrant behavior. This is the norm. Go to Meet Your Meat at PETA.ORG. Go and watch. If you can eat them then at the very least don’t you think you owe them the courtesy of watching what they endure to satiate your tastebuds? Isn’t that the minimum that you can do? What harm will come of it? And if you are still involved in animals in entertainment – from monkeys in commercials to elephants in circuses to horses and cattle in rodeos – find out what you’re watching. For crying out loud when animals act unnaturally you can guarantee with absolute 100% certainty that there are human being behind it forcing the behavior through cruel and violent means. We have moved away from using animals as different things come along to replace them. Surely we don’t need to subject the weakest amongst us to do things God never intended. Dominion is so misunderstood. I can force my pets to walk on their hind legs and wear skirts and jump through fire. But what purpose does it serve? That I am powerful? That I have power over them? That I am the master? Gag. What does it say about us that we exude power from controlling those without power? We can make our kids do stuff they don’t want to do. We can dominate our children or animals or seniors or mentally or physically impaired or disabled. Does that make us powerful? Or maybe just a little bit loathsome? At what point to do we say – yikes! That is so not what we are supposed to be doing! How many times are people going to say the most quoted line from Spiderman – with great power comes great responsibility – without having any clue as to how very true those words are? At what point do we say – the best leaders are the benevolent ones. Sure pillaging and raping can be fun for the victors but what about the victims? Who do you support more often the favorites or the underdogs?
Do you prefer to be with the winners that win at any cost or the losers that lose with dignity?
Why is that?
I would prefer to lose with dignity than win with shame. It appears to me that the richest people in the world end up atoning for the ills they did in the past when striving for success and destroying those in their path, by becoming the most philanthropic. That’s a good thing. But I would prefer to start out that way and continue on that path than to jump over later because no matter how charitable you are after the fact, you have left a swathe of desolation that cannot be repaired. Better to do unto others from the get go.
The second half of Trading Spouses in on next week. I hope to see some realizations from the Zandis.

Anyway, the medicine is wearing off, I hate being sick.