Typing in stereo: Shows sound good to real housewives
By: Karla Peterson
October 18, 2004
" 'Desperate Housewives'? What kind title is that?"
my 8-year-old daughter asked, looking from the TV Guide on the
kitchen table to the mother at the sink. "You're not desperate."
That's my girl! Smart, media-savvy and blissfully in the dark
about the truth of her mother's life.
I am a modern mother, of course I'm desperate. Desperate for time.
Desperate for sleep. Desperate for affirmation. But after assuming
that a show about desperate housewives in suburbia would have nothing
to say to a working mother in metropolitan San Diego, I am desperately
happy to report that it does.
Airing Sunday nights at 9 on ABC, "Desperate Housewives"
is a campy comedy-drama about life on the dark side of the manicured
hedge. With its pristine houses and pathologically perfect homemakers,
"Desperate Housewives" gives us a pastel Hell as imagined
by Laura Ashley's evil twin. It also gives conflicted women a bouquet
of reasons to feel good about their lives, and along with the equally
encouraging "Wife Swap" (airing Wednesdays at 10 p.m.),
it has made ABC our go-to network for empowering entertainment.
You wouldn't expect to find womanly wisdom on ABC, home of doofy
sitcom dads and batty bachelorettes. And in the beginning, you don't.
From the pinched Martha Stewart clone to the trophy wife who is
sleeping with the hunky gardener, the women of "Desperate
Housewives" bustle around their pretty subdivision with
stereotypes flapping around them like paper-doll clothes.
Meanwhile, "Wife Swap" - a reality show in which women
trade homes and families for 10 days - pits caricature against
caricature and waits for the dust bunnies to fly.
Both shows paint their agendas in big, broad strokes. "Desperate
Housewives" sees psychosis brewing in every crock pot. In
"Wife Swap," the women are either chore-happy domestic
wonders or late-sleeping slacker moms, with the latter group
getting the most snark per episode.
So you are either a muffin-baking maniac or a bon-bon eating menace.
Unless you are a standard-issue woman looking for reassurance
wherever you can find it. Then you can read between the lines of
these shows and see exactly what you need to see.
Take the recent "Wife Swap" featuring Amy Beaver and
Aletha Smoak. Amy is a sweet, fragile, animal-rights activist who
is not big on housecleaning or child discipline. Smoak is a
no-nonsense gal who runs a tight ship while her husband indulges
his passion for huntin' and fishin'.
In the course of the hour, the women try to impose their domestic
styles on their new families, with predictably disastrous results.
Aletha's iron-clad rules about chores and manners make Amy's
dreadlocked husband cry, and when Amy tells Aletha's hubby that his
Confederate flag and stuffed deer heads have to go, he stomps around
the property and refuses to come in for dinner.
With its fondness for oil-and-water match-ups, "Wife Swap"
can be predictable and cartoonish. But even as it trades in wifely
clichés, the messy complexities of reality keep shining through.
Amy is a flake and an appalling slob, and Aletha is an uptight
neat-freak, but they love their families and their families love
them. And while the swapping experience does bring about some minor
changes - Amy convinces Aletha's macho husband to spend more time at
home and a smidgen of Aletha's neatness rubs off on Amy - both
families return to their slightly altered lives thrilled to be their
own weird selves again.
For any woman who ever tried to shape her life according to the latest
self-help book or the newest child-care study, the realization that
there are many variations on doing the right thing can be very
liberating. For the floundering women of "Desperate Housewives,"
it could be just the life raft they need.
While the compulsively perfect Bree (Marcia Cross) is busy making osso
buco and upholstering her own chairs, her family is busy hating her.
Former corporate titan Lynette (Felicity Huffman) has thrown herself
into motherhood and tossed her sanity out the window. The lovely
Gabrielle (Eva Longoria) signed on as a trophy wife, only to discover
that money doesn't buy contentment or great sex.
The fictional women of "Desperate Housewives" are desperate
because they are buying into someone else's idea of fulfillment, which
is something real women do all the time. But on the other side of the
picket fence, the wives and mothers of "Wife Swap" are
reminding us that there are a million ways to make a happy family,
and just because none of these families work the same way doesn't
mean they don't all work.
So before you get desperate, think about trading perfection for
perspective. It could be the swap of your lifetime.
© Union-Tribune Publishing Co. 2004. All Rights Reserved.
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