COLUMN: Confessions of a reality TV junkie
My name is Catey and I’m a reality TV show junkie.
"Keeping Up With the Kardashians," "Dance Moms," "Toddlers in Tiaras," "Wife Swap," "Khloe and Lamar," "Teen Mom" … you name it, I love it.
As much as I love wasting my days away watching the people featured on those shows waste their lives away and make complete fools of themselves, I’m not so blinded by my love for reality TV that I don’t recognize how absolutely horrible it is.
Shows involving kids are probably the worst. It’s already bad enough that a lot of celebrity children are exploited since birth because of their parents' A-List statuses, but when everyday children are subjected to the same lifestyle, I’ll be the first to say it’s gone too far.
Shows like "Toddlers in Tiaras" don’t help, either. These series literally spotlight kids acting like little demons, and nine times out of 10, nothing is done about their behavior. For example, "Toddlers in Tiaras" has a tendency of showing its 4- and 5-year-old stars throwing temper tantrums, exclaiming how much they hate their mothers and bad-mouthing their competition.
Yet, not once has the show featured a parent pulling their child from the competition because of their behavior.
This is absolutely unreal to me. If that had been me as a child, I would have been out of that pageant so fast my head would spin, to use one of my dad’s favorite phrases.
With examples of kids running rampant all over TV, there’s no wonder that my little cousins and my friend’s siblings think they’re supposed to mimic that behavior.
On another note, although it might be a stretch, a small part of me agrees with the people that claim the reality TV I love so much is a contributing factor to the change of our society from respectable to, well, not so respectable.
Watching the rise and fall of Kim Kardashian’s 72-day marriage, seeing husbands trade their wives in for a few weeks to try something else out, and witnessing teen moms Amber and Janelle physically abuse their husbands, leave their children and battle drug addictions are some major contributors to people’s poor opinion of our society.
If this is what we allow to stream through our televisions night after night, we shouldn’t be surprised when this is how people begin to act.
As much as I love reality TV and keeping up with celebrity gossip, I really believe we need to re-think our standards and stop giving our time and attention to people who don’t deserve it.
That being said, don’t go getting rid of all the reality TV at once … those of us who are addicted wouldn’t know what to do with ourselves.
