Sister Wives

I’ve been staying in hotel rooms lately (it’s odd, really, when the boy comes to town, we stay in hotels since I have a roommate and he doesn’t want to mess with her schedule) which means that the television has been on. A lot. Like, every night.

I’m usually someone who does not watch TV, except for a few shows that I stream on Hulu (like the Office). But put me in a hotel room? I can sit in front of it for hours, while my book is lonely on the bedside table.

So, the other night, we were flipping through the channels (the boy does not like commercials at all), and we landed for a few minutes on TLC’s Sister Wives, which is a reality show that follows this family of a polygamist cult (spinoff of LDS) of one guy, four wives, and sixteen children. The partial episode we watched showed them going back to the town where the man grew up and meet up with all his old friends. Of course, this is awkward.

This cult states that they don’t proselytize. Great. The friends are mainstream LDS and they are not on board with the polygamist lifestyle.

There were a few things that bugged me:

1. The friend was really against the polygamist proselytizing, but he said one sentence that started with “when I was on my mission” — Okay sir, now how do you think us gentiles feel when you are proselytizing? HMMMM?
2. The polygamists defended their faith but not in a logical way. To the casual observer (that’s me) the only difference between this cult and the mainstreamers was polygamy.
3. Their definition of polygamy is quite unfair. It’s more like polygamy for him and monogamy for the ladies, except when she is the chosen wife for the sleeping. Unless there’s one giant bed.
4. The show is set up for the casual observer to judge these people harshly. That shouldn’t be surprising, but ladies, if you think that you’re just showing your faith to the open-minded public? You are mistaken.

It’s an odd show that made me feel angry, riled my feminist feathers, and made me feel better about the way I live my life. And I only watched ten minutes!

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