Reality Matters_ 19 Writers Come Clean About the Shows We Can't Stop Watching - Anna David [55]
I watched as the Irish lass, who had come so close to giving up on her dream in those long wilderness years, fight her way back for one more chance. It was a real-life Cinderella story like nothing I’d ever witnessed. So when, at the end of the season, I finally met the resurrected singer, now on the road to stardom, it was a giddy evening. During a dinner interview between myself and five of the Idol finalists, Carly and I discussed the upcoming tour. “You’re coming to San Diego,” she said. “You have to meet my husband.”
“I’d love to!”
“And you have to see our tattoo shop!”
“I’d love to!”
“And you have to get a tattoo!”
“Ah! Well! Right, yes. Well!”
Let me parenthetically state not only that my body was at this date entirely unmarked, but also that getting a tattoo was as foreign an idea to me as growing wings and flying to China. Content in my late thirties with the notion that coolness was never going to be a part of my life, tattoos—along with skinny jeans, fauxhawks, and glitter body paint—belonged to a world I had reluctantly reconciled myself to never be a part of. Any accoutrements of this sort actually felt utterly alien, almost frightening.
All that said, after seeing the Idols in concert on that first night—a giant, sold-out show in Phoenix, Arizona—and remembering how far each of them had come, saying no to such dreamers was not possible. As much as I knew that this tattoo would subject me to permanent ridicule in my highfalutin circles back home, this was my own American Idol journey and there was no turning back.
Now, when friends gather and ask me about American Idol, I roll up my sleeve and tell them the tale of the long road that led me to the tattoo chair in San Diego, and they gape in horror at what my obsession with a television singing contest led me to. But at the end, when the tattoo is revealed, they are forced to strain their eyes to make out the tiny black dot on my forearm. “It’s a placeholder,” I say, explaining how in the end, I couldn’t quite make up my mind what I wanted to engrave myself with. With every telling, the story becomes undermined—the combination of obsessive insanity and cop-out wimpiness turns what admiration had existed to disgust and pity, even as I struggle to explain that it was still a major statement…it’s my first one, after all.
Had I really learned anything from American Idol, there would have been no half-gestures, no apologies, and no explanations. But apparently my journey is still far from over.
15
HOW TO SURVIVE A BACHELOR PARTY
Wendy Merrill
I RECENTLY WENT ON A BACHELOR-WATCHING BINGE. Although I don’t like to think of myself as someone who would enjoy the show, I also don’t like to think of myself as someone who would eat chocolate cake out of the garbage or sleep with a stranger while in an alcohol-induced blackout, so clearly what I think isn’t nearly as important as what I do. I may have stopped drinking and binge eating some twenty years ago, but I happily hunkered down with my remote control to indulge in some real escapism.
The first thing I love to hate about this show is the premise—essentially, that it’s possible to find true love on reality television. I mean, doesn’t the idea of one man test-driving twenty-five beautiful women at once sound more like a polyamorous play date than an honest attempt at finding one’s soul mate? But hey, I guess that’s hardly the point. We all know that reality shows are to real life what Pringles are to the potato, and The Bachelor is not exactly what I would call soul food. I guess I’m just a hapless—er, hopeless—romantic at heart, who resents myself for still wanting to buy into The Bachelor’s premise and believe in the possibility of a happy ending.
I grew up watching shows like The Dating Game, in which a bachelor would coyly ask three bachelorettes who were hidden from his view naughty questions like, “If you were a shellfish, what kind would you be?” At the end of the show, he would choose one woman, sight unseen, and they’d be whisked off to someplace fabulous