Really?
I live a fairly interesting life and every once in a while I actually wish that cameras were following me around to record it. For posterity certainly. Occasionally for verification. Sometimes for therapeutic reasons – as much as I recognize his show and edutainment, it can be nice to have Dr. Phil close so that folks can see how they behave. Because of course you're right.
But because I am an honest person, most people tend to believe me when I tell them that:
· Pakistani mullahs thought I, a boy, disrespected their women
. My lack of strong secondary sex characteristics, greater than average height and short hair led me to be mistaken for a teenage boy in Pakistan in the spring of 2007. Having opened the gate to the women’s market, I was first grabbed by the male guard who stood outdoors and could not enter. Though it would have been dangerous for a woman to rebuff a man in such a manner, my reflexive and silent “how dare you” shook him off. Having entered, I was accosted by a woman who told me that no men were allowed. Answering that I was a woman, she retorted that I must prove it. I will and cannot, I replied, but then pulled my shirt tight to shut her up. The sight of my less than ample bosom caused her to choke on laughter and reply, “Many men look like this!” I decided not to stay any longer but when I went to leave found that my bosom investigator had reported my male status to town mullahs. When I left, thirty town men – all of them – were pointing AK-47’s at me. My male protectors, my Canadian brother-friend, body-guard and an official from the Aga Khan foundation were outside. Inside, however, was a female Nobel Peace Prize nominee of whom the men were afraid. She told them to put their guns down, that their women had not been defiled, that hairless, breastless, hipless, I was female and leaving. OR
· I was arrested by derelicts in Times Square
The time a group of derelicts jumped up from the floor near the turnstile of the New York City subway to arrest me for fare beating. I lived in Westchester County and was on my way to the doctor with a very high fever. I had a boyfriend who used Connecticut highway tokens when driving to see me and somehow had used one accidentally. I was placed in handcuffs, placed on the train. I was fingerprinted and photographed but was spared being put in the cage with the scary guys. I was allowed to leave and go to the doctor but was later sentenced to cleaning city parks for two months of Saturdays. Luckily, I look good in orange, even if the jumpsuit was less than flattering. The job was foul, but I did not find anything or anyone dead.
· Dead folks float all here all of the time.
My mother and I were in Singapore, looking into the harbor. A rope tethered to the pier was tugged in a peculiar manner so I walked down the pier to see why that might be. Just then a boat sped by on the other side of the pier and a bloated, discolored, perhaps dead-for-a-week body floated out attached to the other end of the rope. I asked our tour guide to whom we should report this and was told that “dead folks float here all the time. The police just tie them up with ropes.” “Don’t families get notified?” we asked. “Or news reports get made?” She shrugged. “People sometimes come and look”, she said.
· I was almost arrested in a transvestite hooker raid
My friend, Grey and I went to see The Red Shoes in New York and returned to his mother’s home. As we turned the corner on 47th and 9th, about seven paddy wagons pulled up and yelled, Up against the wall! They pulled me away from Grey at which time I noticed something interesting. He was standing with a large group of white men and I was standing with a large group of black…women? Now, my face was freshly scrubbed, I had long hair pulled into two braids, each tied with a small bandanna. I wore a long blue-gray dress and brown seamans' sandals. These women wore bras, hot pants, fantastic wigs, four-inch heels and enough make-up to scrape into pastry bags. They were all black and Hispanic. All well over six feet in their heels. I am 6’1”. Most towered over me. As these women swallowed, I noticed Adam’s apples. I don’t have one.
Men, I thought! As the police got ready to put me in the paddy wagon, I said, Look at me! I don’t have an Adam’s apple! And my father’s a minister. This would not be good. I am not calling my father and telling him that I got arrested because you think I'm a male prostitute! This plea did not move the police. The transvestites all yelled some version of, Leave that girl alone. No man is gonna pay money for her!
Mainly their statements were not so clean. The police seemed to believe that I was not a good economic commodity. Helpful to my immediate situation of course, but every girl wants to be thought desirable. Even by scumbags. I thought they liked the young innocent girl look. At any rate, Grey and I were released. All of the men except Grey wore suits. I was not certain how you have to dress to be a John but apparently the girls had silently communicated to the police that Grey did look not rich to have been one of their walking-one-the-wild-side clients. Certainly these wo-men weren't Grey's type but they were wrong about his money. His family owned the neighborhood we were standing in and a few more on the West Side. This tranny hooker raide turned out to be a big deal arrest of New York's toniest business men; it was reported in the New York Times, the New York Post, and by every local TV station. And my father did not have to bail me out or worry, for this particular reason, about the state of my soul. Me and my innocent face were at Grey's house watching the raid unfold on TV.
· I look like a North African terrorist to French national security officials
I once took a French immersion class in Paris, living in a sixth floor walk-up in St. Germain des Pres in the 6th arrondissement. On a second visit, I saw my former landlady. The neighborhood Metro was bombed. When I was leaving the country, I was called out of the customs line and told that I was being held on suspicion of terrorism. My photos were destroyed - my camera looked journalistic. Where did you get your fake American passport? Impossible question. Sing the French national anthem. I did. Say the American Pledge of Allegiance. I did. Why can you do both. My mother taught French. I was American. I watch a lot of war movies. So it was my turn (I could say these things pre-9/11, when I could not be held indefinitely). So no more questions, sirs. Please call the American Embassy. Polite but insistent.
So my life felt a bit like a reality show already before the term entered the lexicon. My life has sometimes seemed like The Amazing Race. Now it’s Lord, I Really Need to Get Out of This Chair! But this is my reality – I don’t manufacture it. Life happens when you choose to live it. Life is an action verb. So if you don’t think your life is interesting enough, you need to find a way to live it that is. You don't drop into someone else’s' life, substitute faux fame and fantasy for living, or hope that the video will convince people that you're hot.
While mine may sometimes be a dangerous life, its all mine. I travel to interview women making a difference in developing countries or see the challenges of living one's faith in monotheistic countries. I see what surprises I find in these places; they are never what I have gone seeking. My trips always have all possible safeguards designed into them. I don’t go rogue. My life is (almost) always a thoughtful life. Living your own life. Now that's hot!
What many people seem to forget is that, by definition, reality is real. Reality shows are not. They certainly have real elements but some are, many have scripted elements. Reality shows can be fun to watch. And some can even be helpful. The cooking, home decorating and renovating shows have got us past the initial pain of September 11th and have helped us nest during the recession. Martha has taught us to dream about paint chips and country chic; Top Chef got us into the kitchen, as home cooks or as a generation of newly enrolled chefs; and The Biggest Loser sent overeaters to nutritionists, counselors and the gym.
Whether in helpful, silly, dangerous or demeaning shows, people want fame at all costs. They will endanger their children, our first responders and even the President of the United States. People used to earn fame; we lauded them for their genius, skill, courage and talent. Now, in an era when simply being frequently seen brings bank, its not surprising that many people confuse living one's life with being seen living one's life some form of a slightly manufactured life. Reality is turned on its head.
But if you choose to involve yourselves in its long arms as a way to have fun, earn prizes, have a chance at fa
me, or boost an existing personal brand, there should be some basic rules:
1.
You do not prostitute your children on camera
– Wi
,
, and the national audition now known as
– to earn a spot on a reality show. You do not endanger the morals and values of those children nor, importantly, the lives and limited resources of first responders who, in an age when children’s lives are so often threatened, went out of their way to –unnecessarily, as it happens – ensure little Falcon's life and safety, and to keep him from crashing to earth in a balloon 20 feet in diameter. When I first saw the balloon, I assumed that an infant had crawled into it. It looked like a Jiffy Pop
canister
, flimsy and light. Eyes can deceive, but I recognized the
Heene's
from pop-ups on the
internet
. I was not surprised that this turned out to be a hoax. Richard and
Mayumi
Heene
,
since investigated by Social Services
, have been indicted, are accused of a crime. To his credit, Balloon B
oy
himself
- six year old Falcon
Heene
- must have been reading about George Washington in school that week. Through multiple on-camera episodes of vomiting, he could not tell a lie.
.
2.
You do not endanger the life of the President of the United States of America
– We will put aside, for a moment, the terrible breaches
by the White House Office of Protocol (which should have had their own staff member at the gate) and the Secret Service (who will typically make you wait even if they recognize you if they find no evidence of your invitation). It is not certain yet whether
and
can be criminally prosecuted. But if it turns out that they were not, in fact, invited to the White House, they have certainly committed the crime of terminal stupidity, of not thinking past their wish to be considered for the cast of the
Housewives of Washington,
of not wanting to increase their personal celebrity by hobnobbing with political power. For its
Housewives
, Bravo, the cable network, said it would be looking for
women who have their pulse on the most important cultural events
, political galas, gallery openings and fund-raisers in Washington society
. Did it not occur to the
Salahis
that they could get staff persons in trouble if they talked their way in? Or that people in terrorist cells might now wonder how to recruit a lovely couple to try to sneak into a presidential event? (These are the alleged events - all is under investigation. The couple says that they were invited to the reception).
Michaele
had her hand on Joe
Biden
’s chest. She and her husband were close enough to the President, Vice President and inner circle to have use table implements for weapons, brought in deadly toxins and shut the world down. Luckily that was not their purpose. That appears to be stargazing. A look at their
provides a less than flattering picture of their life goals. They brag about who they know, about jobs they have held (like Redskins cheerleader) that turn out not to be true, and a self-described
wedding of the century
(they forgot the rule that it’s best to let others laud you). New reports show the couple in rather unseemly legal skirmishes with
Tareq
’s parents regarding the ownership of the family-owned
. Rather than giving people an opportunity to now think better of them than this picture might provide, they reportedly cancelled their free appearance on Larry King to enter a bidding war for a paid television appearance, though, this just in - December 1 found them on the
Today Show
, unpaid, seen
everywhere
. They stated that no one would disgrace the People's House by showing up uninvited. They also denied earlier having crashed the Black Caucus dinner at which President Obama was a guest. Most people save their paper copies of invitations from presidents so pony up,
Salahis
! This should be simple. Someone should have a record of you somewhere. You can make liars of those someones by revealing your data. None on your side doesn't hold up in the court of law or public opinion. None from the White House, either? Case closed. Though, in much the same way that Brazilian turtle poachers have been hired by that government as conservationists, perhaps the
Salahis
should consider new careers as security consultants. Or spies. After all, if they can get next to the world's most important Commander in Chief and his many minions (not to mention foreign heads of state), they may be able to sidle up next to Bin Laden in his distant cave.
Call it the
Age, where propriety cries out for a good prank and where all the world — even the White House — is a stage. And as “
” has shown, getting noticed works.
Well, someone needs to stop watching at least some of what passes as reality television. When you stay stuck on stupid for too long, you run the risk of killing your brain cells. Those suckers don’t regenerate, either. Not yet. If you find yourself lower on gray matter than was
previously
the case, there is probably a game show on which you can beat your head against a wall, eat rotting organ meats, insult your dying grandmother for money, or run through a pile or bricks. Then you, too, may qualify for your own reality show. Have agents, handlers and assistants. Become
faux
reality
persona
of the
and
ilk. Or maybe star in a new
-like show called
Presidential Secret Service.
Word has it that there may be a few recently vacated jobs available. In this new age, anything appears to be possible. So reach for the stars. Or at least be photographed with them.
Really?!