Wednesday, November 8, 2006

The Trash Queen

My friend, HR, calls me the queen of trash.  He is referring to my fascination with popular culture.  I look forward to Tuesdays because that’s the day that my new issue of Entertainment Weekly arrives.  I watch for the postman and hurry out to greet him every Tuesday.  I suspect that he thinks that I have an interest in him, but I just want to get my next fix of gossip about the glamorous. 

 

I like to think of my tastes as eclectic; after all I also have a subscription to Newsweek.  But HR reminds me that I watch Survivor and Big Brother faithfully.  I got him hooked on both for a couple of seasons but he eventually fell by the wayside, feeling that the weekly displays of deceit, manipulative behavior, and betrayal were a bit too much.  I call it entertainment.  The first line in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina reads,  “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” 

 

I think that sort of explains our (my) fixation with reality television.  It’s the bad behavior that makes us watch.  Promises are made and we breathlessly wait for them to be broken.  Outright lies are told and we are in on it, thanks to the all-invasive diary-cam.  For those of you who are not a viewer of reality shows--most have opportunities for individual participants to talk in private to the camera.  Big Brother actually has a diary room where the players admit their dastardly ways.

 

I don’t think this fascination with peeping into other people’s dysfunctional behavior is new.  When I was a girl, I remember the magazines with the lurid headlines, “Me and My Stepfather: Unspeakable Acts.”  They were adult magazines with titles like True Romance and Modern Romance.  The covers featured some doe-eyed blond wearing tight shorts and a peasant blouse, pulled down off her shoulders.  I wasn’t allowed to read these magazines, so every chance that I got, I would sneak one into the bathroom, lock the door, and delve into a world of wanton desire.  By modern standards, they were pretty tame, suggestive but not explicit and no nudity, but lots of underwear shots.  Most of the time I didn't know exactly what they were talking about but I knew that whatever it was, it was forbidden.  That was good enough for me!

 

I think that the ready availability of explicit pornography has ruined the market for those titillating magazines; I don’t see them on news stands any more.  So here I am, ready to confess to the world.  My name is Sheria, and I like trash!

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I can remember when Mother thought "Happy Days" was bad because they talked about French kissing.

Anonymous said...

Haha, thanks for the memory.  As a young teen I liked nothing more than to dive into a brand new issue of "True Story" magazine.  Every story was devoured and digested greedily by my adolescent mind.  I even tried writing a few myself...although I am not sure that a 13 year old really had any experiences readers would have wanted to share!  I haven't seen one of those in years either!
Marie
http://journals.aol.co.uk/mariealicejoan/MariesMuses/

Anonymous said...

:) You bring back memories when I use to find the forbidden magazines  too funny, now aday they are to trashy for my taste, hopefully my kids dont find the forbidden to bring in the bathroom to sneak a peek.. scary thought cuz today we dont have just panties and off the shoulder tops there is way to much porn , was it there in our days? and we just didnt get to see it

Anonymous said...

I watch Big Brother too. I love the reality of it, waiting to see how the scheming plays out. A great entry 'your royal highness'.
Kate.
http://journals.aol.co.uk/bobandkate/AnAnalysisofLife/

Anonymous said...

NOT TO WORRY DEAR ONE,,,AT 73,  I LIKE WATCHING SURVIVOR AND BIG BROTHER TOO,,,ALTHOUGH AM RAISED STRICT ITALIAN, WE COULDN'T HAVE HAD A TV OR EVEN SAY A NASTY WHILE GROWING,,, BORN IN CHICAGO UNTIL 20,,, MORE ABOUT ME ON MY WEB SITE,,,   WWW.BOOKSBYROSASBARASSI.COM
ANYWAY I LIKE YOUR JOURNAL,,,IT'S AN HONEST WONDERFUL YOUNG WOMEN TELLING IT LIKE SHE LIKES,,,  FROM A CRAZY OLD LADY, Marie

Anonymous said...

While I have never watched an entire episode of "Survivor" or "Big Brother", I have to admit that I refuse to miss America's Next Top Model.  You seem to have a very serious side that needs balance.  So I wouldn't call you the "queen of trash" -- just a woman in search of equilibrium :)

Anonymous said...

I am a Big Brother and Survivor fan... I get into the plotting and scheming, the loyalties they build with each other, and how easily some of those bounds are broken. But they parallel what we do in real life. We forge bonds with certain people, some we call friends, some we call fellow workers. We play games in our work to get the job done. Do I do this at school? Yes I do, particularly being the newbie in the building... I have to be very observant about personalities. I cannot treat everyone the same because not everyone responds to me the same. How easily our words and actions can be misinterpreted by different people. It's a perception game... not a reality game... unless you call it a reality perception game, this living we do. And about the trash... yes, when I was a kid I would babysit for people, I loved going through their magazines and books. I think I learned more about sex from reading the trash that folks brought home (including my own mother's True Romance, or those nurse and doctor romance "novels" she brought home). I was educated, and impressed with the genre at that young pre-adult age. Fortunately, the trash genre did not hold my interest for long... my tastes led me to higher standards, but I do remember reading about things people did or felt that I didn't understand. It was all so very provocative and mysterious to me. Bea