It’s a first for The City: Olivia Palermo got served! And by a stunning leggy Brit whose sparkle and sheen wowed everyone on the show (myself and good ol’ Freddy Facklemeyer included).



It’s Fashion Week again... didn’t we just have Fashion Week on this show? God, working in fashion is so fun! Whitney is toiling away in her closet at People’s Revolution, changing her line to try and streamline the collection of lace legging-pants and mumu dresses after getting shot down by Joe Zee and Anne Slowey last week. It’s a tough life for the emerging fashion designer, especially since she isn’t showing this season. That’s sad. Even the Sachika twins got to show at fashion week… I’m hoping that Whit said tents or nothing this year. So, since she can’t have her own show she’s going to attend as many shows as possible and prove to all those meanies that she really is somebody, she’s an important designer with a vision and a sketch book and everything!

But Debbie Downer Kelly Cutrone comes along and says, “Whit, if you’re not in the first 3 rows, you ain’t nobody.” And Whitney protests, but she’s wrong — so wrong. After the third row there are a few more assigned rows for losers with less than stellar readership and fallen society gals but then people can buy the tickets. Whitney, you don’t want to sit with people who would buy their own tickets. While Kelly’s there she asks Whitney to work on a big huge fashion show in the big huge tent for some big huge designer who makes clothes that no one would ever wear. But Roxy has moxie and pipes up that she wants to help with the show. “Put me in coach! I’ve been practicin’ all summer!” Kelly agrees and matter of factly tells Roxy that if she screws up she’s fired and I believe her because she’s Kelly Cutrone and her balls are bigger than Joe Zee’s could ever be.



Speaking of, the powers that be at Elle are gearing up for Fashion Week which is a huge deal seeing as they work at a fashion magazine. Everyone sits at the Elle oversized table and they talk about combing the city and hectic schedules and shows and Olivia getting a Marc Jacobs exclusive interview. At this point, if Olivia’s job were real, she would have already been fired. But on the unlikely chance that they had kept her on up to this point, this assignment would be the make-it-or-break it Kelly Cutrone job-threat moment. But Olivia is confident-ish and everyone has to scuttle off to their fashion week assignments and dig up some huge, earth-shattering news.



The fateful Marc by Marc Jacobs show happens and lo and behold, Olivia doesn’t come through with the interview. But she’s been touting her connections this whole time! She keeps talking about being friends with Marc! They both go to lunch and pretend to eat and then Marc gets a piggyback ride home from his beautiful Adonis of a boyfriend. To be fair, Olivia does get to go backstage. It’s her cameraman who gets rejected. What?! You have to clear press coverage for backstage interviews with a major designer at Fashion Week ahead of time?! Olivia apparently had no idea as a super-important accessories editor and when she meekly says, “Can Elle come?,” as if Elle is a homely girl she promised could get into a nightclub she frequents but gets left on the street desolate and pudgy, it’s kind of sad. Mostly for the cameraman in glasses who is left to actually stand outside desolate and pudgy until Olivia reemerges from the tents to tell him to just go home.


At the next fashion show Whitney scores front row tickets from her Berdorff buyer friend with the gap in her tooth and her whole life is validated. Kelly asks Roxy if she would rather be at that show instead of working the show for People’s Revolution and she responds that she’d rather be learning, which is a pretty responsible thing to say, especially if you’re Roxy Olin.

The weird People’s Rev show goes off without a hitch and Roxy even gets to stand in the booth next to Kelly, echoing place calls and lighting cues in a frightened whisper/scream that she’s trying to affect with power. Whitney, I’m sure, does that thing that people do at fashion shows where they follow the Amazon walking down the aisle as if they were a dog watching cars pass, leaning over every so often to say, “Sleek” or “That falls really well on her body.” Then backstage Whit and buyer girl run into beautiful English Rose/Olivia’s would-be replacement Louise. In the tackiest of all moments, buyer girl asks Louise, “Do you date Freddy Facklemeyer?” Well, person I’ve never seen before and who has probably just spotted me in Facebook photos, I did date Freddy Facklemeyer in the past. And with that Whitney adds, “I used to date Freddy too.” It reminded me of being at a party where a cute, popular boy is talking to a group of people about going to a U2 concert and I blurt out, “I like U2, too,” even though I don’t really like U2 and it’s not appropriate to mention it at all. But who can blame Whit? This Louise is like six feet tall and wearing a fur vest and has an accent. And she’s a jet-setting fashion journalist and is really, really nice to boot! Even I’m in love!

By fortuitous circumstance, Louise is also at the next show that Erin and Joe Zee attend and she’s just as charming and adorable. She sits down in a seat labeled AnnaLynne McCord and chats with the two about her work as an international cutie-pie and convinces them — without being pushy at all — that she’s an amazing replacement for Olivia, who happens to have slept in. They ask her off-the-cuff to do a backstage interview for Elle.com and when we see her cracking jokes to Badgley and Mischka about disco-wear and “boobs and butts” (that sounds so much more classy with a British accent!), it’s obvious that poor Olivia, who has squeaked in the back door with wet rat hair and droopy eyes, is getting outgunned.



Because of this and many former offenses, Erin recommends that Elle make Louise the face of Elle.com, and something be done about Olivia. Dun, dun dun!!!!!!!!!! The consolation prize for Whitney is that she gets asked by Maybelline to show at Miami Fashion Week, which is kind of like not making the basketball team but being asked to be the manager. Roxy’s being sent down to manage the show for People’s Revolution, which might spell out Kelly Cutrone keeping good on her promise to fire Roxy’s ugly eyebrows.

Real life drama (not the semi-scripted, Bravo kind) has been clouding the line between real and reality television throughout this season of The Real Housewives of New Jersey. Several police reports have been filed that promise a season rivaling the table tipping antics of last year (including assault charges against Jacqueline’s daughter — Ashley — for ripping Danielle’s weave out), Teresa and her juiced up gorilla husband are $11 million in debt, and today brought us stills from a Danielle Staub sex-tape that simply can’t be unseen. Trust me, if you haven’t looked, don’t. Suddenly Ashley’s quip in last night’s episode about Danielle’s square boobs is not only funny but vomit-inducingly true.

But while the drama is ripe off the screen, it’s still there — if to a lesser degree — on the screen. In this episode: more fallout from the Brownstone debacle. The ladies chomp on and on about how they’re tired of talking about Danielle, they wish they could just forget about Danielle, blah, blah. This is confusing to me since they spend, literally, the entire episode talking about the walking billboard against breast augmentation. Don’t get me wrong, I love gossiping. It brings me back to the days of yore when all I had to worry about were pep rallies and Prom night and that whore Christine who was always trying to steal my boyfriend. But I stop myself these days, because I’m ten years removed from high school and being bitter is not cute. These women, apparently never got the memo; their BS is so high school I feel like I’m sprouting a zit.

The action centers around drama that no adult in their right mind would mutter aloud: a Facebook and texting war. See, in the grownup world even if the conflict is legit, even if what happened in the confines of a social network or in your Blackberry is some serious I want to punch your lights out shit, you can’t say the words, “And then she did X to me on Facebook” without fear of the room shaking their head in dismay. Again, these ladies have no issue reverting to places that the rest of us have run from for a long time. To be fair, half of the participants in the text/Facebook “war” (yes, they refer to it as a war—Happy Memorial Day!) are kids. Ashley rears her mini-Jacqueline head again and sends Danielle a text that she should get out of her family’s life. She ends it by saying, “Bye Bitch”. Danielle, being the completely sane human being that she is, interprets this as a death threat. It’s probably perfectly reasonable considering Ashley’s “terroristic” moves in the past, moves like creating a “I Hate Danielle Staub” group on Facebook. Ashley notes that there are 2,000 people in the group and that makes me kind of sad for the state of everyone really. It even makes me a little sad for Danielle because, I mean, HATE is a pretty strong word and I can’t even imagine how I would feel if that many people said that they hated me. I stop feeling sorry for her when it’s revealed that she sent Ashley a message calling her fat. A 40+ woman sent a girl a message telling her to “drop some weight”. If nothing else before all of this made me want to give this woman the stink eye, this did it in for me.

So, Jacqueline and Teresa go to lunch and tell Ashley to meet them there so that they can discuss the rumors buzzing around town about all of this dramz. In a move as stunningly mature as any I’ve seen on this show so far, the adults counsel Ashley to cut off all contact with Danielle. It’s making her look “trashy.” She’s playing down to Danielle’s level. It’s a deft recovery in parenting for both women who just last week got drunk in the middle of the afternoon to the point of sloppiness and allowed a 3-year-old to ride an ATV without a helmet. But, in the grand tradition of teenagers making bad decisions, Ashley makes her status on Facebook something about Danielle wanting to get a warrant out for her arrest. Her mother screams at her, she rolls her eyes and I do too. I feel like I have enough Facebook in my life without this show adding to the madness.

Meanwhile in Danielle land, the lady of the hour decides to take her ex-con bodyguard Danny to a suit store to get some new duds. The logic here is that Danielle’s only friend, Kim G., has taken issue with the eye and ear sore that is everyone’s favorite hit man, so she’s going to prove her wrong by slapping a suit jacket on him and reminiscing about their time in the clink. What’s that derivative colloquialism? You can’t turn a ho into a housewife?

The Manzo’s have a family dinner where they gossip about the Facebook war and a food fight breaks out and everyone gets called into the principal. An interesting point is brought up here. When classy Danny called Chris the f-word multiple times, Danielle—the world’s most vocal gay advocate — wasn’t so vocal. Teresa ruins the moment of public discourse by defending her husband’s use of the slur “gay” which is totally better than the slur “F------“. Sigh.

We end the episode with a showdown between Dina and Danielle. Dina wants to tell Danielle once and for all that she wants nothing to do with her and Danielle delusionally thinks that Dina wants to apologize for “her part” in the hell she’s been put through. Dina proves to be all class and boobs at their meeting (was it necessary for her to actually physically meet with Danielle? I’m not so sure but my boyfriend is adamant that it’s because she’s “classy”. I think maybe the boobs and class come as a packaged deal for him and he’s enamored). There’s some infighting, Danielle tries to talk over Dina, Dina sticks out her fish lips like only a Manzo can and we get a “To Be Continued” at the bottom of the screen as Dina walks out the door. The only problem? Danielle brought along muscle Danny as “protection” and he’s sitting in the parking lot waiting for Danielle’s command with his “phone on his lap.” Maybe I’m being a little paranoid in thinking that the ex-convict who has threatened violence against the Manzo’s on many occasions would actually hurt Dina but I’m a little frightened for the next episode. Maybe arguments are best fought in the safety on the Facebook world.

After the Soup clipshow fodder/debacle that was The Bachelor: On the Wings of Love, I’ve found myself sucked into the vacuous wormhole of this ABC ratings juggernaut. That’s right, I’m watching The Bachelorette. This time around, the object of a couple dozen men’s fervent attention is Ali Fedotowsky. Her heart was broken by dashing pilot Jake last season (after she left the house to pursue her budding career at Facebook, came back because she was drawn by the magnetic love of Jake — and also the melodic honey of Mr. Jeffery Osbourne — and was turned away by (the producers) Jake with nothing more than a promise of her own show.



So, why did I choose to start watching a program I haven’t glimpsed since ugly Jillian’s feet got obsessed over? Well, the answer is a bit embarrassing. I read an interview with host Chris Harrison saying that Ali is cut from the cloth of normal people, that this season’s hijinks spring from honest circumstances, that the Bachelorette’s reactions and decisions are lead by her own emotional compass, not the delicate nudging of the men behind the curtain. That’s right, I trusted the mouthpiece of a reality show to tell me that said show was, in fact, more reality and less show. And you know what? I don’t feel badly about it. I like Chris Harrison. Something about him makes me categorize him in the Jeff Probst vein of hosts — effective and honest, not quite as standoffish as say a Phil Keoghan but not quite as apt to meddle in the contestants' personal drama as a T.J. Lavin. I like that he offers advice to the Bachelors but doesn’t to the Bachelorettes (out of respect to the other dudes in the house). I like that he’s still good friends with Andrew Firestone (remember him? Boy, was he dreamy). And goddamnit, I like that he called out that little slut Whats-her-name (she’s not worth a Google search) for claiming that he was stepping out on his wifey. So, based on that flawed logic, I am now watching the show.



So much has happened so far! Ali has kicked off a slew of guys, including a dude who killed a bear with his bare hands. To his credit, that would elicit at least one rose from me. Not our fair Ali, though. Here are her front runners:

Roberto: Clocking in as the only minority on the show, he sure does milk his “Latin charm” bit for all it’s worth. He got the first impression rose on the first night by doing a Tango with Ali. Watching the two on their first one-on-one date this past episode, I almost found them endearing in a Mark Consuelos/Kelly Ripa kind of way (he’s dreamy but boring BUT exotic, she’s adorable but annoying BUT infectiously happy), and then she told him to “Dame un beso” in the worst Spanish accent I’ve heard since fourth period Spanish in 11th grade. It’s okay, she learned how to say it in a rap song.

Roses: Roberto seems genuinely into Ali - some might say that he’s “here for Ali” but then I would have to drink according to the rules of my newly christened Bachelorette drinking game. When he warns Ali of some suspect characters in the house, it seems like he’s telling her out of genuine concern for her heart. Also, he’s insanely good-looking
Thorns: While I admire Roberto’s efforts to stay out of the drama, I think that he’s established himself enough as a middle-of-the-road sort of bloke to be able to step in and say, “Hey, there’s a lot of crazy going on in this house. Here’s what a sane person has to say about it.” Also, although Ali thinks that he “has no idea how good-looking he is”, I think he really does. Hot guys who know that they’re hot are never good news.

Frank: I like Frank. A lot. It’s probably because he wears glasses and his occupation is listed as “Retail Manager”, but he seems like a normal guy. Ali and Frank enjoyed a one-on-one date where they picnicked beneath the Hollywood sign and sipped champagne on the hood of a convertible. Nothing like a little alcohol consumption to get a car-themed date really going. It was obvious that the two had chemistry, but lately Frank’s been stressing A LOT about the attention that his girl is giving other guys in the house. Like, A LOT.

Roses: Frank is good looking (chiseled abs, strong cheekbones, nice hair), but that’s all offset by endearingly pedestrian elements (median income job, wire-rims, affinity for plaid button-ups). He’s the layman’s Roberto, a Roberto that is far less likely to cheat on you. Also, he’s super into Ali.
Thorns: He is getting pretty stressed out about this other-dudes-dating-Ali thing. Hey Frank, I don’t know if you’re aware, but the concept of this show has a girl — your girl — dating a multitude of different guys at the same time. Frank can’t handle it: he gets visibly sweaty and his eyes do this creepy darting back and forth thing and suddenly I can imagine him 45 and balding, suspicious that the next door neighbor stole his newspaper again.

Justin: Where do I start with this one? He’s a professional wrestler named “Rated R.” Everyone in the house hates him. He has a cast on his foot that I highly suspect is the result of a desperate ploy to get Ali to feel sorry for him, paying more attention in the process. The last episode was full of drama because Mr. Justin decided to crutch his way down the road a few miles to Ali’s house to surprise her. Once there, he told her all about his “I have Daddy issues” sob story and guaranteed her that all he wants in life is to be a better father than he had. Nothing creepy about that.

Roses: Um, I guess Ali likes assholes who do creeptastic stuff, so that’s a plus for her?
Thorns: Read the first paragraph that I wrote about this guy. Also, it’s of note that when he went gallivanting to Ali’s house (which cut into sweet Hunter’s one-on-one date BTW) he didn’t tell any of the guys. I mean, it’s not like this is a huge, punishable offense but the douche went out of his way to referentially answer people’s questions about his afternoon without really answering them — and then gave the cameras a sideways glance and douchey gloating smile. Also, he’s Canadian.

Best (and Worst) of the Rest:

Jonathan:
The Bachelorette RecapAside from setting off my gaydar like an elementary school fire alarm, Jonathan is so disrespected in the house that the other guys refer to him as “Weatherman.” That’s because he’s a weatherman who uses weather-related metaphors to discuss his time with Ali. In the most recent group date, he cried after having to kiss Ali. Did I mention that he’s totally gay?

Kirk: While filming a scene in the new Barenaked Ladies music video (yes, that was an actual date) Kirk and Ali passionately made out and wrestled on a bed. The scene was just so romantic that they barely noticed the 20 crew people, 6 cameras and director yelling cut. Multiple times.

Craig R.: Easily the ugliest man in the house, I find this one endearing because as a self-proclaimed “professional bullshit detector” (he’s a lawyer), he totally calls out Justin on all of his lying and fake-crying ways.

Kasey: All I know of Kasey is that his Kermit the Frog underwater voice caused my boyfriend and I to laugh uncontrollably for the rest of the episode.

The Real World 13: D.C. started and oh, boy do I feel old.

The cast includes white girl, other white girl, white guy, annoying white guy, fat white girl, black dude hell-bent on shirking his "ghetto" past. So, um, it's kind of like politicians actually moving to Washington except every hot tub party and make-out with a gay dude will be caught on tape.

In the grand tradition of the Real World pattern, this season is going to be force fed drama; it'll be the kind of drivel that producers and producers alone thought up. No real life learning situations (abortion on L.A., transgender communities on Brooklyn or rehab on Hawaii and Hollywood) or legitimate drama borne of pressure-cooker boiling points (racially charged arguments on New York and Back to New York, Brooke's crazy-time on Denver), not even the sexually charged STD-only zone that will surely mark--and mire--my generation (Las Vegas, Denver, Cancun). Nope, it's going to be a San Diego. Or a Chicago. Or a Philidelphia...ugh.

In the first episode we meet the cast; here they are:

ANDREW



Mr. Try Hard. This dude is like that guy who runs around the party wearing a funny hat and pulling down his pants and saying incendiary things for no other reason than to say incendiary things. And to get attention. And to prove that Mommy and Daddy didn't need to love him, he can find love all on his own.

The guy's supposed to be "the funny one" but his jokes are stale and weak. He's aiming for kitsch and falls somewhere between cheese and annoyance. I see in the previews that he falls off of a ledge sometime in the future. That's too bad. Maybe it'll shut him up.

ASHLEY



This is Ashley and she likes to crimp her hair. She also LOVES Barack Obama for seemingly no other reason than it's cool to like Barack Obama. She also likes to argue. She's also from Texas. Now that I'm putting these facts together I've realized that Ashley just wants something to rail against. I wish she would start with her crimper.

CALLIE



Observe: the rare breed in The Real World. The Fat Girl. To be fair, Callie is MUCH more representative of the actual real world where fatties abound and people have imperfections. So, in the vein of being happy that there are actual real people on The Real World, I will not even make fun of her.

EMILY



Emily used to be in a crazy Christian cult which gives her a pretty insane outlook on the world. Since leaving the sect she's experimented with bisexuality and LOVES giant black dudes. She's also not too keen on God. That's all I really know about her. Identifying feature: A "there's a piece of food on your face" mole.

ERIKA



Look at that rocker chick. Look at those earrings and red lipstick and ever-present scarf. And she has tattoos!!! Only legit rocker chicks can get tattoos! There's like a secret handshake you have to know to get into the tattoo parlor. That handshake may be $100 and an hour of your time (as I learned bent over a chair, pants at my knees as I got a giant pointless trampstamp at 19), so I'm growing ever wary about her legitimacy as a rocker chick. She did sing some song on the first day that rhymed and had a terrible trite metaphor in it--it was an original. I think I hate her the most.

JOSH



DOUUUUCCCHHHHHEEE! This guy has a jheri curl AND a fade out. HOW IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE??? His dangling cross earrings remind my of Ricky Vasquez and he walks into the house with a fang necklace and a scarf on. OMGOOSE HE IS A BLOGGER'S DREAM!!! Step down though ladies, he's taken.

MIKE



Can we just discuss those eyebrows. God doesn't make eyebrows look like that, He loves us. So, why would you do that to your face???? Simple rules people, they begin perpendicular to the eye and end at an angle intersecting the edge of your eyeball and nose. It's math, suckers. Now, for the love of all things good and just, stop plucking!!! Mike is bi. Or gay. He's not sure and I don't care but I'm looking forward to the drama.

TY



Oh hey, token minority. How you doin'? Ty's big mark was made on the first day as he argued with Ashley over religion. Everyone knows you don't bring up politics, religion, college sexual history, tipping etiquette or family secrets over dinner. He refers to the neighborhood that he grew up in as "like The Wire". I refer to his typecasting as "totally gratuitous".

Teen Mom: Yay or Nay

I loved 16 and Pregnant.

I loved it not only because I love the Lifetime film of the same name with Kirsten Dunst in her most heart wrenching and overall'd role. I loved 16 and Pregnant because in an age when teenage girls are losing their virginity younger than ever, government programs and loud-mouthed Evangelicals are promulgating dangerous ideas about contraceptive use and teen-pregnancies are on the rise, the show gave MTV viewers (I don't have the exact stats here but I'm assuming that if TRL screaming crowds are any indication, that 15-20 and female is a pretty large cut of the demographic) a realistic look at what could happen if you give it up to Tommy from gym class and he made his pimply spawn grow inside of you.


I loved 16 and Pregnant.

Its follow-up, Teen Mom, is currently airing on the cabeler to astounding success. Its premiere was the highest rated in MTV history before the Jersey Shore juggernaut came along and it's been doing well ever since. So, am I going to show the same love for this show as I did the first?

Well, the answer is difficult. The show shares many of the same elements that I enjoyed so much in the first series. It is a stark, realistic look at the differing experiences of teenagers who get pregnant. I still appreciate the concern for realism with which the network is handling the situation. That celebrity pregnancies have glamorized having a baby is of no question. People in Middle America can't look like Heidi Klum or Nicole Richie three weeks after they pop a nine-pounder out because they don't have personal trainers, nutritionists or the benefit of tummy tucks following pre-scheduled Cesarean Sections. And, yes, that does happen. The business of birthing a baby is booming and if the aughts have taught us anything, it's that teenagers are a monstrous horde of consumers, ripe for the pop-culturally fuelled propaganda picking. So, seeing these formerly pert teens stay fat after baby or have trouble dating cute boys or having to watch as their friends get to be kids and they get to take care of them is a nice counter-point to the US Weekly element of it all.



But in that reality is the nasty documentation of kids caring for kids. What often psychologically accompanies teen pregnancies is anger, resentment and regret--perfectly reasonable emotions in the face of a volatile life event. But these emotions are rarely discussed and NEVER condoned in our society. It doesn't matter how many interviews Brooke Shields does about post-partum depression or how many times Jen Aniston says that she's not looking to have kids, women are seen as genetically predestined Mother Madonnas. Their maternal instincts are all-encompassing, ever-present and always, always, first priority. To deviate from this ideal is to become a threat to the very fabric of our culture--mothers are to be unfailingly Mothers or they are deemed a failure. As caregivers. As women. As people.

These girls are teenagers too, and as much as we give them all too lateral allowances and teach them to seek an independent voice and expect them to act as "young adults" they are biologically still children; children deal with emotions differently than us adult folk. So a feeling of despair, resentment or regret that might lead an adult to express their emotions in a constructive manner often lead teenagers to lash out erratically. In my day I nearly broke a door off its hinges by slamming it. "I hate you! I wish I were never born!" These outbursts were present in 16 and Pregnant, usually borne of one of my (admittedly) lesser-loved cast members, written off as immature or bratty. But they were always forgiven. Forgiven because these were kids after all, and the gravity of the situation was about the size of a fucking mountain on their shoulders, about the size that their bellies were growing to be. I gave them a pass but I gave it to them with expiration date. Nine months. They were allowed to be bratty and bullish and downright babies until their own came. Then, they were magically expected to learn how to juggle it all, to cast aside doubts and depression and to rise above the statistics. Shouldn't their maternal love and instincts alone push them to rise above it all? Don't we all expect this of our mothers?

In Teen Mom we see the nasty truth. We open the gift that we have been given with a perfectly tied bow and watch uncomfortably as real life unfolds before us. These girls are still girls. They are often petulant and selfish and they make the sorts of decisions that remind you of your own high school experience, embarrassing, ill informed, awkward. And that's all good and fine when I'm watching NYC Prep or Laguna Beach and the biggest consequence at hand is someone being cast aside from one private school only to be picked up by another. But now there are babies. And they're so perfect. As the couplings begin to disintegrate, the grammar school constructed communities abandon the girls, the slow and deep-setting realization that "the rest of your life" is at least in part spelled out before them, the juxtaposition of the unaffected, innocent children and their trial-by-fire weary parents (children as well) is a jarring--and saddening--reminder that maturity does not have a due date. Motherhood is not inherent. Sometimes reality television really is reality and perhaps, the lives affected positively by the program will never outweigh the documented sadness of these babies' earlier months, and the children who are raising them. Knowing that I control the replay button on my own less-than-forgiving childhood, and that I am the only one who can watch, is sometimes the most abundant solace I have.

So, is it all a wash? Is Teen Mom more potentially damaging than it is helpful? Is my own culturally imbued notion of femininity and motherhood clouding my entertainment value and ultimately, judgment of these girls? Perhaps. But perhaps this is but a temporary inhibition. Life's most frustrating and judgment-inducing situations often give rise to larger learning moments; the more we expose ourselves to humanity, in all of its facets, the more that we learn about each other and ourselves. Sure, I feel like punching these kids in the face sometimes for choosing going out over their kid one night or fighting with their baby daddy while the baby is in the room, but I'm also beginning to see their plight as people not instead of, not even as well as, but something akin to parallel to their roles as parents.

Take for instance Amber. Amber of my-boyfriend-bought-me-a-$20-engagement-ring-from-Walmart-and-then-purchased-his-fat-ass-a-Playstation3 fame was one of my least favorite segments on 16 and Pregnant. Whiney and curt, she was exactly the sort of teenaged girl who made me think to myself, "In order to punish me for the wrongs I have committed, God will surely smite me with the likes of a girl like this living in my household and looking vaguely like me." And since she's had the baby, she's still one of those girls. No miracle of motherly grace has been bestowed upon her. Amber’s storyline follows her struggle to obtain a GED (a heartbreaking scene in which she is informed that the train for High School Diploma Land has come and gone offers a heavy dose of the aforementioned reality), be a full-time stay-at-home Mom, repair her relationship with breadwinning but absent (and absent-minded) doof/baby-daddy Gary, and wrestle with severe depression.



That's right, folks. The girl done got depressed. In one scene that I would typically deem put-on and affected, the cameraman holds the shot as Amber and her baby gaze longingly out the window of their duplex rental, placing hand to glass in a feeble attempt to regain a piece of the outside world. Suddenly all temper tantrums are forgiven. All of the counter-productive negativity is washed away. Even the questionable fights she has had with Gary (in the presence of her child) are somehow less tantamount. Because in this moment she's a human being. And a woman. And a child. And a human. In this moment the reality of her roles, and her world, and my reinterpretation of them have converged to demonstrate the expansion of my own. In this moment I am making my own world bigger; hopefully that's a good enough end game for these kids.

All of These Things Look Exactly Like the Others?

It can't just be me, can it? Here's a little empirical evidence that these four brunette beauties look waaaaaay too much alike.

(from left: Leighton Meester, Minka Kelly, Mila Kunis, Rachel Bilson)

Television watchers should be familiar with all of these lovely ladies. Leighton is deliciously divalicious Blair on Gossip Girl, Minka plays sweet Lyla on Friday Night Lights, Mila ditzed the screens up as Jackie on That 70's Show and Rachel was Seth Cohen's main-squeeze Summer on The O.C. But starring on the small screen isn't the only thing that these chickies have in common. They all look like cousins. Or sisters. Or THE SAME FREAKING PERSON.

So much so, in fact, that Leighton and Minka are starring in a new film The Roommate, in which they portray a college-aged Single White Female. See? Even Hollywood producers see it. But even in this example, there's a glaring fact. In the movie, Leighton's character starts acting all Jennifer Jason Leigh on Minka's ass. You know, doing her makeup the same. Making the same pouty faces. Wearing her hair the same. The same thing has happened with these girls.

Leighton's actually a blonde:

Rachel's more hipster than prep-scene:

And Mila's look is dependent upon make-up and face-making:

Still though, there's always this:

All Aboard the Hot Mess Train!

Oh, shiz. New Bad Girls Club. The season premiered this week and I was working but it was on one of the televisions and I witnessed an awesome clip of a fight in the driveway. After this preview, I am officially hooked.