Dead Meet Mr. Mom
While out to eat the other day, I saw something disturbing in the restaurant. It had nothing to severed appendages turning up in thick broths, but it was almost disgusting. A mom and dad walked into the restaurant with their children. Dad was carrying their youngest in a baby carrier. I’m guessing the youngest was still a newborn and one or both parents were still on maternity leave since this was a weekday lunch and neither appeared to have just left work. The father, toting the baby and looking less than thrilled about it, had thrown all dignity out the window by wearing a pink polo shirt. I mean pink, not something with pink highlights or pink stripes on an otherwise manly color, but straight, flat, non-faded “I intended to look this way” pink. He might as well have taken a black magic marker and written “whipped” across the front.
Stereotypes are awful, but you need to live with them while knowing which ones you can fight. To me, a guy, especially a dad, wearing a pink shirt is not a stereotype to fight. It sends the message “I’m being more feminine so I can better interact with my kids,” and that’s what disgusts me. You can be a guy and interact with your kids.
This stereotype that men do the outside work while women take care of the kids is one that I feel is worth fighting, probably because I’m a man who fights it everyday. That’s why I subjected myself to the new show “Meet Mr. Mom.” If you’re unfamiliar with it, it’s a new reality show where the mothers of two families go on vacation, leaving the fathers free to duel to the death with large, blunt objects for a chance to meet Michael Keaton, the star of 1983’s “Mr. Mom.” Sorry, I just inserted the premise for an entertaining and original show instead of the actual premise, which is loathsome and bizarrely timed to capitalize on the success of a movie from two decades ago. The real premise is two mothers go on vacation, leaving the fathers in charge of the house and kids, and hilarity ensues. The fathers compete against each other in running the house, with the winner receiving, I don’t know, a fighter jet or something.
The underlying assumption disgusts me most about the show, that the mom stays home with the kids while the dad earns the outside income. It sets up the father to be a buffoon trying to do mom’s job. It also says that “mom’s job” is more important than “dad’s job,” that the house falls apart without mom around to keep order, but apparently the family will survive without dad’s income. Why exactly does mom enjoy a stay at a luxurious resort while dad stays home alone, working his butt off while probably using vacation time from work? The show could partially solve both problems if the stay-at-home mom would do the dad’s job for a week. I bet that would be funny. Personally, I’d probably make all sorts of hilarious mistakes trying to do my wife’s job. (“Palpitate? I thought you said intubate! D’oh!”)
I started watching about 10 minutes into Tuesday’s episode. After introducing the families and the show’s setup with hilarious results, it did what any good reality show does and introduced a heavily contrived situation for the contestants to compete in. On this episode, the show cleaned every bit of food and cooking equipment out of each family’s kitchen, and gave them a strict time limit (something like 5 hours, I missed the exact time) to restock the kitchen and cook an ethnic meal for a themed dinner party that night for three surprise guests (later revealed to be mom’s friends).
Surprisingly, the dads struggled with the task. I’m sure any mom could easily restock a kitchen and cook a major meal on five hours notice. I’d have more sympathy for the dads if they would have chosen a simple ethnicity, like Mexican (tacos, a can of refried beans, some vanilla pudding and call it “flan”) or Italian (spaghetti, sauce, garlic bread, some ice cream and call it “gelato”) instead of the horribly complicated ethnicity they chose (Irish? Really? You hear “ethnic meal” and the first nationality to pop in your head is Irish?). Nevertheless, having one chance to go to the department store for all the pots, pans, plates, and utensils you’ll need, and then having one chance to go to the grocery store for all the ingredients you’ll need is a tough job. Of course the degree of difficulty didn’t stop the show from critiquing the dads as they shopped. Time management, parenting, and cooperation were all fair game, as if I or any mom wouldn’t say “this is what we’re getting, now sit down and shut up” if we were charged with a similar task without the cameras rolling.
The shopping excursion produced the most vomit-inducing aspect of the show for me from a production standpoint: Product placements a plenty. Everything was a product placement when they shopped, the vehicle they drove, the store they visited, the items they bought, the items they didn’t buy but looked at, possibly because a producer told them to look at it for the camera. One of the dads was even smart enough to wear a shirt emblazoned with his company’s logo, though he wasn’t smart enough to find a logo big enough to see on television.
The meal went about as well as the shopping trip, with the kids criticizing dad’s cooking. “It’s gross” is one comment I remember about food that didn’t look so bad to me.* I’d think that a show masquerading as a “family show” would demonstrate some better manners from the children, though in the kids’ defense, I’m sure the producers were encouraging them to make wacky comments for hilarity’s sake.
That’s all I saw of the show. After about 15 minutes, Abbie started whining, so I had to ironically take care of her, abandoning all television for the rest of the night. Where’s my luxury resort vacation?
* In all fairness I did just eat some cheese from a moldy block, not that the piece I ate had mold, at least no mold that I could see.
Stereotypes are awful, but you need to live with them while knowing which ones you can fight. To me, a guy, especially a dad, wearing a pink shirt is not a stereotype to fight. It sends the message “I’m being more feminine so I can better interact with my kids,” and that’s what disgusts me. You can be a guy and interact with your kids.
This stereotype that men do the outside work while women take care of the kids is one that I feel is worth fighting, probably because I’m a man who fights it everyday. That’s why I subjected myself to the new show “Meet Mr. Mom.” If you’re unfamiliar with it, it’s a new reality show where the mothers of two families go on vacation, leaving the fathers free to duel to the death with large, blunt objects for a chance to meet Michael Keaton, the star of 1983’s “Mr. Mom.” Sorry, I just inserted the premise for an entertaining and original show instead of the actual premise, which is loathsome and bizarrely timed to capitalize on the success of a movie from two decades ago. The real premise is two mothers go on vacation, leaving the fathers in charge of the house and kids, and hilarity ensues. The fathers compete against each other in running the house, with the winner receiving, I don’t know, a fighter jet or something.
The underlying assumption disgusts me most about the show, that the mom stays home with the kids while the dad earns the outside income. It sets up the father to be a buffoon trying to do mom’s job. It also says that “mom’s job” is more important than “dad’s job,” that the house falls apart without mom around to keep order, but apparently the family will survive without dad’s income. Why exactly does mom enjoy a stay at a luxurious resort while dad stays home alone, working his butt off while probably using vacation time from work? The show could partially solve both problems if the stay-at-home mom would do the dad’s job for a week. I bet that would be funny. Personally, I’d probably make all sorts of hilarious mistakes trying to do my wife’s job. (“Palpitate? I thought you said intubate! D’oh!”)
I started watching about 10 minutes into Tuesday’s episode. After introducing the families and the show’s setup with hilarious results, it did what any good reality show does and introduced a heavily contrived situation for the contestants to compete in. On this episode, the show cleaned every bit of food and cooking equipment out of each family’s kitchen, and gave them a strict time limit (something like 5 hours, I missed the exact time) to restock the kitchen and cook an ethnic meal for a themed dinner party that night for three surprise guests (later revealed to be mom’s friends).
Surprisingly, the dads struggled with the task. I’m sure any mom could easily restock a kitchen and cook a major meal on five hours notice. I’d have more sympathy for the dads if they would have chosen a simple ethnicity, like Mexican (tacos, a can of refried beans, some vanilla pudding and call it “flan”) or Italian (spaghetti, sauce, garlic bread, some ice cream and call it “gelato”) instead of the horribly complicated ethnicity they chose (Irish? Really? You hear “ethnic meal” and the first nationality to pop in your head is Irish?). Nevertheless, having one chance to go to the department store for all the pots, pans, plates, and utensils you’ll need, and then having one chance to go to the grocery store for all the ingredients you’ll need is a tough job. Of course the degree of difficulty didn’t stop the show from critiquing the dads as they shopped. Time management, parenting, and cooperation were all fair game, as if I or any mom wouldn’t say “this is what we’re getting, now sit down and shut up” if we were charged with a similar task without the cameras rolling.
The shopping excursion produced the most vomit-inducing aspect of the show for me from a production standpoint: Product placements a plenty. Everything was a product placement when they shopped, the vehicle they drove, the store they visited, the items they bought, the items they didn’t buy but looked at, possibly because a producer told them to look at it for the camera. One of the dads was even smart enough to wear a shirt emblazoned with his company’s logo, though he wasn’t smart enough to find a logo big enough to see on television.
The meal went about as well as the shopping trip, with the kids criticizing dad’s cooking. “It’s gross” is one comment I remember about food that didn’t look so bad to me.* I’d think that a show masquerading as a “family show” would demonstrate some better manners from the children, though in the kids’ defense, I’m sure the producers were encouraging them to make wacky comments for hilarity’s sake.
That’s all I saw of the show. After about 15 minutes, Abbie started whining, so I had to ironically take care of her, abandoning all television for the rest of the night. Where’s my luxury resort vacation?
* In all fairness I did just eat some cheese from a moldy block, not that the piece I ate had mold, at least no mold that I could see.
posted by Matt at
9:39 PM
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