The Aerie
I'm not a dwarf who's looking for love. And I'm not a single person seeking love from a field of twenty candidates, half of whom are secretly gay. So I really thought I was safe from Fox.
Of course, nobody is safe from Fox. Because, while I'm not a female whose had too much work done, I am a reunited adoptee. So tonight, I'm watching "Who's Your Daddy?"
Now, it started off with three strikes against it. First, it's on Fox. Second, it's named after an expression for exuberant sex popularized by Amanda Peet in the awful film "Whipped." And third, the woman contestant, "TJ," looks, well, just terrible - too much make up, too much hair treatment, too much everything. She has the right to look however she looks, but I guess I'd have an easier time taking her seriously if she didn't look like a washed-up C-list actress. Of course, I suppose that washed-up C-list actresses have birthfathers too, so I shouldn't judge.
2005-01-05: I added the links above after the fact - yes, believe it or not the woman I felt bad about labelling as a washed-up C-list actress is in fact a washed-up C-list actress.
But I'm watching, I'm having to watch. How can I not watch this horrorshow?
There are elements that resonate with my own experience. When TJ first met the eight men who might be her father she seemed overwhelmed by the whole experience - the TV production, the apparent surprise at the structure of the show, etc. But when she eliminated the group from eight to four men, then I got the sense that it hit her: she'd met her father, she'd evaluated him, talked to him, and correctly selected him into a group of four. I could tell he'd suddenly become real to her.
And I could understand the searching, the process of peering into the faces of the potential birthfather's and saying, "Is it you? Do you look like me? Are those my eyes? My teeth?" That's familiar.
The rest of it is torturous. I know she agreed to this nonsense, but it seems wrong to put a person through this. If you know which man is her father... tell her! Don't screw around!
But in a way it reflects what the nation does with the whole issue. Everybody is allowed to know who the birthparents are, except the adoptee. The agency knows. I sat there with my caseworker on the other side of the phone, playing a game just like this one. I remember asking, "Will you tell me the first initial of her first name? No? The SECOND character of her first name? No." I wrote out forty questions and grilled the caseworker on each one, and got nothing. Nothing. Like TJ on this program, the agency played games with me. The caseworker refused me while staring right at the answers I was looking for.
And people wonder why I'm furious.
Fortunately I can do something with that anger. The Minnesota Council for Adoption Reform (MCAR) is organizing legislation in Minnesota this year, laws that will hopefully provide unrestricted access to their birth records for adult adoptees.
I've been trying to send letters to the Star Tribune about this issue, but so far they've failed to print any of them. I guess I'll just keep trying.
Meanwhile the show has ended, and yes, she was able to figure out which of the eight men was her father. It was interesting to see her confidence increase as she went along - she was completely certain by the time she made the final selection. They brought out his daughters, and also her birthmother. It was very emotional, as planned.
Of course, no mention whatsoever was made of the adoptive parents, which was just plain wrong.
And the money? The hostess mentioned that she'd won $100,000 and TJ didn't seem to care.
Maybe I'm a bigot - maybe looking like a washed-up C-list actress, and being foolish enough to put your life on prime time TV like this, maybe that doesn't mean you don't know what's important in the end.
Posted by Albatross at January 3, 2005 9:37 PM