Posted by Elizabeth

Over the past six months, my Facebook status updates have looked something like this:

“Elizabeth is distressed that Wife Swap has disappeared from Lifetime’s lunch hour line-up.”
“Elizabeth has finally found an antidote to watching Wife Swap at lunch: a family who only eats raw meat (including chicken). Insert stomach-turning here.”
“Elizabeth didn’t know that ‘vendettaly’ was a word.  But according to Wife Swap it is.”

Every weekday afternoon, I settle onto the sofa with my lunch and watch Wife Swap reruns. For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of watching, Wife Swap is a hilarious trashy reality television program revolving around two diabolically different wives switching households for two weeks, where they are given an opportunity to foist their values and beliefs upon another family.  That’s not how the network would describe the show, but it’s pretty accurate.  Sometimes I am completely enthralled and, despite my best intentions to snap off the television after I’ve finished my BLT, watch an entire episode (I’m not particularly proud of myself on these days).  Other times I can’t stomach more than a snippet of the episode, like the time the family who ate raw meat, with very ragged teeth, was featured (not good lunch-time fare, let me assure you).  And I can’t stand watching more than a few minutes of any episode that features high-decibel yelling.  There is a lot of yelling on Wife Swap.

After months of watching my Facebook status updates feature Wife Swap, and my own vow on this very blog to stop frittering away my lunch hour on the show, my friend, Heidi, finally asked, “Why do you love Wife Swap so much?”  The truth is I don’t love Wife Swap so much as I have a grotesque fascination with the program, not unlike watching a train wreck and being unable to divert your eyes.  For somebody whose pastimes include studying change in everyday life, it’s an excellent case study.  The formula for the program dictates that two opposing forces be thrown together.  The Cajun wife and the ballet dancer.  The evangelical Christian and the Rastafarian.  The mom who homeschools and the elementary school teacher.  The multimillionaire and the rural homesteader.  The NRA enthusiast and the pacifist.  The hunter and the vegetarian.  The BMX racer who cut down all the trees in her backyard to create a track and the environmentalist.  The risk-taking scientist and the safety-obsessed family (the former The Heene Family, as you may have heard, of recent “Balloon Boy” fame).

Of course the producers pick the most extreme examples that will make the best television, but what fascinates me is that, as different as the families are, nearly every episode boils down to this:  the controlling/structured/mean mom versus the free-spirited/disorganized/fun mom.  Through this one-dimensional definition, schedules and order become synonymous with being a kill-joy, and a lack of schedules equates with pure joie de vivre.  In other words, it’s the strictest definitions of our blog personas, the change-a-holic and the change-a-phobe.  Within the confines of the show, there is no room for a wife/mother/woman to be both organized and fun.  I know such a balanced view wouldn’t make compelling television, but I can’t help but wonder what stereotypes we wish to buy into and see reinforced as a culture?  Because I can assure you that viewers love these cardboard cut-outs.

At the beginning of each episode, the wives discuss their motivation for appearing on Wife Swap. On rare occasions the woman will state that she is interested in learning something new from her swap family, but typically she will discuss her desire to bring her way of life to her new family.  It’s not Wife Swap so much as it is Life Swap.  In these episodes, change doesn’t become both parties moving towards the middle so much as it becomes a battle of wills.  An episode is a sixty-minute exercise in the wife trying to convince her swap family that she knows what’s best for them.  And isn’t that so often the case when it comes to change?  We want to prescribe what we think is right rather than listen and learn.  Wife Swap isn’t a show about change so much as it’s a show about persuasion.  If I have learned anything from my hours of Wife Swap viewing, it’s that the most important ingredient for change is listening, something that doesn’t come naturally to most of us.  If we wish to invite change into our lives, as so many of us do, we would be wise to open our ears, for life is speaking to us all the time.

At the end of each episode, when the two couples are reunited, they sit down face-to-face for a post-mortem.  More times than not these sessions devolve into screaming matches laced with vitriol, and when the producer wants to bring them back to equilibrium (after providing ample shouting time to boost ratings), she does so by asking, “What did you learn from this experience?”  A lull usually falls over the room as the couples meekly offer up a random tidbit or two, which usually boils down to this:  I learned that I love my way of being in the world.  It’s obvious they didn’t learn a thing.

Note: Today’s image was provided by LiP Reader and Contributor, Mary, which prompted me to write this post.