The Dark Side of the Toorak Mummies

An Arts degree can do terrible things to a person. With only 12 hours of classes a week, I spend more time than is right feeling like I'm on holidays. This has advantages: I generally wake up at noon (except for my sole 11am start), have four days to make money like a mad woman and thus expand my DVD collection, and I have a lot more scope than the average person to schedule a day of nothingness.
But there is a downfall. When having so few real commitments, one can fall into the habit of watching daytime television.

It is tragic indeed, but at least I can say that I occasionally learn something.
From Oprah Winfrey and her guest Dr. Mehmet Oz, I learnt that walnuts contain an appetite suppressant, I should eat more tomatoes and that my waist size is well within the healthy limits.
Trading Spouses has really given me insight into the huge class and race divisions present in North America.
Ready Steady Cook has taught me not to be afraid of fennel and to embrace zucchini flowers.

One show I have learnt nothing from whatsoever is The Catch-Up. Oh, correction - it may just have taught my brain how to transform itself into a noxious oozing goo. Australia has a bad habit of taking successful US and creating an "Australian version" that is rejected by the public in two minutes flat. It happened disastrously with Australian Queer Eye and Australian What Not To Wear... both cringeworthy endeavours.



So The Catch-Up is being positioned as something like The View (that Rosie O'Donnell show), with less spice. The women involved are Libbi Gorr, Mary Moody, Zoe Sheridan and Lisa Oldfield. Their claims to fame? A writer/comedienne, a journalist, a radio presenter and *cough* the wife of the politician who slept with Pauline Hanson. The producers of this show are obviously trying to position these women as 'everywoman'; representing different age groups, different hair colours, different favourite designers, different husbands, different shoe sizes.. oh the depth! So I decided we could give them Spice Girls-esque names:
Libbi Gorr aka Substance Spice: This woman is actually interesting. Back in the 90's she was working with Magda Szubanski on comic endeavours and had us all laughing with her character 'Elle McFeast'. She is funny, she is talented, she is very, very smart. Unfortunately she is also Australia's Kirsty Alley replacement as the face of Jenny Craig, which almost cancels out all the positive things about her. Libbi Gore would be the saving grace of this show, but unfortunately even she can't stand up to the utter rubbish spouted by the others at every available opportunity.

Mary Moody aka Dried-Up Prune Spice: The owner of outdated prejudices, unpopular and unconsidered opinions, and the worst of all - a wardrobe more suited to a firm-breasted 20 year old. Mary reminds me of a horrible assistant principal I had in high school - sweet mannered but ineffectual, married to convention and protocol, narrow-minded and very comfortable in her social strata. Not one to push boundaries or question unfair procedures. She would do nicely as a nosy but caring next door neighbour, but she must do this first: stop, please, stop exposing that grandmotherly bosom on national television. It's indecent.


Zoe Sheridan aka Actually a Baby Spice: Admittedly, she is quite a bit older than me, but it doesn't show. She seems like the type to fail an 8th grade reading test. I'm not quite sure what function she fulfils - in one of my favourite The Catch-Up moments she offered the following line to man grieving over the loss of his young daughter - "Let's face it, when we die we're just worm food anyway.." Zero tact, even less brain power. Her list of former credits show that she has a talent in hosting countdown shows on radio. What a mind, what a mind.

Lisa Oldfield aka Bland/Real(?) Spice: Once again, I am at a loss as to why this woman is included in the line-up. Her 'fame' stems from the fact that her husband had a relationship with Pauline Hanson in her heyday, a fact that he vehemently denies. The others tout trumped up biographies, labelling themselves 'adventure, mother, writer, director' et cetera. But Lisa has no such trimmings, she even lists her HSC score and her part-time job as the most defining aspects of her personality. Perhaps this isn't blandness, it could be honesty. She also mentions her battles with facial cancer and depression. Unfortunately, any integrity or depth this woman possesses is lost on the excruciating show content.

These woman are positioned for us to accept them as we accept our sister, our best friend, our mother, our daughter, et cetera - the show is based on a premise of female solidarity that is well and truly alive in Western culture. But it falls so far short.
Every female group, whether bound by blood or friendship, is intrinsically different from the next. These differences stem from a million different areas - the dynamics of personalities within the group, socio-economic grouping, upbringing, education, political affiliation, similarity of ambitions or direction, et cetera. As an example, I'll use a female group I am part of.

A sort of variant on the 'Ya-Ya' sisterhood has managed to spring up on my Mother's side of the family. My Aunt Antoinette heads this league, along with another Aunt and her best friend. There are rules, a hierarchy, shared interests, commonality of upbringing circumstances, a mixture of young and old, those who are related and those who are friends. It's great fun; we sit around a couple of times a year, drinking tea, doing each other's nails, gossiping dreadfully and eating enough chocolate, cream puffs, muffins, doughnuts and cookies to solve third world hunger. We also get down to the secret sharing - the cement of this sisterhood.

The Catch-Up is trying, unsuccessfully, to mimic this organic bonding of sisterhood. But by trying to appeal to every woman, they effectively lose every woman - the sisterly group scenario simply doesn't gel on television, but even if it did, it would fail to work unless it entertained some sense of exclusivity.

While researching the show so I could write about it, I chanced upon an article in The Age written along a similar vein. Marieke Hardy is much less scathing but much funnier than I, so check it out.

There are so many things wrong with the show, I don't know where to begin. So I'll start with the website. I hadn't previously seen this, but it opens up a whole new can of vapidity.

These, according to the website, are the 'hot topics' that women want to know about and discuss:
- Measuring Success: Do Diets Really Work?
- Disciplining Difficult Teens: Is Tough Love the Answer?
- Many people use their phones as an address book, without writing down contact details elsewhere. But what happens when you lose your mobile phone?
- Should Australia deny entry to all HIV-positive immigrants? (sadly enough, the poll stands at 85% for 'yes')
- How to discuss embarrassing problems with your doctor.

Wow. I know that these are really the foremost things on my mind.

There is also the absolute killer column on their website called Sexless in the Suburbs, waxing lyrical about the joys of both sex and parenthood. Excusez-moi? Do my ears deceive me? Apart from the fact that one leads to the other, those two tend to be mutually exclusive - even the title of the column alludes to that. The current topic being addressed by the column is "what should be in the Sex and the City movie?". I will admit it - I am VERY interested in that.
But the scenarios that Ms Belinda Cole (who?) comes up with are very frightening.

"Now I have two kids and live in the suburbs myself, I have to wonder; how are Carrie and her skinny friends going to stay relevant in the planned movie version of the series?" Unfortunately for you, Ms Cole, staying relevant does not mean staying relevant to you. Ultimately it wasn't the aim of the SATC girls to get married and have babies - some did, but they all wished simply to find the perfect man and have a relationship that worked. You may have chosen to live in the suburbs and have babies, but for every 'you' who threw it away, there are a hundred girls waiting in the wings hungry for everything those girls stood for. I guess I'm one of those hungry girls. Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda are incredibly relevant to us.

Sidenote: Writing that just reminded me of a Simpsons episode where Patty and Selma sat down to watch 'Nookie in New York', a parody of SATC. They describe it as "four single girls who act like gay men", and later sigh contentedly and say, "It's so like our lives!"

Ms Cole probably did believe whole-heartedly that SATC was just like her life before she 'grew up'. But now her priorities have changed:

[I would like to see] Carrie finally discovers that happiness does not come from
the man she has, the friends she has, or even from a pair of extremely expensive
shoes but from the look in her children’s eyes when they are laughing. ..Sex
& the City gave single, independently-minded women, sassy role models and
hallelujah to that but I wonder if anyone will ever do the same for us mums...
If Carrie does decide to settle down, I wish her the best of luck. I hope she
finds contentment and happiness and realizes that motherhood can actually make
you fiercer, sharper and even, funnier.

Cole has hit the nail on the head for me and doesn't even realise it. The SATC girls are role models for independently-minded, single, sassy women - she may have formerly belonged to that group, but she has obviously shirked it now. Why should Carrie then do the same? She has ups and downs during the show, but ultimately she seems happy with her life - there is no need for her to get married or have children to be happy. Independence can be just as rewarding as the husband, kids, dog and picket fence - something that a lot of gushing 'yummy mummies' are very scared to admit.






Erk. I'm spent. This rant is partly brought on by appalling daytime tv, but exasperated by the fact that I will be working at a baby goods store in about a week, surrounded by the exact types that I have grown to detest so much. Wish me luck. No, wish me survival.