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Blogging: Almost as good as using your grandmama's cassette recorder and pretending to be a talk show host.

Saturday, September 29, 2012

In Defense of Honey Boo Boo

This is not an article I'd have predicted writing. I'm not a fan of reality TV, much less the variety that exploits the subjects' apparent stupidity. Okay, I guess that's pretty much all of it.

But I'm riled, and I don't rile easily, unless you are a bank or male chauvinist.

Now, I don't care if you watch Here Comes Honey Boo Boo; in fact, I will probably have more respect for you if you don't. I hadn't watched more than ten minutes of it myself before this week, and that was by accident. I swear.

But if you're going to criticize, and there's plenty of ammunition, try not to rely on blatant prejudices when you do. Or at least be honest about them.

Let me start by admitting this is entertainment so lowbrow that if you look around you're liable to see belly button lint. Would-be child beauty queen Honey Boo Boo was born into a family about as country as they come. Other than the fact they were blessed with a child who has stage presence and not a stitch of self-consciousness, this appears to be the main attraction. I can only imagine that for most Americans the spectacle of the Boo Boos four-wheeling through the mud or watching their child bob for pigs' feet is a homegrown National Geographic moment, not much different from watching an indigenous tribe insert bones in their children's noses during a coming-of-age ceremony.

It was not until I began seeing the show's parents being excoriated for their treatment of their children, in some cases labeled outright child abusers, that my curiosity was truly piqued. And then somebody went and made fun of their accents.

Most Southerners, no matter their degree of accent, are keenly aware of its effect on non-Southerners. Not all accents are treated equally, either. Nearly any Southern accent will get you pegged as falling in the lower range of the intelligence quotient, but a rural accent more than 100 miles from a coastline is especially damning. The producers have capitalized on this, one hopes for the sake of humor, by providing subtitles for the show as if the Boo Boos were speaking Pennsylvania Dutch.

I know this because the insult leveled at my Southern cohorts forced me to watch no fewer than three episodes to determine if the Boo Boos were the stupid, horrible, consumerist child abusers they'd been labeled.

I assume the suggestion that the Boo Boo children be taken into protective custody stems from the fact that the parents put makeup on their child and allow her to compete in beauty pageants. (Or perhaps that they have a pregnant teenager, because we all know that hardly happens to anyone.) I'm not a fan of parading pre-school children across stage in heels and enough hairspray to trigger early-onset puberty, either. But is it abuse? In two hours of footage, I never saw Honey Boo Boo's mother scream at her for a mistake or express disappointment when the child didn't win. She consoled her when she lost and praised her performance. She never pressured her child to compete at all, stating she'd be just as supportive of any other activity her daughter chose.

What I particularly noticed is how much time these parents spend engaged with their children overall. No, they are not reading Shakespeare while listening to classical music, but they are having fun. They seem to be loving and caring parents who are also not afraid to tell their children no--no, you cannot yell "Bingo" if you don't have Bingo; no, you cannot eat cheese puffs off the floor; no, you cannot swim in the lake with the warning sign about the flesh-eating bacteria just because everybody else is. Oh, wait, Mama didn't actually keep them from eating the cheese puffs off the floor. Call the Department of Social Services!

Of course, people can treat their children well and still be horrible, right? Horrible people who decorate their house for Christmas in July to collect donated food for the needy? Right?

Granted, charitable activity does not protect people from being stupid. Sugar Bear may not the sharpest tool in the shed, or he may be just worn out from being outnumbered by all the women in the house. Still, you have to have a little admiration for a man who has to ask which Santa suit he ought to wear.

I'm more inclined to believe, though, that what most people really mean is that they sound stupid. Chances are, they're at least smart enough to know they're being made fun of. Like I said to my bestest friend, Woo Woo Kumquat, even if the Boo Boos are stupid, they are probably letting us laugh at them all the way to the bank, while we enter our initals in the Honey Boo Boo Name Generator.

Consumerist? Well, perhaps it is living a little high off the hog to have two Santa suits. Based on the comments I've seen in the blogosphere, however, this is really code for fat. The true sore point seems to be that they are completely unapologetic about it. Even trying to diet as a family will not absolve them of refusing to show sufficient shame for being overweight.

For the sake of argument, though, let's pretend that we are criticizing an obsession with material possessions. Ultimately, you must judge a tree by its fruit. Honey Boo Boo herself enjoys being the center of attention, and you might suspect she's a little spoiled. She cries when she loses. She is six, after all.

And yet. Her birthday party was a telling moment. Her sisters had scrambled to find presents and ended up wrapping items from the kitchen pantry. Honey Boo Boo seems just as thrilled to open a box of cereal and a gallon jug of hot sauce as anything else. She proclaims that she loved her party and that she loved the hot sauce from her sister "because it came from the heart." She could certainly teach a lesson to the scores of twenty-somethings who tweeted intentions of violence toward their parents last Christmas because they didn't get iPads.

Will I watch again? Probably not. Should you? I'd advise against it. But if you've passed judgment on these parents, ask yourself if your own children would show that kind of gratitude. The Boo Boos don't live like most of us, we'd like to think (probably mistakenly) they are fatter than most of us, and they certainly don't talk like most of us. Whether you admit it or not, that's what you really object to.