Weigh In: The Duggars

I hate to be incendiary, it’s truly not my bag, but that being said I’m going to immediately blow up my own spot and talk about religion, sex, our bodies and rights that pertain to them. BECAUSE APPARENTLY I LIKE TO MAKE MYSELF MISERABLE.

While I love the medium, it’s safe to say that TV can be pretty gross. Shows where we can watch the morbidly obese struggle with their lives in a halfway house or seasons dedicated to watching former child stars implode may be riveting – but it’s riveting like a car crash. There’s clearly a market it for it, and it’s not like shadenfruede is a new concept, but some of these rankle me on a much deeper level – and this is coming from a person who loves TV. If TV were bread, I’d gladly be the meat in its sandwich. Boom.

Shows like, I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant, for example. Having told you its title, I shouldn’t have to tell you what it’s about. (Hint: dramatizations of ladies who give birth after not knowing….they were pregnant.) In addition to be, uh, kinda boring, seriously, the show should just be titled “Why American Sex-Ed Is In Need of Reform.” Frankly, if this is happening often enough that there can be a show with multiple episodes – let alone seasons – we need to be better educating young women. Period. Which was accidentally a play on words. About menses.

Every woman should be entitled to a full education about her body, and a full right to decision making regarding said body.

That’s why I’m conflicted about the Duggars. I mean, it’s easy – SO EASY – to be all, “AHHHH Scary Christian Soldiers! Baby making factories! Brain Washing! Not Healthy!” Because – and I’ll be honest – I’ve said the same things myself, but you can’t say Dowager Mother Duggar didn’t receive a full education about sexual health. In fact, part of the reason they’ve gone down the road they’ve traversed is because after being on birth control for so long, and then going off and having difficult conceiving, Mama Duggar swore to keep all children conceived from her on out.

So she was at one point educated about her sexual health – but was it a good education? It seems like it must have been incomplete at best.

This is on my mind because the Duggar’s eldest son Josh (who,  man. has gotten portly. That was mean. I am portly myself, such is life. But seriously, he was a fox for a while – brother could convert me, ya heard?) and his wife Anna have welcomed their second child into the world.

This baby’s robust and healthy appearance makes for a stark contrast when we consider the health of Mama Duggar and Papa Duggar’s most recent addition, the premature Josie.

What are your thoughts on this? Are the Duggars free and clear in your book, does reality TV get off the hook when it comes to ethics, do sexual politics have a place on your TV?