The Femme vs. Megan Wants a Millionaire

A while back, I took Howard Beale's advice and bashed my TV in with a Louisville slugger. I don't volunteer this information often because I don't want to be that person everybody knows or has met at some point that doesn't have a TV...and lets everyone know all the time they don't have a TV.

So a friendly blog reader pointed me in the direction of a new series that supposedly premiered recently, Megan Wants a Millionaire. Supposedly, it had a muscular millionaire that was a former male stripper. Now this definitely got my attention and I found the episode online.

If I were an editor of a women's fiction publishing house and a manuscript with a "millionaire/ex-male stripper" crossed my desk, I'd write UNREALISTIC in red ink and moved on to the next bit in the slush pile.

As for the show itself, I could only watch the opening five minutes. Watch it yourself here, if you're sadomasochistic. Not because it was a dating show, or even a reality show (reality shows aren't any worse than any other type of series in and of itself; they're just another kind of documentary) but because I very quickly came to loathe everyone on the series. In fact, I like to think I'm an open minded person. I've never walked out on a movie in my entire life. But this series was so bad I stopped after ten minutes.

First, our large breasted, blonde heroine's startling ambition to be a trophy wife. Yet another case of life imitating the Simpsons, with Megan as a real life talking Malibu Stacy doll and me as a real-life Lisa Simpson. I'd like to get a time machine, go back in time and introduce Megan's present day spray-on tanned self to the eleven year old girl she used to be that wanted to grow up to be an astronaut or scientist.

Also, the tiny accessory chihuahua is a little sad too. I'm no expert on "famous-for-being-famous skank" fashion, but is that even still trendy couture anymore?

Also, the thing I found the most interesting is how apparently all these series are interconnected, sort of like how the Fonz once visited Steve Urkel and there were regular Knotts Landing/Golden Girls crossovers. My jaw hit the floor when I saw Brett Michaels of all people had a reality series. Didn't he stop being famous 20 years ago, when Kurt Cobain smote all cock rock everywhere? Are they going to give a series to the guy that played Eddie Munster next? Frankly I find the idea of a series involving Brett Michaels revolting. I have a feeling if he kissed my hand, I would die 40 minutes later.

Finally, I have some personal experience with the sugar daddy type and they're all loathsome pervs with a patronizing attitude to younger women. Beats me why these millionaire guys would subject themselves to a series like this. I urge them to go to Miami Beach, the Sugar Daddy capital of the world. Or..heck, try any "newly hip" and "rediscovered" part of NYC, like Brooklyn Heights or Chelsea. I remember working at a bar when I was an undergraduate for a semester, and getting hit on by these older rich guys all the time.

Being young looking and short, when asked about myself and I talked about college, I got these snippy, infuriatingly patronizing little comments like "Aw, little honey, you don't need to worry about that sort of thing with me." Gah! Of course I had to smile and be nice, because you never tick off a customer. If a guy invited you to have drinks with him, your response was always supposed to be a noncommittal "We'll see." After a while, those "We'll sees" got more and more angry in tone.

I like playing Gene Siskel about as much as I'm sure everyone else loves to read it, but something about this series got under my skin. I suppose because one of the top priorities in my life is self-sufficiency and self-respect and I get very nervous about a lot of the girls of my generation. I get my sense of pride from working hard and accomplishing things, whereas a lot of them have a mentality that takes pride in not working and getting others to do things for them.

I'm often frightened, disappointed and startled at a diminishment that happens in girls around middle school and high school. Recently, I saw a friend of mine from elementary school again. As kids, she used to teach us card tricks and wanted to be a dog trainer. Now when I saw her, she looked down all the time and only spoke when her boyfriend asked her a direct question. I left that meeting wanting to cry.

Let me tell you about another recent encounter with an old friend: she had an apartment in the Heights, yet she had NO JOB, her toddler was more or less raised by the maid. It came up in conversation that she once dated a guy just so she could have money to get a tooth fixed. She used to say things like "I'm a Queen and I should be treated that way." When I told her I got my Bachelor's degree in Mathematics, she scrunched her nose up as if she smelled something terrible and said, "Well, you always did like that sort of thing, Cristina..."

This is something I see going on around me all the friggin' time, a part of the world I live in, and...well, it frightens me. I guess there is one little upside to being a math and science nerd: I'm the first girl of my generation of my family to graduate high school before getting pregnant.