Posted by
Billy on Friday, June 26, 2009 2:43:38 PM
When news broke that reality TV stars Jon and Kate Gosselin are separating, I thought about my own family's brief time as a media clan – and what it taught us about the stresses of living and loving in front of a camera.
I'm talking about a weekend last year, when a national magazine hired me to visit New Orleans with my family and file a first-person travel story about our experiences.
I was paid a handsome fee, and all of our expenses for a fun-filled weekend of dining and sightseeing were covered. There was just one catch: As part of the article, a professional photographer would tag along, getting candid shots of me, my wife, our 12-year-old daughter, and our 7-year-old son having a good time.
The photographer was easygoing, professional, and very sensitive to our family's privacy, but her presence necessarily altered the chemistry of the weekend.
Dancing the two-step with our daughter at a Cajun eatery, I caught myself smiling more broadly than usual, intent on italicizing the moment as a fun-filled snapshot. As we strode around the French Quarter, I noticed that all of us were walking more briskly, standing straighter, and eating more daintily as our personal paparazzo clicked the shutter.
Although we knew that our photographer wouldn't publish anything unflattering, I instinctively relaxed as we parted company at the end of the trip. Our family was free once more to be the one we'd always known, rather than the idealized household we'd subconsciously crafted for media consumption.
When our daughter watches "Jon & Kate Plus 8," I find myself struggling with another form of illusion – the notion of family life as constantly interesting and dramatic. Quite often, the drama of reality TV comes from domestic conflicts that seem edited to magnify differences rather than resolve them.
(Please read the whole column. It is too bad that Jon and Kate didn't follow what this column writer did.)