I'm still amazed by the varying opinions about my post on The Duggars from this Spring. Everyone seems to have something to say about them, their family, their life, their kids, and we're so passionate about it! We're emotionally invested in their situation as if we actually know them, because on some level we all do. My good friend Rachael M. made a very important point, which I feel like not enough of us are actually considering.... they have opened themselves up to criticism by inviting TV cameras into their lives.
My guilty pleasure is celebrity gossip. Thanks to FameCrawler I was on the Britney Spears meltdown last winter like a monkey on a cupcake. I love reading about other people's lives, and you do too. You wouldn't be reading blogs if you didn't! Our society embraces a certain level of voyeurism, from gossip magazines at the grocery checkout line to our ongoing obsession with reality television, its all around us. The Duggars realize this, and they've capitalized on it! Its simply unarguable. They made the choice to share their details, and they know we're watching.
We watch their day to day life on our televisions and assume that we know these people, their values, their family dynamic, but we don't. We know what we see, the edited version of their very interesting life, and we make very passionate assumptions about them based on the very limited information we have. My question is, why do we insist on protecting them, if they've chosen this life? We all know its out of the ordinary, we all realize these people aren't normal, they've obviously accepted this, because they realized they had a product like none other. We're offering criticism of their way of life, of their impact on our world, on their belief system, or we're shaming the critics for being so negative, because we truly care about these people. Regardless of how we feel about them, they've had an impact on our lives. They're selling their family values and we're supporting every bit of it, whether we agree or not.
