Playing house
To be clear, though, biting the hand that feeds isn't always a soulful act. Say, just for example, you're about 19 years old, and you want to marry your incredibly self-centered, naive, seriously immature Mormon girlfriend. Say she and her family insist that you convert to Mormonism, and then you get married in a Mormon temple, which means that none of your family and friends can attend the wedding, since nonbelievers aren't allowed in the temple.
Now, calling your mom on the phone and telling her that she's not invited to the wedding? That's not a very soulful move -- but that's exactly what makes it such good fodder for a show on MTV, the destination of choice for those who love rubbernecking the soulless. Following the fine tradition of "My Super Sweet Sixteen," "Engaged & Underage" is one of the most chilling horror shows on the air, a show that will have you groaning and grimacing one minute, and laughing until you cry the next. And when you laugh, you'll laugh an evil, menacing laugh, a deep, rancid Muhahahaha! that will scare the cat and send a chill down your spouse's spine. If that sounds good to you, read on.
Not content to merely trot out a steady parade of scary, spoiled, teenage, whoring sea donkeys, MTV has uncovered an even more terrifying demographic: teenagers who want to have sex but can't because they've decided to save themselves for marriage. Naturally, instead of keeping the little horndogs chaste indefinitely, all this really does is send them to the altar prematurely. "You won't sleep with me until we're married?" the poor little aspiring humpers say to their girls. "OK, then, here's a ring! Let's get hitched and do the nasty!" MTV completes the sick picture by showcasing another ill-advised young couple each episode.
It's hard to know whom to pity more, the doe-eyed teenage girls who think that being a bride is super-dreamy, even when they don't know how to do laundry or pay a bill, or the teenage boys who followed their hard-ons straight into the middle of a Wedding Barbie tragicomedy. All I know is that when one mom is forced to meet her newly married son after the wedding because she's not allowed inside the Mormon temple, and when she gets there she wants to cry, but she can't, because she loves her son and doesn't want to spoil everything, so she poses bravely with the bride, who's wearing a parka over her wedding dress in every picture? That's quality television.
In another episode, a bride-to-be named Bre actually tells us, unabashedly, that she got the idea to save herself for marriage from Jessica Simpson. You see, she was, like, a big, big fan of Jessica, and she read this interview with Jessica and Jessica said that she was going to be a virgin until she was legally wed and Bre thought, Oh my God! That's like such a great idea! Meanwhile, Bre's fiancé, Josh, still lives at home with his parents and spends most of his time rough-housing with his two younger brothers in the massive family room of their spacious, well-appointed home. In a discussion about finances with Bre and the preacher who's going to marry them, Josh says that Bre's draft of a possible household budget is silly, because who spends $320 on food every month? His mom buys big piles of sliced turkey, and he can just, like, chow on that for weeks. Ohhh, Josh. Where do we begin? Poor, sad little ... Muhahaha!
There's even a "diary cam" for the bride and groom to record their thoughts the night before the wedding, and while Bre waxes dreamily about being married forever and ever and ever, poor Josh talks mostly about how much he's going to miss his siblings, who appear to be in elementary school. The horror!
Luckily, I've noticed that there's a pattern here, for all of you parents breaking out into a cold sweat right now. Typically, either the bride or the groom has parents who have a strong marriage and proselytize on the subject of strong marriages regularly. Since marriage works so well for them, and since they got married when they were very, very young, they can't really see the big deal in encouraging their kid to do the same thing, even though the kid in question hasn't done a thing in his entire life but eat nachos and play video games on the couch with his little brothers.
Luckily, the show makes it clear how to prevent your teenagers from getting married too young: 1) Encourage your teenagers to engage in lots of premarital sex, and 2) demonstrate to them just how torturous and awful marriage is. That's right: When you're not buying them condoms and urging them to throw coed sleepovers, you should be bickering with your spouse and lamenting the unbearable torture of remaining chained to the same human being for the balance of your days on Earth. Thank you, MTV, for this rather elaborate but very helpful public service announcement!