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News Flash! Update as of March, 2005!
The idea on which this TMF was based was made into the show Wickedly Perfect, which aired on CBS January 6-March 5, 2005. The winner was Kimberly Kennedy. Oddly enough, she's female, blonde, and doesn't wear glasses. My, what a surprise!
You can see and read about all the competitors at http://www.realitytvworld.com/index/articles/story.php?s=3122
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If you haven’t heard about it, CBS is planning to make and air a reality TV show in which a dozen contestants vie to become the next Domestic Diva. The assumption seems to be that Martha has been dethroned or, at the very least, will be unavailable temporarily. Evidently CBS wants to have a queen in the wings ready for crowning.
Domestic Diva—or whatever it ends up being called—is billed as a reality TV show. The contestants will have to live under one roof (probably a New England-style farmhouse, we are told—sound familiar?) and somehow manage to avoid one another while they surmount challenges to their homemaking abilities. One hypothetical hurdle mentioned in an article about the show is to prepare a dinner party for a large group after electrical power to the farmhouse is cut without warning.
Believe it or not, I have entered my name in the Domestic Diva contest. This required making and submitting a two-minute video and filling out a lengthy questionnaire in which there was a suspiciously long section about mental health and a suspiciously short section about critical homemaking skills such as, oh, diagnosing the ills of ominously gurgling toilets…because if you think a mere electrical outage can tank a dinner party, you should see what happens when there aren’t any functional bathrooms.
I blithely began filling out the questionnaire until I got to the question asking for the applicant’s gender. “Wait a second,” I thought. “That sort of suggests they expect to get some responses from men.” Then I wondered why I’d assumed instantly that all the applicants would be female, and why CBS wasn’t looking for a Domestic Diva or Dude? Or better yet, a Domestic Deity, gender to be determined?
In the end, though, I rationalized that the Domestic Divinity they’re looking for must, indeed, be a woman, and a married woman, to boot. For one thing, the questionnaire contained a lot of questions about dinner party planning. Singles (except gay guys) don’t throw dinner parties. They throw parties, but not dinner parties. And menu planning for the parties they throw usually doesn’t involve anything more complicated than deciding whether to offer pretzels in addition to the chips and dip. So, that explains the married part.
As for why a household expert would have to be a woman, well, just take a look at the dictionary entries under “domestic.” They include wifely, cleaning lady (not man), cleaning woman (not man), and simply woman. Also, rather oddly, homely. So, strictly speaking, based on the dictionary definitions, a Domestic Deity would not only have to be a woman, but a mousy, ugly one. Just you wait, though. I’ll bet all the contestants will be leggy and blonde, and not one of them will wear glasses. This is, after all, reality TV.
And what abilities will our undoubtedly female, necessarily married contestants have to possess? Well, one question asked applicants to put ten specified talents in order from 1 to 10, with 1 being the talent at which the hopeful diva has the most skill and 10 the least. The talents given were: gardening, cooking, public speaking, creativity, arts and crafts, leadership, bargain hunting, event planning, fashion and plumbing.
I would argue that some of these are not exactly requisite abilities for a household goddess, but assuming for a second that Domestic Divahood is defined by expertise in these ten talents, here’s a list of domestic difficulties I’d like to see the Dozen Divas face on TV. Highest score wins.
Gardening: You are asked to design a home landscape that will look good instantly, cost very little and require almost no maintenance. This is possible only through liberal use of a) plants, or b) Astroturf. Scoring: ten points for the correct answer. *
Cooking: Commit to memory the phone numbers of ten local takeout restaurants. Scoring: one point per correct answer, and five bonus points (all or nothing) for knowing which ones deliver. Another five bonus points (all or nothing) for knowing which night of the week each one is closed.
Public speaking: In this timed test, you will have ten minutes to win an argument with the electrician about why the light switch he installed at the top of the basement stairs controls the attic light. The objective is to get the work done correctly at no additional charge that very day. Scoring: ten points for success; no partial score for exacting a promise that he’ll “come back on a less busy day.”
Creativity: Your husband has cut an exploratory hole in a wall. In one afternoon, using a $100 home center gift card and the tools provided, convert it into something that looks like it was intended to be there all along. Scoring: up to ten points at the discretion of the judges.
Arts and Crafts: Your husband has spent all but $5.69 of the holiday gift budget on a non-returnable set of monogrammed golf clubs for his best friend. In one week, in the evenings after work, you must hand-craft gifts for the remaining 37 people on your gift list using only the following raw materials: plastic straws, 3x5 cards, two skeins of different-colored yarn, and a roll of adhesive tape. Audience members will vote on your score up to ten points.
Leadership: You and the husband surrogate provided (for the sake of consistency, real husbands are not allowed in this test) must travel by car from a designated starting point to a designated residential home to attend a dinner party. A contestant may not render her male companion unconscious by any means or leave him behind at a pit stop, but forcibly taking control of the vehicle is permitted. Scoring: ten points will be awarded to the first contestant to arrive. Two bonus points to any contestant who is still talking to her male companion upon arrival. Instant disqualification for failing to arrive before the dinner party is over.
Bargain hunting: Stock a kitchen entirely from local Goodwill stores. Scoring: a gathered group of nine housewares retailers who are under the impression that they are attending a showcase of new Fall housewares merchandise will be asked to choose the kitchen ensemble that achieves that certain elusive Pottery Barn panache. One winner will receive ten points.
Event planning: The farmhouse dinner party/electrical outage/gurgling toilet scenario will do. Scoring: up to ten points by vote of the dinner-party attendees.
Fashion: Just say “no” to a series of overpriced designer items. Scoring: ten points if you can get through them all without saying “I just have to have that!” Five points will be deducted from the score of any contestant developing bunions from years of wearing pointy-toed shoes.
Plumbing: You have a ballcock in your hand. Do you know what to do with it? Scoring: ten points for a passably accurate answer. No partial score for anything less.
Needless to say, since I designed this contest myself, I think I would win it. But alas, I already know I didn’t make the cut for the real Diva-Off. The contest rules say that applicants must be available to be interviewed the last week of July. As I write this, July has come and gone, and I’m not sitting by the phone waiting for it to ring. The producers of the show have labeled me a Domestic Dunce. My house, by implication, is a Domestic Dive. I’ll never get to toss those double Ds around after my name as if I’d achieved a higher academic degree.
You might be wondering why I ever thought the creators of Domestic Diva would choose the founder of The League of Anti-Wives to be (or even compete to be) America’s next queen of domesticity. Well, my argument is that the whole concept of domestic divahood needs updating for the twenty-first century, and that I’m the woman to do it. What women really need is a paragon of domestic minimalism—someone who’ll show them the way out of the desert of domesticity, not encourage them to wallow around in it some more.
Of course, we married women already have a perfect role model for domestic dispassion, and we refer to him as "husband." But women don't listen to men, or at least they're always saying we don't. So a man's laissez-faire example just doesn't make us aspire to the same level of domestic indifference that he achieves effortlessly. For that, we need a woman's lead, and I think I'm the gal to provide it.
But now we'll never know. Oh, well, I never really expected to be called in for an audition. After all, reality TV is about as real as, well, any other kind of TV. You know what would be real? Let those dozen Diva wanna-bes live in that farmhouse for six months, and then see what happens when they host a dinner party just as they’re all ovulating at the same time. Oh, the humanity...
* The correct answer is b) Astroturf. Real gardeners know that real plants are about as cooperative as real husbands and real children.
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