Wifeswap

Snichols emerged from a Thanksgiving/8 year old birthday/bad cold fog to catch her first (and possibly last) episode of “Wifeswap” tonight–found it hilarious/disturbing/thought provoking.

In this one, more aptly titled “husband swap,” a huge bearded biker who lives for motor vehicles, television and pissing off his neighbors, swaps lives with a small bearded environmentalist living for cycling, chanting, and composting in Colorado cohousing.

The hilarious and disturbing fact was that the enviro’s organic, yoga-loving, compound-clinging, frigid wife and two adorable toddlers absolutely bonded and loved the biker while the biker’s tv dinner eating, cat piss tolerating, fossil-fuel burning wife and 3 rude and reluctant teenage (step)daughters basically wanted to set fire to the enviro in his sleep.

But it wasn’t all bad–each family learned from the other. The cohousers learned that wearing leather, eating steak in front of the tv and having your kids puke from cotton candy at an amusement park can be great fun. While the biker trash learned that they really do hate recycling, cleaning up their house, eating vegetables and talking to each other as much as they thought they would.

Why is this all thought-provoking when it’s an extreme gag cooked up by the networks for entertainment? Well, maybe it’s not, but here’s what snichols thinks we should consider: if most of the Bush supporters think that liberals are like the enviro, judgmental, out of touch with reality and just plain not fun, maybe that’s an image we need to work on.

Why? Because it’s not true. Although snichols’ life may be somewhat closer to the judgmental environmentalist’s than the fun-loving biker’s, she basically lives a happy medium–that is, she lives in cohousing, recycles, and eats vegetables, but she also wears leather, eats meat, has sex and watches tv–in short, you can be doing right by the planet and having fun–they’re not mutually exclusive.