I don't like daytime television, but I watch a lot of it. And it's not as if it has anything to do with the cancer I had because I watched lots of television both daytime and prime time that I didn't like before. What I watch has changed, however, since I no longer crave the gruesome forensic drama or the embattled courtroom display. I now watch, most of the time, HG TV, though I still don't like it all that much. HG TV, of course, means Home and Garden Television. For daytime, I'm most interested in houses and other house-like presentations, like self-constructed rv's, the history of old homes and designers competing over room decorating.
As for prime time television, I have one guilty pleasure: American Idol. But I'm too embarrassed to talk about watching that today.
Daytime television, I must admit, is embarrassing, too. But for different reasons that have everything to do with the essence of a statement Lance Armstrong made in a reflection about cancer recently published in Newsweek. He said:
“It’s clear that the way we battle cancer is deeply at odds with our values as a country, and with our common sense. There is a serious gap between what we know and what we do; what we deserve and what we get; what should be and what is” (37).
Armstrong elaborates, stating that our country is about freedom, choice and rights. But cancer isn't, mainly because there are things Americans could do to help the cancer situation that they don't. For Armstrong, he's mostly referring to lack of legislation for health care and cancer research. But he is also speaking of how Americans abuse their health more than any other country in the world.
Which brings me back to December of last year. I was coming off of two rounds of steroids and chemotherapy. By this time, my face had that characteristic moon shape. I had gained around 15 pounds. I looked forward to stopping the steroids because I knew it would deflate my body, but I had no idea that withdrawal would be so psychotic an experience.
As I lost weight and my face slimmed down, I also felt as if I was stoned for a total of five days on some very bad drug. I was extremely paranoid. For a few days, I'll never forget, while in this state of psychosis, everything I saw on television was blasphemy. I believed that American had somehow come under the dominion of an angry and controlling God. This God watched American television and saw it as a reflection of our core values as a society. And, for these abominations, He was planning to annihilate us.
His outrage: the myriad of ads and programming focused on the outer self. "Slim and lift," your stomach, eyes, butt and thighs with low calorie diets, pills, nylon smoothers and impossible work outs. And the worship of models and actors who had achieved this bodily perfection was achingly clear when we salivate at the chance to see "tears and top model mayhem" on America's next top model. Or when we drooled over perfectly dressed people exclaiming, "That suit is horrible on her" on What Not To Wear. And on.
His anger: the consequence of internalization, the obsessive focus on appearance. So for those who diet, exercise and criticize their bodies so much it makes them sick, there's the pharmaceutical ads proclaiming that "side effects are generally mild and vary by age." These drugs can "prevent depression from returning," make girls "one less" cancer statistic or gift men's and women's organs with the ability to love "like there's no tomorrow."
For three days, I believed that God was angry with America because of what our televisions, really our oracle, said about our society. The oracle spoke of debauchery and decadence that, under this God's judgment, would send us all to hell in hand basket.
For a few days, I stopped watching television. The display of judgment inducing behavior was too garish for me.
Today, I'm back to watching the old oracle of daytime debauchery. But I no longer believe God is going to kill us all. I just believe that so much of what I see on television supports a striving way of life that cancer thrives on. That if something doesn't change, not just on television, but in our society generally, cancers of all kinds will become an epidemic. Some cancers already have, according to those in the know. Whether this is true or not for society is not something I can say without becoming as judgmental as that angry God I imagined. But I know it was true of myself. Before cancer, I was one stressed out woman. My regular pattern of breathing was actually panting. And I fed my striving habit by every means possible. It was my energy and sustenance.
I'm wanting now to have mercy on myself. Let go and let God. You know, all that babble we've heard for years, but ignored. I have even started meditating just a little each day. Praying. Writing more and more. I'm still something of a stress addict, but I think I'm relaxing more. Even if I still haven't stopped watching televsion.
Maybe I'm doing research.
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