Daytime TV Is Depressing

As I've mentioned before, I've used the TV like a lamp during my maternity leave. I KNOW this is not wise, okay? So keep your itchy fingers from commenting about it.

When I stop to pay attention to it for more than a minute, though, it's the most depressing programming ever. Not because most of it is recycled junk from the night (or weekend, or decade before). It's depressing because most of it is about improving myself in some way. When I'm bombarded with messages about how I could be better, I start to feel like my status quo is lame.

To wit:

• Rachael Ray has 30 minute recipes and constantly reminds you that you don't NEED to order out, and that the stuff you order can't possibly taste as good as this homecooked goulash.
• 10 Years Younger actually puts women (and sometimes men) in a clear box on a crowded promenade and invites perfect strangers to guess the victim's, I mean participant's age and explain WHY they think this twenty-four year-old woman looks fifty-three.
• Dr. 90210 reveals the myriad ways that you can sculpt yourself into the ideal you without plebeian efforts like, say, diet and exercise.

Yikes, then there are the commericals: Get seventeen degrees! Lose six hundred pounds while eating a bushel of chocolate a day! Quit smoking! Earn a million dollars a week while working from home! Take vitamins to make your brain, heart, and fingernails stronger! Get your doctor to prescribe birth control/bone loss prevention pills that you only have to take once every decade (now in vanilla and strawberry flavors)!

There's also a cacaphony of advertising that tells me my baby will love me if I use specific kinds of diapers, and that my house will sparkle after 30 seconds of effort with a newfangled broom. Be that as it may, I'm not going to run out to purchase these products, because these will not really make me more house-proud.

Guess I just wanted to put it out there that I'm not falling for it...much.