rerun of Wife Swap on lifetime

**oheoh's momma** · 11-29-2011, 08:35 PM

this afternoon sat down to watch tv and watched an episode of wife swap this was about a poor family who are overweight, un employed, with tooth decay,poor hygiene living in a trailer. the whole towns population of 36000 people have huge job losses due to closing of factory.
this is very sad woman made her laundry soap, used vinegar as softner which are things that we do here. Being dirty, a bad house keeper, with tooth decay just made poor people look bad and frugal people look worse.
I am overweight but not unkempt, my clothes are not stained, I do not have tooth decay toothpaste and floss are my friends.
I keep my house clean and smelling good. took orange peels and cinnamom sticks and cooked to make house smell good. Rinse clothes in vinegar and they do not smell like pickles.
When we were un employed I babysat, sat with elderly, took old people to store, ironed old ladies church clothes, hubby cut grass, worked on cars, painted people houses ect. when u are down u get back up.
this family did not even try. they were happy being fat and lazy the end result the rich family decided to simplify life by getting rid of the big house and having a smaller one and to have business semniars for the un employed.
the poor family ate a few more fruits and veggies and decided to buy truck and snow plow to start a business.
it made me really angry.

**Contrary Housewife** · 11-29-2011, 08:46 PM

Remember that a lot of these shows are staged... not exactly made up, but planned out to make it look better or worse than it really is. And they edit stuff, too, so you don't always see the whole story.

**khaski** · 11-29-2011, 08:58 PM

I think I even remember that one- and the kicker is they had the attitiude of 'well, everyone's unemployed' and kind of accepted it rather than working to better their lives (but perhaps that's easy for me to say, not being in that position). I just remember the general apathy.

**jacqueline** · 11-29-2011, 09:12 PM

i just caught the tail end of the show this evening. i used to watch this show a lot.
i felt sad at the end - i just felt that the "poor" people were misrepresented. (remember i only saw the last maybe 20 minutes) i was impressed that she made her own laundry detergent. was disgusted with the "rich" people and that they seemed so unsympathetic.
but at the end couldn't understand why there was an obvious satellite on the end of their trailer and that they had a computer or internet. so i guess i must have not have got the full glimpse of either family.
it seemed neither side could be open-minded as to how the other lived. that is the reason why i always like the show normally is because vastly different lifestyles learn new things or truly see another way of life. not so on this one i guess.