For those who have not yet been sucked into the wonders of “The Pussycat Dolls Present: Search for the Next Doll,” the finale of Season 1 (apparently there will be a Season 2?? How many more dolls can they need??) was this week. Although obviously Asia has been a mother all throughout this competition, her motherhood has only become salient these past couple of episodes. In last week’s episode, her frank answer in a mock-interview question that she is a role model by showing that a single teen mom can still succeed and reach her dreams pulled her motherhood back into the spotlight. Before that it was more like a little-known fact, barely mentioned and definitely not a focus of Asia’s editing. She was praised for her answer (it was a very good answer), but not much more was said.
Then suddenly in the finale Asia’s daughter is all over the screen. There are home videos of Asia playing with her daughter, she talks about how much she thinks about her daughter, she says she wants to succeed for her daughter. And when she wins, she says she is glad her daughter will be able to see her as successful. It’s interesting, because leading up to this week’s finale, I talked to a few friends (the few who admitted openly to watching the show) about the potential outcomes. Almost uniformly, they all said Asia would never get picked as the winner because she was a teen mom, and neither the network nor the band would want that image. Instead, they played it up bigtime.
So my friends were wrong, so what? I don’t know if I agreed with their assessment of the situation, but I can see the logic. America doesn’t exactly, you know, embrace teen motherhood or teen mothers. On the other hand, the Pussycat Dolls probably have an audience that is much closer to that reality- I’m sure teenagers, some of them mothers, are the primary target audience of the PCD. And everyone loves those “coming back from hardship” stories about “overcoming diversity” and stuff. Maybe that’s the key. It’s okay to be a teen mom if you overcome it. It’s great to have such a good role model- someone who really did fight for her dreams in spite of her position as a mother. Huh.
