FUSHTRATED

I loooove reality TV. Like, I’m PASSIONATE about it. I’ve watched COUNTLESS shows of ALL DIFFERENT kinds: Dating shows. Celebreality shows. Cooking competitions, dancing competitions, modeling competitions, wedding dress purchasing competitions …

Now usually, when you’re super passionate about something, NATURALLY, you might consider participating in it yourself! So sure. I’ve thought about trying to get on a reality TV show once or twice. But I’ve never gone through with submitting that application. Why? Well, maybe I’m afraid of the fushtration.

FUSHTRATION. A condition unique to participants in Reality television shows. Understandably! It’s easy to become fushtrated when you’re surrounded by cameras, put under pressure, and put into fushtrating situations!

I’m not JUDGING. I completely understand being fushtrated, under the circumstances. Take, for example, The Bachelor. Imagine a cut-throat competition where the guy wooing you is also getting hot and heavy with up to 29 other women? That’s emotionally TORTURE, I mean, INCREDIBLY fushtrating! Now let’s consider America’s Next Top Model — a bevy of very tall teenagers and early-twenty-somethings put through a beauty competition where “challenges” see them suspended off tall towers, trapped underwater, and holding bugs and snakes? It’s like the Miss America pageant meets Fear Factor, what a mindfuck, I mean, HOW FUSHTRATING!

Like, honestly, I don’t think I could handle my fushtration nearly as well as some of the reality contestants I’ve seen on TV. See, I would get EASILY fushtrated. And I’m not sure I could cope with my fushtration. Moreover, I don’t think I’m willing to put myself through the fushtration for any of these competitions. I couldn’t! I admire people willing to put themselves through the fushtration of competition to win at say, Top Chef or So You Think You Can Dance! Not to mention the Teen Moms and 90-Day Fiancés who get nothing for their fushtration! Nothing!

Sometimes, in my everyday life, I come up against challenges. Sometimes, I think I start to feel… fushtrated? Mounting fushtration? But then I think HEY – I’m not learning a new dance style every week to perform on national TV, trying to cook a meal from bizarre assorted basket ingredients in 20 minutes, fighting my high school boyfriend for child support, or dangling from a harness in a gown with a poisonous spider on my shoulder. I have it so easy. There’s no need to be fushtrated with life’s minor annoyances. And when I come home to relax with my Gordon Ramsay shows, I have so much respect for people who willingly put up with the fushtration of being reality TV stars. They’re the real heroes.