The Next Frontier in Reality TV: Very Pregnant Women Looking for Love

Pregnant & Dating—about the love lives of single pregnant women—sounds like one of the fake reality shows that are part of PBS’ marketing campaign about the horrible state of TV today. But it’s totally real. And it premieres on WE tonight.

The show purports to be about the sex lives of single pregnant women. From WE’s website:

Traditionally, love is followed by marriage and then along comes motherhood, but in this fresh new original series, viewers join these fearless five as they experience the modern day dating game with a baby on board. The spotlight will be on all the drama, conflict and inherent comedy that ensues when these very spirited and single moms-to-be embark on their quest to find Mr. Right, or at least Mr. Right Now.

(The “inherent comedy” seems to be when the women are forced to tell the men they just started dating that they are pregnant, with the cameras there to capture their hilarious reactions.)

The idea of pregnant women being people—who are physically attractive with normal desires—instead of just asexual baby-growing pods is an interesting topic, even if it was already tackled in the eighth season of Friends. If nothing else, it’s sure to spark the age-old conversation that we just love: how women should behave. (Interestingly, few people were “grossed out” when Billy Crudup and Tom Brady didn’t put their love lives on hold after they had impregnated women.)

That being said, having been a pregnant woman myself, it’s hard for me to imagine wanting to get to know a new person on a first date while I was going through so many physical and emotional changes and preparing for the biggest transition of my life. But according to an interview with one of the stars of Pregnant & Dating in her hometown’s local paper, it sounds like these women weren’t all that interested in that either, and the handful of blind dates they went on were set up by the show. One review says that the title of the show aims for the sensationalism of implied sex, but that Pregnant & Dating deals more with the issues of impending single motherhood, which means that a more accurate name would be Pregnant & Single, which sounds kind of sad.

Oh, and here’s a bonus: one of the women in the cast, Keisha, is a former member of the R&B group Xscape, making her the fifth person in the revolving lineup to appear on a reality show.