Last night on Sister Wives, Kody and his first wife, Meri, celebrated their 20th anniversary with a fancy dinner, where Meri asked, "If I were to be giving my attention to another guy, how would it make you feel?"
This all came about because Meri likes Robyn, Kody's new girlfriend, but feels jealous of the attention Robyn is getting. Kody said that the "vulgarity" of a scenario in which Meri had two husbands or another lover would be "wrong" and against "God and nature." But! He admitted to his own hypocrisy, and in the end, apologized to Meri, in a way, saying that he was sorry that "in this process, heartbreak happens." The dude has a way of talking that involves removing himself from the equation and thereby absolving himself of any guilt. Apologizing because "heartbreak happens" is not the same as saying "I'm sorry I am fucking and doting on three other women besides you. That must be hard."
A flashback to Kody and Meri's wedding picture really just proves that things were creepy from the beginning.
The show is obviously a little bit behind what's happening in real life — news broke that Kody Brown has indeed married for a fourth time. Some guests at the wedding hid from the TV cameras.
In other news, the dollhouse the Brown kids play with has one daddy and lots of mommies.
And while Kody's third wife, Christine, was in the hospital about to give birth — her first hospital birth and her first epidural, for her sixth child — Kody asked Christine's doctor about Meri's fertility issues. The doctor was just a little confused.
Last but not least: Isn't the terrifying opener like an SNL skit?
'Sister Wives' Wedding — Guests Hide from Cameras [TMZ]
Sister Wives Hubby 'Marries' Wife No. 4 [Newser]
DISCUSSION
I've said this before, and I'll say it again. As feminists, we should believe that a woman should have a choice on how she lives her life. If she so chooses to live her life in polygamy as a consenting adult, even if that's all she's known as "normal" in her community, who the hell are we to tell her otherwise? These women are clearly not isolated from society. They made a decision to live this lifestyle. It is not for us to say "well, it's patriarchal and therefore wrong." Lots of things are patriarchal. Women taking their husbands names, giving their children their husbands names. I don't like that, but that's a choice that each woman is free to make so it's really not up to me. I'm very uncomfortable by how much we are judging this family and these women. Like I said before, I highly doubt any of us knows a polygamist family, so that probably helps with how unfamiliar and uncomfortable we seem to be with it.