Ever watch HBO's Big Love and feel a tad bit envious of the wives? Ever find yourself wishing there was another wife kicking around the house with whom you could talk, whose refrigerator you could raid and with whom you could watch repeats of the Sopranos and curse the series' ending?
Well, a Michigan woman does. In fact, Michele Gazzolo said in a Chicago Tribune essay that she covets the fictional Big Love wives' coziness and says she and her neighbors refer to one another as "sister wives," even though they don't share a hubby. "We found ourselves confessing that plural marriage didn't look so terrible, even in a drama filled with suffering and intrigue," Gazzolo wrote.
However to Carol Lloyd, who writes for Salon's Broadsheet blog, referring to the Henrickson family of three wives and a passel of kids as looking "cozy," is "unsettling." Lloyd instead suggests that Big Love whitewashes "one of the most misogynistic cultures in Western Hemisphere."
Well, after the season premiere, I'm guessing "first wife" Barb might be re-thinking all this coziness.
[Via Broadsheet.]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
6-12-2007 @ 5:12PM
khia213 said...
Envious? Hell, no! It's hard enough being open an intimate with one other person full time without the complication of jealousy and loneliness that comes with sharing a spouse's affections. As far as the companionship of sister-wives, that's what your friends are for.
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6-12-2007 @ 5:14PM
bd said...
Jeanne Tripplehorne is MILFtastic
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6-12-2007 @ 7:52PM
1iPete said...
I think plurality marriage is a complex issue with possible positives and negatives and like any marriage is largely dependent on what each individual brings to the collective dynamic.
But they sure all do benefit from a huge backyard....
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6-13-2007 @ 12:06AM
Kevin said...
It is is bizarre that anyone can live this way, having 1 wife is a full time job and proves impossible to maintain for a vast majority of the population. How anyone could maintain 3 wifes is beyond me. If sexual equlaity is here how could this be seen as normal, also if this is see as a normal why could a woman not have 3 husbands.
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6-15-2007 @ 10:26PM
xvertigenx said...
In agreeance with Carol Lloyd, while the main characters portrayed in Big Love seem to have a loving and nurturing lifestyle albeit unnatural, the series has yet to really delve deep into the inner workings of the compounds. What little we have seen so far is sickening, to see more may turn me off to the series as a whole.
That is my whole thing with Big Love. It is extremely intriguing (plot wise and production wise) but I almost don't want to like it so much due to the fact that it is glorifying an awful lifestyle by showing mostly the rare cases of people that can make it work outside of what seems to go on in the compounds.
Three wives? I'll have to get back to you after I marry my first ;)
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