Pissed off

I have been seeing advertisements for the show Army Wives on Lifetime. I had dismissed it as a glorification of the military and the soap opera-ization (if that is even a word) of what military wives go through. There is an Army Wives marathon on today so I thought this would be a good time to explore the series. I have watched one episode and I know everything about all of the characters. The writing is bad and predictable. Within the first fifteen minutes of the episode I knew how the episode would end because I have seen the same episode about twenty other times on ten different series.

But other than that, this is why the show is shit:

There is all this crap about the military wives code and how they have to protect each other. Bullshit, we all just live our lives.

After watching 3 episodes I am now afraid of any Army veteran. At least once an episode an army dude from Iraq comes home, goes nuts, and kills everyone in their general vicinity. I am thinking this isn’t really the norm anywhere except on this show. I understand that the veterans who come home have been overworked, over deployed, and probably have PTSD to some extent, but don’t make it look like our military is full of guys who could go nuts and take us all out if the commissary doesn’t have their brand of ice cream one day.

I understand that the show is on Lifetime, but sheesh! It is like watching Army Steel Magnolias. There is the one central wife who is strong, stoic, and all knowing. She is infallible and her hair always looks great. Then there are 4 supporting players who have the problems that she has to fix. Give me a freaking break.

This show doesn’t accurately portray military life. It is the Army Soap Opera and plays on all women’s fears and emotions, whether they are military or not: Will my kids grow up to be stoner skate rats, will my husband get in a car wreck on the way home and die (as mentioned above, his chances of being taken out in the commissary one day are much, much greater), does this watchband make me look fat…

But the worst part is that they have taken something very personal and private to some women and by televising it have succeeded in trivializing it. They made it look like when the dudes leave for their macho, testosterone filled existence in the hot sand, that the wives lives are still just as easy and the only problems they have are the dreaded watchband issue and who they are trying not to sleep with next. They don’t show the crippling sadness, the children who act out because they miss their parent and cant express their pain, the logistical difficulties like carpooling, work demands and trash removal that just work better with a 2 parent home. They don’t show how hard it is to just live when a military spouse gets left behind.

And yes, I know that when we marry our military spouses that we signed up for the leaving. We leave our friends, our home, our family, our comfort zones. But it is still okay because we leave as a couple. It is okay when we leave all of these things together. But after all of the leaving, it is still such a horrible, painful thing to be left. It doesn’t matter how strong, capable or well liked you are. When your spouse leaves your home to do a job, it hurts. A lot.

And to those people who don’t think the military wives are really ‘in the military’ I say, Fuck You. We serve too. We go to the shitty formal balls and eat lukewarm food with people we don’t like. We attend office functions and eat store bought cake with blue frosting that turns your lips the same frightening color. We sit on the bleachers in the heat and the mosquitoes to watch the office softball team lose…again. We cry when one of ours doesn’t come back and we secretly thank the Higher Power that it wasn’t the one we have given our heart to.

As a 20 year military wife veteran, don’t tell me I didn’t serve, and if you are going to put us in the spotlight, make it at least believable.

Dumbasses. Fuck you. Now I am all pissed.