Sometimes Raining on Somebody's Parade is the Kind Thing to Do

Okay, Tania, the woman featured in the video above is a 37 year old woman who "wants to start taking her modeling career seriously." Everything is officially staged in the "Real Housewives" franchise over at Bravo, let's just accept that as the "reality" behind these "reality" shows. So, if this 37 year old woman is actually trying to start a modeling career, I don't care. BUT, I do care how these faux-reality programs influence regular people's perceptions about what they can do realistically with their lives. For example, I work with at-risk youth and I've rarely met an at-risk youth suggesting a solid plan for him/her-self career wise. Everybody wants to be a professional athlete, singer, dancer, actor or simply aspired to be "rich." When I worked at a community college, I remember meeting a young woman (already a single mother) who could NOT manage to turn in her ENG 101 papers ontime, say she wanted to be a doctor. At the time, I would never have rained on anybody's parade and said, "why don't you consider nursing" because I was a young idealist. First of all, let me tell you, she flunked ENG 101, so she ain't a doctor today, let alone a Community College graduate. I think that we need to get realistic career planning instilled earlier in the curriculum of most middle-schools and high-schools. Not, tracks, where you can't change your mind and go onto something else, but the TEACHING OF MAKING PLANS. So, say you want to be a doctor, they need to learn how to make a plan for becoming a doctor, a nurse, an EMT, a research scientist, and a pharmacist. That's five plans with five solid steps--including learning the moment they need to apply to college, what semester they should take organic chemistry, how much debt they should expect to incur, etc. Because, in a world where a 37 year old woman thinks she can become a famous model because a kiss-ass agent agrees to meet with her on a reality show, you know ten fools at home are thinking they need to try to sneak onto the American Idol auditions and pretend to be under 29 so that their talent will just Susan Boyle us away. By 37, you should damn well be living with a bit of reality and accept your life. If you want to totally change careers, that can happen, but something like modeling, professional athletics, acting--that's just stupid and it serves as a bad role model for the rest of humanity, particularly young kids and desperate housewives who are more vulnerable to thinking stupid reality tv stunts like this are, well, reality.