LoveHowTo Blog
News Flash: I’m Single Again!
I'm no stranger to media exposure, but I've never been able to figure out what it all means.
When my husband and I sold our house quickly in a down market 15 years ago, I wrote an item for the Los Angeles Times in response to the paper's request for selling tips. They ran it on the front page of the Real Estate section with a photo of us holding our new baby in front of our just-sold house.
Nine years later, when we put a pool in the backyard of our next house, we ended up doing the landscaping publicly, on the HGTV show Landscaper's Challenge. That show ran for years, and after every airing I heard from at least one long-lost acquaintance.
Now that I'm getting divorced, a friend who works with First Wives World asked me to appear in a KABC-TV news segment with the site's fitness expert, Kathy Kaehler. I agreed, thinking I'd appear in a brief flash, and I'd get a chance to learn a few much-needed tips from a personal trainer to the stars.
I was somewhat taken by surprise when the segment producer did a whole "how did your marriage break up?" interview with me prior to the exercise segment. I mentioned purchasing and consuming of an entire Entenmann's cake for the first time in two decades when I'd heard my ex had gotten engaged. (I thought you had to be divorced first, but never mind and bring on the fudgey frosting!)
The segment featured me as an "emotional eater" with a fear of dating and a BlackBerry addiction. Now, I'm not denying any of that. But was it really smart to advertise it on network TV?
Sure, now that I'm blogging, my "private" life is more public than ever. Anyone anywhere in the world could, theoretically, read about my past and present, here on LoveHowTo and my other site, HellishHolidays. But you still can't beat the mass media for reaching an audience. And that's a double-edged sword.
In the 1980s I had a dream job at Billboard that led to my being interviewed on "Entertainment Tonight" and writing regularly for Rolling Stone. I quit for a less-dreamy but living-wage-paying position at RCA Records. Around the same time, I placed a personal ad in the Village Voice – that's how we found strangers for awkward coffee dates back then, kids. The Voice had held a seminar on personal ads, with Cynthia Heimel as a speaker, and a big computer to take orders for ads after her talk.
The day after placing my ad I received a call from a booker at the Today Show who had been cruising the event looking for non-crazies to appear on a segment about the hot trend of personal ads. Apparently I fit the bill. She and I met for a drink after work at a bar on the Upper West Side.
In the course of explaining the concept of the segment, she flashed her engagement ring repeatedly and remarked how relieved she was not to have to advertise herself to find someone to go out with. I was in my mid-twenties at the time and hardly a loser, but those words hit hard. I decided that if this was to be the tenor of the segment ("how lonely spinsters degrade themselves publicly in a desperate attempt to find love, after the break…"), then I was better off bowing out.
I told the booker that my new job at RCA was very corporate, and that it probably wasn't wise to go on national TV my first week on board promoting myself as a swinging single. She huffed and puffed and accused me of betraying her. She displayed such a sense of entitlement and selfishness that I knew I had made the right decision. I can only imagine that the man who had given her that rock is long gone now. But who knows? Some men like that type.
The point is that I'll never know how national exposure might have affected my life at that point. Would I have been contacted by potential dates, convinced I was the one for them? Would NBC be passing along mail from would-be stalkers, or a future husband?
Based on my KABC experience, which led to every woman I know – and no men – calling up to tell me how great I looked, I have to figure: Nah. Back to Match.com.
by Laura
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
