The positive image of polygamy in media
 Polygamy loves company – especially in the American media.
 
By Brielle Schaeffer
The Daily Evergreen - Pullman, WA
 
Polygamy loves company – especially in the American media. With the recent news of fundamentalist Mormon and infamous polygamist Warren Jeffs’ arrest and two television programs, the fictional "Big Love" and the reality show "The Girls Next Door," the media does not dispute this. Pro-polygamy propaganda is juxtaposed with legal consequences.

In "Big Love," an HBO television series, the protagonist has three wives and seven children who live in three separate houses that share the same yard in a suburb of Salt Lake City. The show’s tag line, "Think having three wives is a dream come true? Think again," is trying to deglamorize this macho obsession with multiple, monogamous sexual partners. But it still shows how American culture is fascinated with female subservience.

The other part of the media’s positive polygamy images is "The Girl’s Next Door," a reality television show on E!. This show is about Hugh Hefner’s three girlfriends who live in a house next to the Playboy Mansion. Hefner, the porn king himself, has three bunnies at his disposal and he spends the night with his favorite one. Even though they are not married, how are their relationships any different than polygamous ones.

So while Warren Jeffs is getting tried on numerous charges and was wanted for polygamy, Hefner is getting off. While Hefner’s relationships are more about gratuitous sex and publicity for Playboy, the polygamy in "Big Love" is attributed to the protagonist’s religious beliefs. According to the Church of Latter Day Saints’ Web site, Mormons outlawed polygamy in 1890 because of negative consequences such as spouse neglect, marriages of minors and domestic abuse.

According to an March 31 article in The Village Voice, "Big Love’s" creators are an openly gay couple that wanted to use this outlet to elaborate on the discourse of untraditional marriage. This turns out being a roundabout form of propaganda. The creators liken homosexual unions to polygamy because marrying another man is obviously the same as marrying multiple women. Wait ... where’s the connection? Nontraditional marriage and libertarian viewpoints are one thing, but equating female oppression with homosexual marriage is horribly incorrect.

One episode of NPR’s "This American Life," titled "I enjoy being a girl, sort of," shared the female side of polygamy. Elizabeth Joseph, who is one of seven wives in a polygamous marriage, said polygamy is the ultimate feminist lifestyle. She and her sister-wives are all working professional women who share typical wife responsibilities. When one sister-wife had a baby, she paid others to stay home and raise it.

While polygamy might be considered a choice and a lifestyle by some, why do women want to make this choice? Polygamy has many religious roots in Islam, Christianity and Mormonism. Do these patriarchal institutions tell some women they wanted to make this choice.

And why isn’t there a TV show, or any instance, of a woman having multiple husbands? Because polygamy is about male power and sexual dominance. Men can have more children with more wives, while women have biological restrictions with “spreading the seed.

Regardless of free will, polygamy is female sexual repression, keeping women submissive by sexually controlling them. Polygamy also keeps women in the traditional roles of wife and mother, denying them their own identities. It reaffirms the age-old sexist belief that women belong in the homes, as baby makers and husbands’ slaves. This denial of identity caused the depression that ravaged housewives in the 1950s.

With the juxtaposition of fiction and reality, the media show that life and art reflect each other and promote unlikely propaganda for an alternate lifestyle. Perhaps it’s entertaining like the sick way people watch car accidents, but polygamy is passe and does not deserve a place on prime time unless it’s a story about a polygamist behind bars.
 
DailyEvergreen.com
Originally published November 16, 2006
 
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