I love "Live with Regis and Kelly". I find them both hilarious. There are part of my morning routine, along with feeding my baby,eating breakfast and "The View" . . Recently the show have started their annual Beautiful Baby search in collaboration with Parenting magazine. Parents are urged to post or send in pictures of their babies and I am not sure who chooses but the 10 finalists are sent to New York to meet with Regis and Kelly but also to have a special photo shoot with Parenting magazine. They also win prizes. The winner get $125.000 for college tuition and his picture on the cover of the magazine.
As a proud parent of a cute baby, I was thinking of sending a picture. I am not sure that my baby will win but I have some pictures that can make anyone beam in awe at him. I am sure he could make the top ten at least. However, I cannot send the pictures for the following crazy reasons.
I come from a country where "Soutoura" or discretion is very important. People tend not to expose themselves and keep their business very private. They think that the more they expose themselves, the more they are subject to what they call "Tchat" or "La'mign". It is hard to explain what both these words exactly means, but let me try. In simple it just means that the more people talk about you, the more bad things happen. I tend to think like that a bit as well. For instance, I never talk about a project to anyone until it is final because I am afraid that it could get jinxed. And I remember one day my mother in law flipping out about my brother in law girlfriend because she let her school post her picture for an ad in the newspaper. The girl took ill later on and my mother in law was convinced that it was due to the "Tchat". I am not convinced something bad can happen to my son if he is shown on national TV after I send his picture to the show. But, I do not want to take chances.
Besides my husband who cares about "Chat" a lot as well, may flip if he knows about it. He gets a bit angry whenever he finds out that I posted pictures of my son on Facebook so imagine his reaction. We live in a world where if you do something, it can be on the net by the end of the day. It used to be stars and politicians that were the target. But no one is safe now. With Facebook and Twitter and pictures that are tagged, you can know things that a person wanted to keep to herself like a pregnancy or that he/she was cheating. You can say that there is nothing harmful about a baby picture but I would answer with what my mother always tell me: "you never know what an ill-intended person could do!" In a land where Voodoo is the weapon of choice to settle disputes or get rid of someone whom we envy, a photo can be very useful. I am sure it is pretty risky to put up my baby photo on Facebook but I calm myself by thinking that I am only sharing it to my friends and none of them would never do anything to hurt me. However, I am not as ready yet to send my baby picture to the show (for national exposure) no matter how tempting the prizes are.
Senegalese people are a bit different than Americans in this sense. They do not want to expose themselves. The culture is changing with the new technologies mentionned above. But in my homeland we are still far from the crazy world of reality TVs, where every wants its 15 minutes of fame. We still believe that exposure is not necessarily a good thing. I am sure we will catch up very soon. We will not be able to avoid or stop it.
As far as I am concerned, I will keep the Soutoura to a certain level I am comfortable with. Hence, I will keep on dreaming about entering to the contest and winning it without really doing anything about it.
Nevertheless, I cannot possibly enter the show. I am not a legal resident in this country.
http://bventertainment.go.com/tv/buenavista/regisandkelly/contests/beautifulbaby10/index.html
