Nadya Suleman is a 21st-century circus freak. The fact that she has now been offered $1 million to star in a porn film just further proves it.
Arguably, becoming a circus freak and/or porn star wasn't her intent. But it has happened nonetheless, and one of the reasons it it is happening is that Suleman's actual intent remains murky: Did she want fourteen children -- or only seven? Was she seeking fame or is she stunned, repulsed, revolted by this tidal wave of publicity? Suleman's dark sweep of hair, earnest eyes and plump lips -- a look that celebrity gossipmongers say she deliberately models after that of her favorite star, Angelina Jolie -- now flash on every talk show, in every magazine except Popular Mechanics. And Vivid Entertainment, Inc., has just offered her $1 million if she will agree to have sex with eight different men in a porn film. (Suleman has refused, telling Radaronline.com: "Who wants to see me naked? Maybe in a year when the baby fat goes away.")
Something in human nature craves circus freaks, wants to leer and jeer at human bodies in extremis. In Shakespeare's time, Europeans regularly lined up to view "human oddities" -- the limbless and the extra-limbed, conjoined twins, the very tall, the very small. Well into the 20th century, popular attractions included P.T. Barnum's "Zip the Pinhead," the midget "Tom Thumb," and the Tocci Twins. For viewers, the thrill is partly fueled by revulsion at the Other, partly by realization that this odd-looking figure is not really so Other after all. It's a "there but for the grace of God" thing: That armless boy or furry woman belongs to my species, and swallows food just as I do. And yet....
These days, we like to think we've outgrown our ancestors' unapologetic yen for freaks -- which was not unlike their yen for public executions. These days, when certain frat-party jokes can land the jokester in sensitivity training, many among us might have utterly exorcised the circus-freak impulse. But many have not, and the struggle to control it and/or channel it is one of today's most compelling psychological conundrums. How do we still gape at the differently shaped, at human-bodies-gone-bizarre, while still claiming that it's wrong to judge and rude to stare?
Witness the Suleman Phenomenon. And yes, her baby-bump photos -- or should that be "babies-bump" -- made the Internet rounds last week.
