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Yes, if you were watching, that was Nadya Suleman aka Octomom you saw on the American Idol Gives Back benefit show Wednesday night. She appeared in the phone bank, answering lines with a few of her older children. On Tuesday, the day before, you also may have caught her on the Oprah Winfrey Show, where she said she does not regret having her children, but she does feel guilty because no one person can meet all the needs of even one child, let alone 14. She said now she understands that her desire for more children was about filling a void in herself.
In February, BlogHer CE Melissa Ford wrote a good piece on the Octomom saga: "One Year After Octomom: From Magazine Covers to IVF Regulations," and here we are two months later still hearing about this mother's life with octuplets. She will probably not leave the public eye completely until those eight babies, born to her while she was raising six other children, are grown and out of her house completely. For financial reasons, holding the public eye may be a good thing for the family; however, such scrutiny has drawbacks.
Though she likened her family to a carnival attraction that the media exploits in the ugliest ways, she acknowledged on Oprah that the money from media appearances may be one of the few ways she can earn enough money to support her colossal brood. She does not want to be on government welfare.
The Winfrey show, however, did not pay Suleman. Oprah stressed that she never pays for interviews. She decided to do an "Octomom" show after getting a letter from Suleman asking Oprah to please help her set the record straight about who she is and what she feels.
Speaking during a video shoot for the show while she was at home with the children, Suleman said the following:
I'm not a celebrity. I'm a pseudo-celebrity catapulted into this big media mess. Did I want it? No. Was I in denial thinking that it wouldn't happen? Yeah. I had no idea like helicopters would start swarming over the hospital.
Octomom is a fictional character. I thought it was hilarious in the beginning. And (then) people took it to an extreme, and I think it's the media that perpetuated this because it's just a cycle, a money-making cycle. For example, in the beginning, I'm all bad. I'm all crazy. I've never had plastic surgery in my life and all of sudden they say I want to be like this (Angelina) Jolie actor. I've heard of her name, never even knew who she was. (Suleman on Oprah)
After that segment, Oprah showed clips of Suleman taking her children to a park while in voice-over Oprah said, "Nadya walks a fine line between keeping the public interested in her so she can sell her Octomom image and feeling like she has zero privacy."
Frustrated by the paparazzi following them, Suleman huffs, "This is ridiculous. We -- I feel like a carnival attraction." She then says that's why they don't go to the park anymore.
It's "invasive" and "exploitative," she continues in the clip. Later in a one-on-one interview with Oprah in which Suleman still speaks from her remote location, she thanked the talk show host for giving her a platform to speak. She said her voice has been "distorted (to the public) if not completely denied."
Oprah asked her whether Suleman herself has contributed to the carnival attraction image. Again the bikini cover from Star flashed on the screen.
Suleman said it's her job to provide for her children. She said she was "ashamed" of the cover, that it's not her character, and that she tends to shy away from the camera. That's when the talk turned to offers for her to do porn.
She said she's turned down an offer from a porn studio to make a movie, that they came to her only three weeks after the babies were born and have approached her three times about making a porn movie, but she refuses to sink so low. The offer was disrespectful and unfathomable to her, she said, and if she ever did such a thing she would need a ton of money to move her family
