Lifetime has green-lit a reality show about five young women living in a Catholic convent, who are trying to decide whether or not to become nuns 4 life. Titled The Sisterhood, the show is the brainchild of Hot Snakes Productions, who are also behind the painfully fake and boring Breaking Amish. Hopefully the nuns will fare better.
While the five consider joining the convent during the discernment phase, each of the women has agreed to allow cameras to document her experience in the accelerated program that tests their devotion over the six hourlong episodes.
The series will explore whether the modern women can rise to serve God when they are cut off from family and friends and embedded in an unfamiliar community. By taking vows of chastity, poverty and obedience, each of the women featured on The Sisterhood leaves behind everything they’ve come to love — boyfriends, fashion, jewelry — to see if they want to become servants to the Church and Brides of Christ.
Nuns! So hot right now!
As you might remember, 18.5 million fucking people tuned in to watch flagrant nun-fest Sound of Music Live! on NBC, despite the fact that it was, as our own Madeleine Davies put it, “a personal attack on our childhood memories.”
And everyone’s still turdin’ out over Sister Cristina, the Sicilian nun who made the judges (including “a rapper”!!!) cry with her rendition of Alicia Keys’s “No One” on The Voice Italy.
Which raises the question: Are nuns the NEXT BIG THING? Are nuns the new witches? Like how witches are the new zombies and zombies were the new vampires?
And, while we’re at it: Are nuns, as an institution, feminist? Obviously Catholicism is markedly not, but there’s something sisters-doin’-it-for-themselves about nuns. (Also they are sometimes mega-hardcore.) This Ann Patchett interview had some interesting perspective on how nuns can be amazing, powerful role models for female friendship and women’s devotion to work:
The nuns’ lives circumnavigate conventional distinctions between dependence and independence, and the radical and the conservative. Are they themselves aware of these disconnects?
Oh, best not to speak for nuns. They’re all going to have their own take on how they see their lives. The differences between the orders alone would keep me from getting into this. There are nuns who wear full habits and lead much more restricted lives who don’t even regard the Mercies as real nuns. The Mercies do not look upon this kindly. The way I understand it, being a nun is a cross between a marriage and a job. It’s a very devoted, all-encompassing relationship that from my limited perspective seems to have more to do with God than the church.
