23-year-old former prostitute and drug addict Kandice Machado got pregnant from a one-night stand. She is featured on the TLC show Birth Moms, which follows Kandice and two other pregnant young women (Lindsay Batts, and Taylor Walters)who stay at an adoption center and decide whether or not to place their child in an adoptive home.
Kandice, who already has two kids (one was a crack baby,) is seen smoking on camera, openly shoplifts, talks about shoplifting (she calls it “professional shopping,”) and demands alcohol.
She is taped by TLC’s cameras grabbing lots of jewelry off of an unnamed discount store’s shelves (the cameras never show her actually walking out with out paying, though,) and then bragging about stealing on camera.
“I am considered a ‘professional shopper.’ I have a discount. I get things for free. I went “shopping” today, and got all the girls stuff.
“I’m not even gonna lie, I shoplift. Catch me if you can. I’m not ashamed of what I do, if it came down to it, I would go prostitute my body if one of these girls with a kid needed something. I would go prostitute my body for $5 to feed the kids.”
“Me helping other people makes me stronger in God’s eyes.”
Lindsay commented about Kandice’s “professional shopping” habit: “She got necklaces and stuff, but she didn’t get them all for herself, she got gifts, which was nice. So it was a good thing, in a bad way. I didn’t see nothin’.’”
Is it any surprise the girls in the complex eye Kandice when their cash and medicine starts to disappear?
When the other girls suggest they get wine on the way home, she exclaims “I don’t want wine, I want tequila.” So desperate for a margarita, she called the police department while she’s still at the restaurant. Apparently when they ran her ID, they forgot to give it back to her, so it had not actually been suspended. Oddly enough, the police officer actually brings her ID to the restaurant (and of course, she smokes outside while she waits.) Kandice brags about the whole incident “The police officer came at my beck and call. Nobody f**ks with me, not even police officers.”
While driving to her prenatal appointment with level-headed Taylor, Kandice asks “Are you sure it’s not gonna die if I don’t get cigarettes in him?” Taylor replied “You should STOP smoking!”
In interview, Taylor points out: “Smoking, drinking: you are risking someone else’s life that you shouldn’t even be in control of.”
Amen, Taylor!
According to the March of Dimes, babies who are born to a woman who smoked throughout her pregnancy are at risk for being born “with birth defects such as cleft lip or palate, prematurely, or at low birthweight.”
However, unlike most expecting moms Kandice wasn't going to let maternity get in the way of her lifestyle choices like smoking and drinking booze.
The former prostitute was also a self-confessed shoplifter and vowed that if she had to, "I would go and prostitute my body for $5 to feed the kids."
The adoptive parents that Kandice had chosen for her unborn baby boy apparently knew about her questionable habits. "I told my adoptive family that I smoked," she said, "'cuz that’s something they need to know. I even told them I had a drink the other night. I'm not gonna lie."
The special chronicled the stories of three pregnant women who were preparing to give their children up for adoption (interestingly, they all had other kids that they had kept). They stayed at a sort of compound that also provided food for them as they prepared to give birth and sign their babies away. It would have been poignant were the three not entirely glib, especially Kandice, a 23-year-old who openly shoplifts, smokes and then goes to a Mexican restaurant specifically so she can drink. Alcohol. While she's pregnant. (Crafty editing doesn't let us know how pregnant, but oh god, does it matter? And also, in the following scene, it is said that she has two weeks before she's due.) And then she needs to retrieve her ID from the cop who arrested her last week for shoplfiting. And then another pregnant girl assumes that the cop's willingness to drive to the restaurant means that Kandice has a "bombay," and I don't even know what she's talking about.
Either Kandice is trolling us or the world trolled Kandice into thinking there was any benefit to publicly showing the depths of human repulsiveness. This show is Bad Girls Club meets 16 & Pregnant meets Pink Flamingos. I never really understood John Waters' disdain for reality TV because he clearly predicted it. Even non-competition shows are competition for who's the most disgusting.
