The Surreal Life
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OPINION America’s Next The Real Top Model Housewives of Orange County Flavor of Heidi and Love Spencer from THE The Hills SURREAL LIFE... Reality TV: harmful fluff or guilty pleasure We asked Jennifer L. Pozner, author of Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty Pleasure TV, and Q: Alannah O’Neill, a reality-TV junkie, to weigh in. Women are bitches. Women are stu- Women are…catty, manipulative pid. Women are incompetent at work bitches From frenemies on lifestyle and failures at home. How do we series like The Real Housewives, The know? Because reality TV tells us so. Hills and Jersey Shore to flat-out The media shapes and informs our enemies on dating and beauty shows ideas about people, politics and public like The Bachelor and America’s Next policy. Just ask Mike Darnell, the bot- Top Model, reality TV presents CON tom-feeding suit at Fox who brought women as being in constant competi- us Who Wants to Marry a Multi- tion for romantic love, professional Millionaire, Joe Millionaire and success and personal fulfillment. Temptation Island. The secret to his “We’re all enemies, vying for the success, he once told Entertainment same prize,” says one For Love Weekly, is that his series are “steeped or Money dater of her sexed- Bachelor Pad in some social belief.” up competitors. As proof, a If, like most people, you think that parade of love-starved ladies reality TV is harmless fluff, Darnell’s badmouth one another to the ) admission should give you pause. lone Y chromosome in their When it comes to women, the “social midst. “Women tend to be jeal- beliefs” that reality producers, writers ous, catty and bitchy,” insists and editors exploit are both anachron- one of Joe Millionaire’s so- REAL HOUSEWIVES istic and toxic. So, what does reality called “gold diggers.” One an- TV want us to believe it means to be gry Bachelor babe proclaims, The Bachelorette a “real” woman? According to a de- “I know better than to trust cade of “unscripted” (but carefully women!” while another rants crafted) television, we’re desperate, that “Girls can be conniving, pathetic gold diggers who aren’t deceiving and just vicious!” happy without husbands. Here are The lunkhead princes of such three of the genre’s most damaging shows hardly hold their harems tropes about women. in higher esteem: “There is h THE EVERETT COLLECTION/THE CANADIAN PRESS ( 104 ELLE CANADA ELLECANADA.COM OPINION Reality TV’s original “dumb blondes” were Jessica Simpson As I read nothing like a from Newlyweds: Jennifer L. good catfight!” Nick & Jessica and Pozner’s Anna Nicole Smith says Flavor Flav piece on the from The Anna with a smirk on Nicole Show. downsides to Flavor of Love; PRO reality TV, my second-season heart sank. Bachelor Aaron What did I get myself grumbles, “The vindictive nature of all Women are...stupid, ditzy bimbos into? Why had I volun- the women is starting to show.” Across unscripted subgenres, the female teered to defend my fa- That’s right—all the women. It’s not un- half of the population is portrayed as vourite guilty pleasure? usual for the genre to reduce an entire gen- cringe-inducingly stupid. After all, we learn You see, I love reality TV der to a few insulting adjectives. Women’s from Bridezillas’ Karen, “Thinking is a the same way I love red inherent cattiness is coded into promo com- waste of time. Thinking is for people who wine and big chocolate mercials that plaster “BACKSTABBING!” have no brains.” When the genre’s gender cupcakes: I consume in big, bold captions, while images of pret- templates were first being created, reality without question. In fact, ty babes are accompanied by feral, hissing TV taught us that “dumb blondes” exist if I were to count the soundtracks. “The claws were bound to for our comedic pleasure. In 2002, the hours I’ve spent in front come out,” promise announcers. original reality-TV train wreck The Anna of The Bachelor, The Editing also plays up regional and ethnic Nicole Show encouraged us to snicker Amazing Race and stereotypes. Stuck-up snobbery and betray- at the steady mental and physical decline The Real Housewives, al among wealthy white women are major of a buxom, stoned former Playboy well, put it this way: My themes of The Real Housewives of Orange Playmate, whose slurred speech and er- mother would probably County and The Real Housewives of New ratic behavior fuelled the tag line “It’s not tell me to “go outside York City. In contrast, Italian-American supposed to be funny. It just is.” Then and get some fresh air.” women throw “low-class” tantrums on The came The Newlyweds’ Jessica Simpson, I was a teenager Real Housewives of New Jersey, flipping who led news outlets to report that the when the reality boom over banquet tables and accusing each stereotype of the “dumb blonde” won’t hit. Roughly a couple other of prostitution, while the African- go away because “maybe it’s true.” thousand hours later, Americans on Real Housewives of Atlanta Reality-TV producers cut their teeth on I’ve watched people get into verbal and physical brawls. “dumb blondes” like Smith and Simpson, date Flavor Flav, work To ensure that women dutifully perform but they want viewers to believe that fe- for Diddy, get sober, their bitch-tastic roles, producers egg them male stupidity knows no racial limits. On fight, cry and fall in love, ) SHOW on with techniques that would make psy- The Real Housewives of Atlanta, NeNe all from the comfort of OLE ops intelligence officers proud. The same Leakes was portrayed as a simpering idiot, my living room. I agree C I N tactics that generate the genre’s oh-so-im- unable to help her son with his math be- with Pozner’s take on A NN portant “drama” (sleep deprivation, misin- cause she didn’t know if one-third was big- how women are depict- A HE T formation, constant surveillance, isolation ger or smaller than one-half. The only ed. Still, a whole book ( ART from the outside world, minimal food, white woman, Kim Zolciak, couldn’t pass could be written about W STE ubiquitous alcohol) are used as elements of elementary English: When asked “How how unfavourably men , torture. And so, they snipe away. They at- do you spell ‘cat’?” she replied “K-A-T.” are portrayed on reality VOLLAND tack each other (“You are all a bunch of Yet, during the show’s first season, view- TV. From the oversexed / catty-ass bitches!” Flavor of Love), con- ers never learned about cast member clowns on Jersey Shore spire like Mean Girls (“[She’s] a ho and DeShawn Snow’s postgraduate divinity and Bachelor Pad to the COLLECTION villains of Big Brother she’s got to go,” Joe Millionaire) and studies. Why? Because filming an intelli- AL B and Survivor, “unscript- O mouth off in bleep-filled “confessionals” gent African-American woman pursuing K THE (“You f*cking worthless c*nt!” America’s a master’s degree would have broken pro- ed” television tells us that / Next Top Model). Whether the women are ducers’ preferred narrative: that black “real men” are buff and sloshed and overtired or sober and alert, women (and their wealthy white friends) sexually promiscuous, TELEVISION such angry outbursts are stoked and edited are gossipy idiots. don’t display emotion ENT to “prove” that no matter how sophisti- Sometimes, entire series are built around (other than anger) and, M cated or sweet her facade, nearly every women’s supposed idiocy. On Beauty and let’s face it, aren’t ENTERTAIN woman is a selfish schemer deep down. the Geek, dim-witted hotties are paired h Mensa material. h ! E 106 ELLE CANADA ELLECANADA.COM OPINION with brainy, socially awkward boys and desecrate cremated ashes (The Simple Life). While I doubt that “teach” each other “valuable” life skills. We can’t serve and protect (“Female offi- a show about good The men instruct the women in science, cers put people’s lives at risk,” a husband Samaritans being nice to grammar and geography. In return, the tells his “new wife,” a cop, on Wife Swap). one another would be a “beauties” teach the geeks how to choose We can’t cook as delectably as men (only ratings hit, I don’t believe good-ass jeans, construct the perfect pickup one Top Chef winner in six seasons has that schadenfreude entirely line and dazzle at par- been female). We can’t explains reality TV’s addic- ties with tidbits about even dress without em- tive draw. It appeals to us Brangelina. The point Boob power— barrassing ourselves because, at some level, it of this “social experi- not brainpower— (What Not to Wear). democratizes the star sys- ment”? One gender’s tem. Case in point: Susan knowledge is vital to is the real key to The bottom line... Boyle. The 49-year-old the world, while the female success. Reality shows can be ad- cat lady from Blackburn, other has a lock on dictively amusing—but, Scotland, dreamed a all things superficial. make no mistake, they’re dream and people all over Worse still, the few intellectual women also deeply political. Their ideology mirrors the world fell for her. The who appear are reprimanded, as when Mad Men minus the cool clothes, and their antithesis to a sexualized Tyra Banks eliminated a med student from producers routinely glorify and try to re- pubescent pop star, this America’s Next Top Model because her vive archaic gender stereotypes.