The Bachelorette is back but sadly not better than ever. Last week, we were told that this season is making Bachelorette history by featuring its first single mom, Emily Maynard. And the production moved ALL the way to North Carolina for Emily and her daughter Ricki. Also, in a new twist, the men all knew the Bachelorette would be Emily. History in the making! Okay, maybe not. But Girls Likes Giants still wants to chime on the new Bachelorette season, Emily, and the season premiere.
The Bachelorette is back! On a scale of negative 3 million to 1, how invested are you in this season? The woman looking for love is a beautiful robot with the mannerisms of a game show hostess, and the show expects us to believe that the words “luxury brand consultant,” strung together, can reasonably be understood as a “job.” That is not a job, show! That is a made-up thing that people put on their business cards so they can pretend like they’re doing something with their lives besides paying too much money for hair products and belts and macaroons. WHERE I COME FROM PEOPLE DON’T HAVE THE LUXURY OF BELTS. (Technically false, but true in spirit. I own four belts. 2/4 are inherited from my mom, one I bought in high school, and one I got at H&M three years ago.) Continue reading →
I love the Food Network, and I watch a lot of their shows. I use their website for recipes and for inspiration, and I am hooked on many of their brands of “reality” TV. I can’t get enough of “Chopped,” I am a devoted fan of both The Next Food Network Star and The Next Iron Chef, and recently Taylor and I watched Worst Cooks in America together. In the past year or two, I have been delighted to see new types of food show up on the Food Network website (i.e. more than grilled sandwiches, Italian specialties, and Emeril’s mix of Cajun/French/Louisiana fare). I am excited to try these new styles of food: Mexican food, Indian food, even some gluten free options. Things I’ve never made before but have eaten with utter gusto in restaurants.
But then I started looking at who was making these foods, and I noticed something that bothers me: the way the network seems, in the cases of non-white and non-black chefs, to match the ethnicity of food with the ethnicity of the host preparing it. This tickled me with significance on and off, and I’d almost forgotten about it, in fact, until Melissa’s post on the problems with ANTM’s representations of racial/ethnic identity (given the approaching end of my graduate studies and impending dissertation defense, this post has been in production for a while now…). Like ANTM’s racial stereotyping, the Food Network seems to be pigeon-holing its “ethnic” stars.
Before I begin, it might be good for you to know: I am a sap. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a well-educated, well-rounded, well-read woman. But I’m also a hopeless romantic who self-medicates during these long single times with guilty pleasure television like The Bachelor.
But I’m not dumb, I swear. I’m a smart person and I’m freakin’ awesome. (See Sarah T’s recent GLG post “Defending Deschanel” for a more thorough defense of the kind of person I am. I get the Jess comparison a lot.) Rather, I’m just a woman who has grown up with an evolving mental picture of a perfect mate. I want what the Bachelorettes want. I want to fall in love and find that fairy tale. That’s why I watch this stuff. And to be fair, I’m not the only one in this boat. After all, both The Bachelor and TheBachelorette are pretty popular.
Now, on with the show. (spoilers abound!)
I’ve liked Ben since Ashley’s season. He’s down to earth, a little off-kilter and he makes wine, which is a total win for a wino gal like me. He’s more relatable than ken doll, jock-brained Brad (Seriously, though. Don’t you think Brad probably has a pink plastic Mattel mound down there?). He’s kind of a normal guy. I believe, under the right circumstances, with my own makeup and wardrobe team, I might even be able to lure him into a conversation.
Throughout this season, I saw him act with a fairly level head. I saw him ejecting ladies in a rational and, I thought, healthy way. He got rid of the crazies, flakes, and fakes. He waded through the boring girls and kept a fairly solid final five including one larger-than-life personality that I, at first, thought was around for production value only.
Courtney simply overshadowed every other lady in the running. I watched each episode this season and have a hard time recalling the names or faces of the other 24 women fighting for our hero’s affections. For the last 8 weeks or so, since the first claws came out, she has been the entire selling point for the season. She was the topic of commercials and online banter and debate, not to mention half of the evening on the “Before the Rose”feature. What would have happened to ratings had Courtney not made it to the end of this competition? Ben’s locks weren’t enough to secure viewers alone.
Ben + Courtney "After the Rose"
What was it exactly that had people so excited about this woman? She wasn’t a villain in the Cruella de Vil sense. The crux of her evil really comes down to a trait Ben’s sister praised in her: she doesn’t “sugar coat”—that is, she isn’t careful. This saccharine series has a premise of finding true love; it’s full of Minnesota-nice, homegrown girls. They are normal girls who deal with conflict in the normal way: through passive aggressiveness. Courtney isn’t passive in any way. That’s her supervillain power. Continue reading →
On The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, there are no heroes. Kyle, Kim, Camille, Taylor, Lisa, and Adrienne each have their individual strong points: Kim is hilarious on the phone, Lisa endearingly forces her punk-rock son to help her with hair extensions, Adrienne hosts excellent spa day parties (so many frozen yogurt toppings)! But they have all been rude, conceited, greedy, or flat-out mean too many times to count. Yet despite—or rather, because of—the cast’s constant breaches of etiquette, RHOBH is a show about manners. Continue reading →
As a follow-up (of sorts) to Phoebe’s lovely discussion of communal TV watching yesterday, I’d like to offer this, sent to me by a friend (thanks, S!):
As someone who felt relief in finding compadres with whom to watch my “shameful” shows (ANTM, Project Runway), and someone who occasionally changes the channel lest her husband see which brand of reality she is watching while alone (What Not To Wear, Bad Girls Club), I can see his point. Previous to finding my small show communities, if my little predilections were revealed in public somehow, I explained them by claiming to watch for aesthetic values (the photoshoots in ANTM, the couture in Project Runway, the food in Top Chef).
But I’m not sure I agree with his thoughts on why we actually watch reality tv: “We say we watch them because it’s like a “train wreck,” or because they “make us feel better about ourselves,” but really we’re perpetually intrigued by, and obsessed with, the lurid toxicity of fame, which is reality television’s only true subject.”
Last night I turned on the television (okay so actually it was the DVR, as I watched Leverage pre Drop Dead Diva) and lo and behold there was Patti Stanger on one of my favorite shows, Drop Dead Diva. Given that last week I wrote about Patti and her matchmaking for millionaires and that I have also recently written on Drop Dead Diva (DDD), I thought an update was in order after I watched my TV worlds collide.
Patti Stanger as Marcie on Drop Dead Diva
On DDD there have been a parade of famous female guests, from Rosie O’Donnell and Paula Abdul in Season 1, to Wanda Sykes in Season 2, and last week Kathy Griffin (which was hilarious). Thus, I suppose Patti’s appearance should not come as such a shock to the system, but for some reason (to be fleshed out shortly) it did. On DDD last night’s “Toxic” episode, Patti played Marcie LaRose, a rather snarky mean girl and Terri’s (Margaret Cho) high school and present day nemesis. Marcie is very much a Patti Stanger type character and we meet her as she asserts to a crowd of single ladies that women should not just give it away. Otherwise, you’ll never get married or so she says.
The major action comes in the midst of Marcie’s lunchtime talk (which Terri’s mother has insisted she and Jane (Brooke Elliot) attend), when Terri and Jane get in a bit of a verbal brawl. Marcie shouts at Terri, Jane defends Terri, Marcie sues Terri for “defamation, per se.” That is, Marcie sues her for slandering her chastity, a suit Marcie ultimately loses at the hands of Kim, Jane’s rival and another firm attorney.
For me the most interesting thing about this episode is that for a show like Drop Dead Diva that most certainly passes the Bechdel Test, and is also, on its best days, about smart, capable, and driven women, Patti Stanger seems an odd fit. So in a show where episodes rarely seem off, this one did and I think it was because of Patti Stanger’s ethic does not quite fit on DDD. For example, Patti is all about women losing weight to get the guy (as indicated by her recent break-up and subsequent weight loss), where DDD seems definitively anti-this line of thought. Instead DDD insists on many different kinds of beauty and that there is no one size fits all way of looking or model for dating. So as the script tried to make fun of Marcie (Patti Stanger) and did paint her as unsympathetic (for example, she ultimately loses her lawsuit against Terri), it also seemed to tread lightly around her.
Patti Stanger on DDD seemed to me like putting a square peg into a round hole: awkward, forceful, and mostly strange. If the show made too much fun of Marcie/Patti and their requisite but similar businesses, then DDD might risk offending the real Millionaire Matchmaker. But if DDD didn’t present some problem with her character on the show, then DDD would have also have felt even odd. So the show toed the middle line and it was weird.
However, the name of the episode is “Toxic,” which at once refers to a case involving toxic dirt and a school (the other storyline from last night), so could be read as having nothing to do with Patti Stanger. But here is where I think the show is quite smart: I choose to read the episode’s title as reflecting the show’s take on Patti (perhaps I’m projecting a little bit). By pairing a toxic dirt story-line and the danger it poses to a group of people, with a story-line about Patti Stanger as a mean girl signals to me a parallel between the two. Thus, the saving grace of last night’s episode and my take away from “Toxic,” is that the show subtly signals that Patti and her dating philosophies are indeed toxic and harmful, just like the bad toxic dirt.
I must confess, I haven’t seen this show yet. In fact, no one has, because it doesn’t premiere until Tuesday. I’ve only seen promos. But I want to think about the messages this promo conveys, because I am both in support of and resistant to its potential impact.
What I like: These women love their bodies! They have learned to resist, or ignore, or laugh at, the judgments American society makes about larger bodies, especially for women. They, I would bet, would laugh just as hard at the idea of low-calorie brownies as I did in my last post. They consider themselves beautiful and sexy and worthy of fulfilling relationships, or just flings, and that is wonderful. Good for them for loving themselves and having a strong support group to hang with. Their lives look like a lot of fun, and I think their decision to take on the problematic, thin-obsessed fashion industry in New York is a brave, and needed, attempt.
What I don’t like: I want to say this cautiously, because my intention is not to offend. I don’t think judgment based on body size is good, I don’t believe in cookie-cutter shapes, and “normative” is a word that shouldn’t even exist because pretty much no one is. However, I can’t avoid, and nor should anyone watching, that this is a reality show, and therefore these women are on display. Maybe they want to be – maybe part of their aim is to bring attention through showing themselves – but there is the same kind of potential for objectification that occurs with every reality show: they are on TV, being watched and judged by people who they can’t see, can’t know, can’t respond to, and probably can’t even imagine. What does that do to the message they are sending? Does it glamorize their lifestyle, and does it do that in a healthy or unhealthy way? Does it make them desirable and admirable, or does it make them products of voyeurism? I can’t decide. Judging only from the promo, there seems to be a equal promise of girl-power, body-image-busting positivity, but I wonder: is that too good to be true?
So the question is, and I put it to you gals: is this a promise of empowerment, or is it just a new direction of objectified sexuality? Is Big Sexy positive or not? Would you watch it? Why? Why not?
Recently, I have been watching a little too much Millionaire Matchmaker. I was not sure there that there was such a thing, but now I firmly believe there might be. My reason for watching in the first place is that the show makes me feel better about myself. It is sort of like watching a bad car crash, where you know you shouldn’t look but you can’t turn away. Seriously, the people who come to Patti, the Matchmaker Maven with what seems to be a poorly calculatedly success rate are oft quite crazy (so she says she is in the 90% success rate, and I beg to differ). However, more recently I have realized it might be time to turn away, and here’s why: watching Patti Stanger is like watching a feminist back peddling bicycle crash over and over again. And that stops being fun at some point.
Patti is a modern day New Jersey yenta and matchmaker to millionaires, and she asserts herself often by throwing around little smatterings of Yiddish here and there. For example, in a recent episode she found a nice millionaire Jewish boy a young shiksa (ie a gentile woman), despite his expressed desires to date a Jewish girl. Don’t get me wrong, I do love a little Yiddish with my television, but her use of it oddly irks me. Perhaps it is because it feels like she is trying to channel the Fiddler on the Roof matchmaker, and seriously Patti’s got nothing on her. Or maybe it is just because she plays to and reinforces the Jewish princess stereotype a little too much for my comfort. But, moving on.
But not only does she mobilize Jewish stereotypes in her performance of Patti, she also is just plain sexist. On Millionaire Matchmaker, despite being a powerful and successful woman herself, she asserts that women must perform highly gendered and stereotypical roles in order to win a mate. We even see her philosophies written onto her own body; for example, recently separated from her fiancé, she is now back on the market after what looks like some serious dieting and a little itty bit of plastic surgery (I think something was lifted). She’ll be the first to tell you that if you want to date a millionaire or anyone I imagine, per Patti’s rules, you must be hot, in shape (ie skinny), educated, and all that jazz. As it turns out, she holds men up to similar standards but she is much more likely to critique a woman’s body or wardrobe (although most of the dates she finds are in fact women for millionaire men).
Patti before weight loss (on the left) and after (on the right)
But for Patti it isn’t all about the body, it is also about maintaining 1950s gender roles and norms. Thus, among her precepts are men must pay for and plan the date. If the woman tries to take control of the date or the planning, she is scolded and sometimes kicked out of Patti’s club (aside: people getting kicked out might be the best of part of the show). It is in Patti’s book, a capital offense for a woman to plan and therefore not let a man be a man. Hey gents, did you know that manliness is defined by your date planning abilities? If we ladies do it, then our relationship is most certainly over before it has even begun. Or at least, that seems to be what Patti is suggesting. When discussing men in the dating world, Patti recommends they become hunters and fishers, which I think winds up making the ladies prey. Problem. So ladies, no planning for you, instead dawn your favorite demure outfit and makeup and wait, and wait, and then wait some more.
These strange, old, and seemingly anti-feminist notions also function along heterosexual lines. That is, every relationship for Patti is seemingly framed as hetero one. And while Patti matches men with men, it seems that she has yet to match two women and often says crazy things about both gay men and lesbians. For more on this topic, check out these two links which detail Patti’s downright discrimination and ignorance: this one and this one.
Perhaps one of the strangest parts of the show is that she backs these crazy theories about women, men, sex, romance, etc. with fake science. For example, she often talks about the chemicals that overwhelm your brain during love or sex and throws out numbers and things like cerebral cortex. However, I feel quite certain, despite not being a chemistry or biology major (okay so I was an English major), that she is wrong and does not make any sense. Any doctors out there, that can confirm?
All that said and done, Patti does have a few pieces of good advice. For example, she doesn’t let her clients drink more than two drinks on any given date (or they can share a bottle of wine) and they are told not to mix and mingle their alcohols. Not bad advice, if I do say so myself. Another seemingly decent rule for dating, per Patti, is no sex without monogamy. Fair enough. It sounds like something my mother once said, plus it is also safe, so that’s good. However, sometimes she points in her mouth when she says this stuff, which makes the advice less great and more awkward. But that about covers the good advice, and seemingly might be advice one gets from their friends, parents, or therapist, rather than needing to pay Patti Stanger for it.
When I only watched one episode every now and then these egregious issues were not always so apparent. However, due to recent overexposure I think the fun and allure of Millionaire Matchmaker has gone. I am tired of watching while dating is reduced to a formula that says I should be submissive and happy about it. Goodbye Patti and your millionaires, I can’t say yet whether I will miss you or not. For now, I think I shall fill my reality TV quota with some Kardashian ladies and some Housewives. But, I shall leave you with this gem:
I’ve been watching The Real Housewives of New York City for the past few seasons and I love it. However, every season, without fail, the finale reunion episode(s) make me question why*.
These women, as evidenced by the screaming, fit-throwing, and blatant contempt for one another are not–by the strictest of definitions–nice. I’ve tried to find some redeeming value in that not-niceness but have yet to come up with any convincing points. It seems more likely that there’s something else at work that makes these women sympathetic.
As seen in the clip and in these photographs, they perfectly embody a glossy, privileged, I-never-learned-how-to-blow-dry-my-own-hair lifestyle. As with most of the Real Housewives shows, these women’s New York is unlikely to be recognized by 98.9% of New Yorkers.
Three of the seven are married (another is in a serious dating relationship), all seven have at least one child, and all seven are involved in multiple business ventures. Nailing down what those ventures are and exactly what their personal involvement entails is impossible, but the performance and spectacle is what matters here.
But I’m getting distracted.
How does the show work to generate affect(ion) for a bunch of wholly unlikeable women?
I think the answer lies somewhere in between the pleasure that can be found in excess–melodramatic, emotional, material, etc.–and appreciation for their interpersonal struggles and triumphs. While these “housewives” aren’t taking on the burden of performing traditional domestic roles, they are still constantly and painfully negotiating relationships with one another, their spouses or romantic interests, their children, and their employees. It is important that the show is making this emotional labor visible and valued.
It is also important to be clear: These relational negotiations aren’t necessarily anything like real life nor are they meant to be.
(a still from one of the reunion episodes: Ramona, Sonja, and Alex)
But the emotion these women seem to always be struggling with–how to communicate their feelings, how to maintain composure, how to tell when paranoia is valid, how to stay out of a fight, how to be a good friend, how to be angry without coming to blows or getting bleeped–is real.
Because these are actual living humans rather than fictional characters (though Lily Bart could give them all a real run for their money), it is fair for viewers to assume that these women have emotions. I am not making a claim that Ramona Singer’s tears at around 2:20 in this clip are any more real or authentic than Lily Bart’s final letter, i.e. that there is some kind of inherent truthiness to their emotions. What I am claiming is that Ramona Singer is a human and the affect of her actual being is impossible to deny. Just because Ramona’s tears cannot be assumed as an honest representation of sadness doesn’t mean they are without value. Instead, the tears can be seen as richer for their multivalent possibilities. Ramona could be crying because she’s frustrated with how she performed in her scenes that night, she’s feeling insecure about her outfit, her head hurts and she’s hungry, or for no reason at all other than she knew how very excerpt-able that moment would be for commercials and is excited by the possibility of maximizing her air time. Ramona’s “real” motivation is blessedly oblique. Her authenticity is unimportant. What matters is that there is a very real woman and she is crying.
I’m still not sure how to more deeply suss out this claim. For example: how is this different than saying that a filmic adaptation of a play is less affective and less authentic than the stage performance of the play? I’ve been thinking over it for days and this is still where I’m stuck. One of things that keeps returning to me is this consideration of a living, breathing, crying body. Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse novels have been one of the great delights of my summer and yet I feel waaaaay less attached to the mostly likeable (novel-version) Sookie than I do to these women. I don’t think it is a matter of successful or unsuccessful character development (Sookie) as much as it is a conflation of character and actual sharing-the-same-atmosphere-as-me celebrity (Ramona). Theoretically, Ramona is accessible to me in the same ways she is accessible to her fellow cast-members, the underlings at her jewelry parties, her stylist, or the camera person for the day. Theoretically, she is always Ramona.
*I’m throwing out a lot of wobbly, nebulous ideas here–mostly to force myself to articulate some of the impulses and flutters living in my brain right now–and am 100% open to being totally, totally, completely wrong. Ask me questions. Tell me what you think.
