August 14, 2026 • 40 mins
Reality TV is a harmless guilty pleasure...or is it? Find out in this classic!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Anny and Samantha and all the stuff
I ever told you production by Heart Radio, and today
we are bringing back a classic about which I know
little about, just reality TV.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Yeah, you know what.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
I have decided we need to come back when revisit
this conversation because the growth, the up and down of
reality TV has been a lot, especially in this time
of influencers, tik talkers and ads like Meta, which we
just recently talked about with Bridget. And speaking of Bridget,
(00:48):
she is with Emily. This is one of those classics
where they talk about can you be a feminist?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
And also like reality TV?
Speaker 3 (00:55):
And that's a great question, and I think Bridget does
a pretty good job in kind of having internal conversation atward.
I love it and I think it's important. But I
do want to come back and have this conversation because
it's been a long time since I've watched reality TV,
but in actuality we tink about it, like with the
videos that I watch on YouTube that's technically reality TV
(01:16):
in a different format. But with that, I think it's
time to have that conversation again and might as well
start with revisiting this classic.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
So we hope you enjoyed this classic.
Speaker 4 (01:32):
Hey, this is bridget and and you're listening to stuff
Mom never told you. And today I'm pretty excited to
talk through one of my favorite topics, reality TV.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Not just any reality TV, trashy reality TV. I'm talking shows.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
Like The Cards, keeping Up with Them, keeping up with Them,
not just Kim, but Kim, Chloe, Kylie, the entire crew
crewk Crew with the k of course, I'm talking shows
like Basketball Wives.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
I'm talking shows.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
Like Real Housewives, which is everywhere, Real Housewives of Everywhere,
particularly Atlanta, because it's my very favorite one.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Basically, if you're anything like.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
Me, you love love, love love love kicking back with
a good trashy reality TV show. Sometimes, I'm not gonna lie,
it's pretty fun that just turn off your brain and
just watch people have really inane conversations and have arguments
about things that are super trivial that really don't matter,
and you know, throw drinks in each other's faces.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Sometimes that's fun. Right.
Speaker 5 (02:45):
First of all, I feel like reality TV is more
nuanced than it seems.
Speaker 4 (02:49):
Oh, as a kinnoisseur of reality TV, I could one
hundred percent vouch for that. It absolutely is probably my
favorite thing about reality TV is how campy and over
the time it is. There are things that come up
on reality TV shows that are so over the top
you can't believe they've actually happened, And of course they're
scripted in YadA YadA.
Speaker 6 (03:08):
YadA, but right, they didn't actually happen.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
I can't beieve that happened because it's fake.
Speaker 4 (03:13):
But that's why I love it so much, is that
it's sort of this hyper reality that imagine.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
If this was the actual world that we lived in.
It's not, but imagine if it was.
Speaker 5 (03:22):
Yeah, there's almost this need to like suspend belief for
a moment. To really enjoy reality TV, you have to
suspend belief and not to mention, suspend your feminist ideology,
which I think The Onion parodied so perfect in their
article satirical article obviously titled woman takes short half hour
(03:42):
break from being feminist to enjoy TV show.
Speaker 4 (03:46):
That article is basically my life when I come home
from a long day of being mired and feminist politics
and super depressed. Sometimes I just want to come home
and watch my dang shows right and turn off my
brain and not think about things for a while. The
article says, saying that she just wanted a little time
to relax and not even think about confining gender stereotypes.
Local healthcare industry consultant Natalie Jenkins reportedly took a thirty
(04:08):
minute break from being a feminist last night to kick
back and enjoy a television program. Jenkins told reporters that
after a long and tiring day at the office, all
she wanted to do was return home, sit down on
her couch, and turn on an episode of TC's reality
show Say Yes to the Dress, and treat herself to
a brief half hour where she could look past all
the various and near constant ways popular culture undermines the
(04:30):
progress of women.
Speaker 5 (04:32):
There's a quote from said women in this article saying
between nine and nine thirty, I'm not even going to
take notice of all the two dimensional portrayals of women
as fashion and shopping obsessed prima donnas.
Speaker 6 (04:43):
That part of my brain will just be switched off.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
You're here, Natalie, I am right there with you. And
it's funny, but it's also true and fictional. Natalie and
I are not alone. Women watch more reality TV than men.
According to Civic Science, a market research firm, women are
ten percent sant more likely than men to be what
they call super fans of reality TV.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
That's people who watch more than five hours a week.
Speaker 6 (05:05):
Would you say that you're a super fan.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
I'm a super super fan.
Speaker 4 (05:08):
If you look at my DVR, my DVR is all
Judge Judy, Law and Order, criminal Intent.
Speaker 6 (05:13):
Well, that's not reality TV. I mean it's inspired by
real events. Yeah, I love Mysonalan ar Oh.
Speaker 4 (05:18):
I could if I my dream of dreams is to
host a podcast spit off that's just law and order focused.
Speaker 6 (05:24):
Yes, you need to pitch that right away.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
I love that. Networks call me. No, it's real.
Speaker 5 (05:31):
I mean, you're a Kim Kardashian selfie book owning reality
TV fan, are you not?
Speaker 4 (05:36):
Can I say people gave Kim Kardashian a lot of
crap about that selfie book. If her name were Andy Warhol,
it would be on the top ten best art book
lists of the year it came out.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
I agree.
Speaker 5 (05:46):
I think the I mean, for me, I'm not a
reality TV super fan, but I am a Kardashian super fan,
So we really should devote an entire episode to them
on another day. But I think the Kardashians have shown
how much reality TV can be a platform for your business,
that is your whole life, and they've turned their lives
(06:07):
into business machines, into money making machines.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Definitely.
Speaker 4 (06:13):
So I mentioned earlier in the show that I'm obsessed
with the show Real Housewives of Atlanta. Nini Leaks is
someone who I quote often.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
She's great.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
Fun fact, her picture is hanging in the African American
Cultural Museum here in DC. If you go to that museum,
they have a wall dedicated to black gestures and her
iconic point is in the museum as an iconic black gesture.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Yeah, so fun fast.
Speaker 6 (06:40):
She's the most giffable person, Nimi Leaks. Oh, Jeff, pardon me.
Speaker 5 (06:45):
She's a very highly referenced jiff On, Jiffy or Giffy
she is.
Speaker 4 (06:51):
She is as much as I love Real Housewives of
Atlanta as this light, fluffy, mindless entertainment. Recently, I've had
to sort of contend with the fact that they're entertainment
might not just be for entertainment value.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Actually it can be kind of heavy.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
I'm talking about the controversy earlier this week that one
of the characters on the show, Kenya, was found making
some pretty transphobic statements on the show, And even before that,
Kenny had a situation on the show where she was
actually the victim of intimate partner abuse, and rather than
showing this as the serious and very scary thing that
it was on the show, it was more handled like
(07:25):
a juicy plot line, which I found very, very upsetting
and troubling. I actually wrote a piece on Huffing and
Post and I just wondered, why is this not being
treated as very.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Very serious abuse.
Speaker 4 (07:36):
Why are Bravo executives putting a camera in this woman's
face and having her talk about.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Her situation as if it's a.
Speaker 4 (07:41):
Juicy, you know, argument at a party, when in fact
it's really.
Speaker 6 (07:45):
Scary, really scary.
Speaker 5 (07:46):
I think the same sort of reality TV washing over
serious issues happens again and again on Real Housewives. I'm
not the most avid watcher of the Real Housewives empire,
but I do recall that The Real Housewives of Beverly
Hills featured some really scary footage of Kim Richards dealing
with drug and alcohol abuse issues, or purported drug and
(08:10):
alcohol abuse issues, and keeping the cameras rolling when this
is a woman who's experiencing a medical low point in
her life, who needs serious intervention and help and support. Instead,
they're making money off of her spectacle, which I just
thought was really not okay exactly.
Speaker 4 (08:28):
And even furthermore, when Russell Armstrong killed himself, he was
a husband of one of the characters on our Real
Housewives franchise, it was later revealed that he was abusive
towards his wife.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
And I like reality.
Speaker 4 (08:40):
TV, but that's scary and serious, and I don't feel
good about promoting people's darkest moments as a spectacle.
Speaker 5 (08:48):
Yeah, it's pretty gross actually if you think about the
fact that, like, they're using your attention to sell ads,
and they're using someone's very real crisis as drama that
is being commercialized.
Speaker 6 (09:02):
I just find that really gross.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
And I think back to one of the earliest reality
TV shows, The Real World. I remember the character Ruthie,
who have actually met in real life.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
When I was in college.
Speaker 4 (09:12):
She came to give a talk at my college about
safe sex and healthy choices. So shout out to Ruthie.
But I don't know if you guys remember I'm kind
of dating myself here. Reality TV didn't used to be
the spectacle of people making dangerous and abusive decisions. It
was just showing people what they were doing. And it
was Ruthie drunk driving outside of a nightclub one night.
(09:33):
That was kind of a turning point where you actually
saw MTV producers in real time trying to figure out
what to do. Do they let her drive home and
film it? Do they stop her? And it was really
for me a turning point of Oh, one, reality TV
is going to be a big part of our culture. Two,
what is the responsibility of the people who produce this
kind of programming to make sure they're putting out content
(09:54):
that is responsible.
Speaker 5 (09:56):
Or just to make sure that the people who are
in front of the camera are safe, playing and simple.
And when abuse and sort of spectacle is made the norm,
then we end up with reality TV that's not just
harmful for the people on it, but it's harmful for
the people viewing it. It normalizes behavior that should not
be normalized.
Speaker 4 (10:13):
Absolutely so, even though I'm someone who is a huge
advocate for coming home after a hard day, putting your
feet up and just watching four hours of Jersey Shore,
you have to ask yourself, am I actually contributing to
something negative and harmful? Can you really just turn off
your brain and consume this entertainment mindlessly or is something
else going on.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
We're going to dive into that after this quick break
ed we're back.
Speaker 4 (10:43):
I've been just admitting some of my favorite guilty pleasure
TV and thinking about whether it is a guilty pleasure,
if I should feel guilty about it, or if I'm
contributing to something a little more harmful than I might realize.
So one thing that you talked about is the people
in front of the camera, whether or not they are
being treated in a way that is safe and healthy.
But it's a it's important to think about those who
are in front of the TV consuming this programming as well.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
It probably isn't a surprise to y'all.
Speaker 4 (11:06):
Reality programming isn't really that helpful when it comes to
young girls.
Speaker 5 (11:10):
It's not good for young girls. It's probably not good
for all of us. But there's been a lot of
research done by the Girl Scouts Institute on the rise
of reality TV and how it has some troubling consequences
for young girls consuming it. Forty seven percent of girls
and young women say that they're regular viewers.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
That's a lot.
Speaker 5 (11:27):
That's almost fifty percent of the population, with thirty percent
saying that they sometimes watch so that's almost eighty percent
of girls and young women saying that they sometimes or
regularly view reality TV. Eighty six percent of girls believe
these shows quote often pit girls against each other to
make the shows more exciting, and another seventy percent say
(11:50):
that these shows make people think it's okay to treat
each other badly.
Speaker 4 (11:54):
That makes me so sad, because if all of these
young girls are consuming this media and a lot of
them are agreeing that it makes people think it's okay
to treat each other in a way that's not nice,
you would just have to ask, like, what are they consuming,
what are they learning about. I'm a big proponent in
reminding folks that some kind of content is only suited
for adults, and I think reality TV might fall in
that category. But according to a study by Parent Television Council,
(12:18):
a lot of young folks are consuming reality TV, particularly
on MTV. And what's kind of interesting is that MTV
reality TV programming is actually some of the most harmful
out there.
Speaker 5 (12:29):
Yeah, we're talking about things like teen Mom and Jersey Shore,
and I'm surprised to hear that teen Mom falls into
that category of being sort of slammed as being bad
for children and especially young girls watching it. A study
actually released by the National Bureau of Economic Research says
that Sixteen and Pregnant ultimately led to a five point
(12:49):
seven percent reduction in teen births in the eighteen months
after its premiere on TV.
Speaker 6 (12:55):
That actually postulates that this.
Speaker 5 (12:57):
Show alone accounts for a third of the overall decline
in teen births in the United States during that period.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Wow, that's really something.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
So full disclosure, I'm a big watcher of teen Mom
and Sixteen and Pregnant, but I always wondered if the show,
even though it makes teen motherhood look very difficult and
look very stressful and look like something that's not a
walk in the park for sure, part of me always thought, well,
if I'm a teenager watching this, even if this looks
stressful and difficult and hard to do, it's still on TV.
(13:28):
And so I wonder if some young people watch this
and say, gee, this doesn't look fun at all.
Speaker 6 (13:32):
But if she can do it, I can do it.
Speaker 4 (13:34):
If she can do it, I can do it. And
she's in magazines and I'm watching on MTV right now, so.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
It can't be all bad.
Speaker 5 (13:39):
And now she's an influencer, and now she's getting plastic surgery,
and now what's happening beyond the show.
Speaker 6 (13:45):
Yeah, I think it definitely.
Speaker 5 (13:46):
Has long term harmful consequences, even if the short term
impact was a positive one, if you want to put.
Speaker 6 (13:51):
It that way. I just think it's complicated.
Speaker 5 (13:54):
And what's worse is that even shows like teen Mom
or sixteen and Pregnant, like Jersey Shore, like The Real
Housewives pit women against each other. It reduces women to
caddy stereotypes that are not positive depictions of all that
women can be exactly.
Speaker 4 (14:12):
Going back to that Parent Television Council study for a minute,
one of the things they found in that study is
that shows like Teen Mom, you might think of it
as being really sexist in terms of men making sexist,
harmful comments to women. Actually, the study found that you're
more likely to see women making negative comments toward other
women or to.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Themselves than men.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
And so I think if you're a young person watching this,
that might normalize this idea that as a young woman,
it's okay to be negative toward your female peers and it's.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Also okay to be negative toward yourself.
Speaker 6 (14:45):
Oh, that is so depressing.
Speaker 5 (14:46):
And the other part of this research that I found
really frustrating and reductive was the fact that this cool
girl narrative seems to be very popular and common in
reality TV. Males tended to refer to females as quote
cool and view them more favorably when females displayed characteristics
(15:07):
that males considered more male, like basically not caring about
having an emotional connection with the people that you're sleeping with,
and not viewing sex as an indication of a greater commitment,
not requiring romance prior to intercourse, not being jealous when
the males were sexual with other females, That cool girl
who's emotionally detached.
Speaker 6 (15:29):
That sort of trope plays out.
Speaker 5 (15:31):
Over and over again. What is that teaching girls watching?
What is that teaching girls watching like about how they
should respect themselves or what they should emotionally require for
partners and equally respectful relationships that they choose to enter into.
Speaker 4 (15:44):
Yeah, there's nothing wrong if you're an adult woman who
is getting into consensual sexual relationships and you don't feel
very emotionally attached. But I don't think that we should
be telling young teenage girls that.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
That is the way for boys to think that you're cool,
That you're cool if you're this kind of person.
Speaker 4 (16:00):
Girls should be figuring out what kind of person they
want to be and what kind of sexual relationships feel
right and healthy and respectful for them if they're getting
this message that the only kinds of sexual relationships you
can have and still be considered quote cool are ones
that are detached and icy and all of that.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
I don't think that's good.
Speaker 6 (16:17):
No, it's not.
Speaker 5 (16:17):
And not to mention, reality TV shows like The Real
Housewives tend to portray women not as nuanced characters with
full careers and lives and interests, but instead they really
reduce women to these oversimplified stereotypes that aren't just based
on gender but race too.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
Exactly Emily, and we're gonna hear more on that topic
and how reality TV shows can really treat women of
color in some nasty, toxic ways, and hear from a
guest who pretty much wrote the book on how that happens.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
After a quick break, and we're back and.
Speaker 4 (16:58):
For more on reality TV whether or not it is
just a harmless, guilty pleasure or if it can be
a little bit more harmful. We're joined by Jennifer Posner.
Jennifer Posner is a media critics, speaker, and founder of
Women in Media and News. Her book Reality Bites Back,
The Troubling Truth about Guilty Pleasure TV exposes how reality
TV functions as a backlash against gender and racial justice.
(17:20):
She's been published in The New York Times, Newsweek, Bitch,
Miss the Nation, Politico, among others, and has appeared as
a commentator on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox,
among many others. Jennifer, we are so glad to have
you here today.
Speaker 7 (17:34):
Thank you. I'm glad to be with you.
Speaker 4 (17:36):
So, Jennifer, we started today's episode with me talking about
my love of reality TV and sort of it. Being
a guilty pleasure writer is turn off my brain and
watch it. Can you really consume reality TV in this way?
Speaker 7 (17:47):
Do you think? Well, it's not so much, can you?
It's more should you?
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Right?
Speaker 7 (17:53):
And it's not even only should you consume reality TV
this way? Should you engage with any kind of media
that way? So, as a media literacy educator, my main
goal when I wrote the book Reality Bites Back, just
as when I do media literacy talks or workshops on
how to engage with journalistic media, my goal is not
(18:18):
to get people to stop watching reality TV or to stop,
you know, watching a particular news show that they enjoy.
The goal is to just be able to arm yourself
with a critical deconstruction tools that will allow you to
watch these shows if you really want to still have
(18:41):
fun with it, but not subtly take in all the
really damaging messages that are always beaming out from so
many of these so many of these programs in the
genre that really get you when you're in the state
of turning your brain. That's the one thing that I
(19:02):
really hope that people don't do is continue to think
that it's okay for us, that we won't be harmed
if we turn our brain off. Is really tempting to
want to though. Look, I mean, I'm human. I'm a
huge TV fan, right, I grew up. I grew up
in the eighties. I was the quote unquote latchkey kid.
(19:23):
You know. I didn't have siblings. TV with my sister,
you know, and it's texting. We have hard lives now.
We go to work, we go to school. It's difficult,
the world of the dumpster fire. We want to come
home not think about things. But when we don't think,
when we are in a passive state. That is when advertisers,
(19:47):
and that is when media producers have us at our
most intellectually and emotionally vulnerable. That's when the deep seated
messages around gender, around race, around class, around secual reality
can sort of subtly sink in in ways that can
do us damage.
Speaker 5 (20:05):
It sounds like you're advocating for conscious consumption of really
trashy TV, Is that right?
Speaker 6 (20:12):
Well, like, if you're going like almost, if you're.
Speaker 5 (20:16):
Going to go there, if you're going to consume it,
consume it actively with a critical I right, I mean,
what are those harmful messages that you see over and
over again in this genre, and specifically messages that are
harmful for women and girls and women of color.
Speaker 7 (20:33):
Well, it's it's so incredibly.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Dense.
Speaker 7 (20:38):
The amount of misogyny and racism in reality TV has
been it's almost incalculable. Although I did my best document
ten years of it, the first ten years on network
and cable TV, the first ten years on network TV,
and the sort of proliferation of it on cable from
(20:58):
two thousand to twenty ten, and.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
I can tell.
Speaker 7 (21:02):
You that there are a number of incredibly damaging tropes,
including the idea that women in general are caddy bitchy,
not to be trusted, especially not by other women.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
That women are.
Speaker 7 (21:18):
Stupid, ditsy bimbos intellectually inferior to uh two men. That
they can't get ahead unless they trade on their sexuality.
That women are sort of overly emotional and over sensitive
(21:39):
to things that are so not a big deal, you know,
like violence against women. Yeah, And that that women are incompetence. Also,
they're incompetent at work, but they're also incompetent at home.
They're bad moms, they're bad wives, they're bad girlfriends. It's
(21:59):
very very rare that women are portrayed in reality TV
as doing anything right. And there's also, of course the
notion that women are tello greedy gold diggers, that women
are mercenary and only interested in love for what it
can give them financially. And finally, that women are in
(22:23):
general in particular single women are in general they're pathetic, desperate,
man hungry losers who can never possibly live full, happy
or successful lives without husbands. And I should say they
don't have to even be good husbands. They can be
sort of chauvinistic and disrespectful and not loyal cheaters and
(22:48):
even abusive to them. But if their husbands then maybe
those women can live you know, acceptable lives. But otherwise
they're going to be losers forever.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
And those tropes.
Speaker 7 (23:02):
That I mentioned apply to all women in reality TV
across the board. In and I'm not just talking about
dating shows. I'm talking about dating shows, makeover shows, lifestyle shows,
even some of the you know, the talent competition shows,
(23:22):
the how to Change your house and you know, flip
it shows, the Dior shows, cooking shows. I've seen these
tropes across the genre. Let's talk in another question about
the apprentice and business shows. But even as all women
(23:44):
are represented in those kinds of ways, women of color
face even more extreme stereotyping and discrimination and bias in
reality TV. So in addition to the stupidity and the
loser and the gold diggers and et cetera, you have
(24:05):
the idea that black women are incurably angry, belligerent, uneducated, ignorance, violence,
ready to pop off verbally or physically at.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
The drop of a hat.
Speaker 7 (24:21):
That hypersexual, of course, very much going between the Mammy
and the Jezebel stereotypes from back from minstrel days. And
then when it comes to Latina women, there's been this
very consistent stereotype of the sort of trope of the feisty,
(24:46):
hot latina, the quote unquote houci the very much focused
around sex and sexuality, but in an exploited way, not
in a way that assumes that that woman has agency,
not in a sex positive way, more in a sexploitative way.
(25:09):
And with Asian women, there's who have appeared very rarely
on reality TV. There's a lot more invisibility. But when
Asian women have not been completely invisible, they've been portrayed
as very much the sort of dragon lady stereotype or
the kind of geisha stereotype.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
It's really base.
Speaker 7 (25:30):
A lot of the stereotypes about women in particular, women
in general and women of color in particular are incredibly
venal base regressive ideas about who we are as people.
And men too have been portrayed in these negative, in
(25:51):
negative and limiting ways. Men are portrayed as basically mister
wright as long as they have a firm ass and
a firm financial portfolio and the only you know, like.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
That's all you need.
Speaker 8 (26:04):
Boys, you know, make it big on Wall Street and
you can you know, you can do anything, you can
grab it by the Oh wait, I think we've seen
what reality TV tells us is mister Wright right in
the most grand, world threatening sense.
Speaker 7 (26:20):
And in a very This is part of why I
have not been surprised by Trump, because I monitored the
genre for ten years, I analyzed, I transcribed personally every
episode of The Apprentice for like a decade. None of
this was surprising to me because I saw it all
(26:42):
on TV and we all did too, but not in
a critical way. And that goes back to why I
think it's really important to watch in a critical, active
way so that we understand what's coming at us.
Speaker 4 (26:56):
So, Jennifer, in addition to our president, what are some
others with the examples that you've seen this play out
on TV?
Speaker 7 (27:03):
Well, let's see what do we want to talk about.
Speaker 6 (27:05):
First.
Speaker 9 (27:06):
Let's let's talk about Everybody's one of everybody's favorites sort
of either actual favorites or hate watch favorites, The Bachelor
and The Bachelorette.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Because one of.
Speaker 7 (27:21):
The reasons I start out with that a lot of
the time is because a it's one of the very
first major reality shows that ever hit network television, and
it's the longest running dating franchise on TV, but it's
also the franchise that started, or at least revived for
contemporary audiences. Many of these tropes about women, many of
(27:44):
made many of these stereotypes about women and about gender
roles in general, sort of Derrek Gurr across the board
in the burgeoning reality TV genre that it was at
the birth of. And so you look at the way
that The Bachelor was set up in the beginning as
(28:05):
a cattle call, basically to portray women as having so
little self respect and so little prospect, so few prospects
in life, that they would subject themselves to live in
a house with zero access to outside information or phone
(28:28):
calls to their kids or their friends, or newspapers or
magazines or Internet, just so that some dude they've never
met before, who they don't know from Adam, who could
be anyone. He could be a rapist, he could be
a loser. Who knows, But ABC says he's great and oh,
he has a great ass, so let's marry him, ladies
(28:49):
otherwise will die alone? That the phrase die alone was
a constant since the beginning of that franchise, One after
another after another, woman in her early twenties to early thirties,
constantly saying I don't want to die alone? What's wrong
with me? Why can't anybody love me for who I am?
(29:12):
I try to be skinny enough, I try to be
beautiful enough, I try to be nice enough. Why would
anybody love me? This is my only shot, this is
my only chance, This is my only And they'd have
these repeated narratives about how women are nothing unless some
dude chooses them, and the portrayal of the man is
(29:34):
just they're perfect, they don't have to actually be very smart,
and they're usually not. They'n't really be very interesting, and
there's usually not. All those fantastic vacations and glamorous dinners
and very expensive gifts and rings and dresses and cars
(29:55):
are a stand in for how dull the man is,
and women are kitted against each other in pursuit of
that one dude, because they are telling the audience, the producers,
I say, I don't mean the women themselves. The producers
are telling the audience that one of these women will
(30:17):
emerge happy and in love, and being in love is
the only successful accomplishment a woman can make in her life,
is the implication and all the others are going to
go home being losers like they always were. It doesn't
matter what they do professionally, It doesn't, you know, they
shouldn't have ambition. Ambition has been portrayed on that franchise
(30:39):
until very recently. Only in the last couple of seasons
have there been exceptions. Ambition was almost always portrayed on
that franchise as being extremely unattractive and wrong.
Speaker 5 (30:53):
So I feel like these examples you're giving are so
spot on and also so omnipresent that how is a
feminist like me or a reality TV show loving feminists
like bridget here, how are you supposed to enter into
conscious consumption?
Speaker 7 (31:11):
Like?
Speaker 5 (31:11):
Is there a right way to watch reality TV while
being conscientious of the messages we're receiving.
Speaker 7 (31:19):
There absolutely are ways to reduce the home and still
be able to get pleasure from your entertainment. I have
a whole chapter in the back of the towards the
end of my book, Reality writes Back called fun with
media Literacy. And the reason that I am really, I'm
really passionate about media literacy is because it allows you
(31:43):
to sort of strike back at propaganda, strike back at
sort of intellectual brainwashing without sacrificing sort of the human
need for entertainment without sacrificing on right, So here are
some ways when you when you watch a reality TV show,
(32:08):
just like when you engage with any other form of media,
what are ask yourself some very key questions. Who created
this image? And when I say who created it, who
owns it? Who is the image for? Who profits from it?
(32:33):
What are the are the sort of financial investments in
this image? So, for example, reality TV as opposed to
a lot of other kinds of media, Reality TV, a
lot of the reason that that it's so toxic is
it's incredibly cheap to make and it comes because it's
(32:55):
you know, they don't use union uh weight, you don't.
They don't pay union wages, they don't workers. But they
also come in before the show is ever on the air,
they have sold usually some of these big franchises like
American Idol or The Bachelor or The Voice, etc. They've
sold millions upon millions of dollars of product placement advertising
(33:17):
before the show has ever gotten to air, So they
don't even have to get the really high ratings. They
can stay on the air with much lower ratings than
a scripted show because they've already made half their money already, right,
and advertisers have been notoriously sexist and racist.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
As we know.
Speaker 7 (33:34):
If we've ever studied any kind of media literacy before,
one of the things you want to be conscious of
is whether or not you're being sold something, whether that
thing you're being sold is commercial or ideological. So what
are the messages you're being sold alongside this entertainment? What
is the master narrative? Right? How have the producers and
(33:59):
the edits worked in conjunction with each other behind the
scenes to get you to think and feel certain things
about characters, about people, about scenarios, And if you believe
most people, let's be frank, if I said to most people,
(34:22):
you don't even like you love reality. See if I
said to you, do you think it's real?
Speaker 6 (34:25):
What would you say?
Speaker 4 (34:26):
I would say it's I would say it's probably not real.
If I had to say, I know it's not real.
I watch it and pretend that it's real, but I
know it's not.
Speaker 7 (34:33):
And you know, I think most people at this point
in the beginning of the genre, when I would do
media literacy workshops or talks with students in like two
thousand and three two thousand and four, they really did
think it was real. But in the last ten years
or so, people have started to get hip to it
and they understand it's not real, or at least they
think they do. So they'd mostly say exactly what you
(34:56):
just said, or some version of it.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
But if I then asked.
Speaker 7 (35:00):
People, and I've done this so many times, it always
works out the same way. If I then ask people
about a character on their favorite reality show and I say,
what do you think about that person? I get back, oh, so,
oh she's a oh he's told oh.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
She's such a sweet girl.
Speaker 7 (35:17):
Oh. But if you believe you know a person who
you've seen on reality TV and what you think they're
really like, you don't really know reality TV is not
real because you don't know what frank invite editing can do.
Frank invite editings is the lifeblood of a genre, and
what it does is it can take little bits and
pieces of conversations that people have had with entirely different
(35:40):
people on entirely different days about entirely different subjects, splice
them together and make it seem like somebody who was
talking about their puppy is actually in love with the Bachelor,
or somebody who was crying about their father getting a
phone call that their father's in the hospital was actually
crying on the job. So there are a bad candidates
(36:03):
at The Apprentice or et cetera. The manipulations that go
on behind the scenes from producers, both in the in
the editing, and structurally in many other ways often are
aims at selling you some very specific ideas about individual characters,
(36:24):
but also about women and men, people of color, trans people,
queer people, straight people, you know, poor people, rich people,
et cetera, and you know, white people, black people, and
we need to be really conscious to break of that
selling process. To break it down, we also need to
be conscious of when a product itself is being sold
(36:47):
to us, so that we're not just watching, we're not
just devoting ourselves to something we think is entertainment, but
really it's just a major commercial. Like every episode of
The Apprentice, half the episode is all about selling something
for a company.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
Well, well, Jennifer, it sounds like you're really.
Speaker 4 (37:05):
Giving us the tools that we need to really be
more critical viewers of this kind of content so that
we're not just sort of mindlessly viewing it thinking that
it's a guilty pleasure that's super harmless.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
Where can our listeners find out more about all the
great work that you're doing.
Speaker 7 (37:18):
That was just a tip of the iceberg. If you
want more tips like that, my book Reality Bites Back
The Troubling Truth about Guilty Pleasure TV. You can find
out more about it at Reality bites backbook dot com.
I actually do media literacy talks and workshops both on
reality TV as well as on a variety of other topics,
(37:40):
in particular right now on rape culture, rape culture and
gun violence in the media. So if anybody is interested
in that, they can contact me on Twitter at at
j E n n p o z n e R
or on Facebook. Find me there, Jennifer L. Posner, and
I would love to. I'm always happy to answer media
(38:03):
literacy questions and keep the conversation going, So feel free
to tweet at me and let's all, you know, let's
never turn our brains off, but still enjoy our entertainment
here here.
Speaker 4 (38:16):
Thanks so much, Jennifer, We really really appreciate it.
Speaker 7 (38:19):
Thank you.
Speaker 5 (38:20):
I thought that was so interesting, Bridget like, those are
some core tips and strategies for how we can still
consume the garbage television that we all love and those
quote unquote guilty pleasure shows that we want, But just
be a little bit more mindful about not passively absorbing
bad messages that really distill women down to these two dimensional,
(38:41):
simplified characters.
Speaker 6 (38:42):
Like you do not actually know people who are on
reality TV.
Speaker 4 (38:45):
As much as I like to think I know Nini Leaks,
I don't actually know her, and I don't actually know if.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
What she says on the show is actually what she said.
Speaker 4 (38:53):
As Jennifer pointed out, those shows can be so heavily edited,
I don't actually know what I'm seeing or how real
any of this reality TV is, so it's always important
to keep that in mind. I also think it's super
interesting how so much on this show comes back to
being critical and being critical consumers, and so it doesn't
matter if you're buying that. Nevertheless, she persisted Sweatshirt that
you think the proceeds go someplace good, but who actually
(39:15):
knows because it's etsy or you're watching a reality TV show.
Really it comes down to being critical about what we
are consuming and making some choices based on that.
Speaker 5 (39:23):
Yeah, because in media, you're the product, You're what they're selling.
So the fact that your eyeballs are on a certain
TV show. If you're getting that TV show for free
or you think it's free, keep in mind someone's profiting
off of your attention. So you have to see those
macro level motivations behind the media that we're consuming and
(39:45):
just and be mindful about the kind of information diet
that you're feeding your brain and your mind and your heart.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
So it's beIN te listeners. We want to hear from you.
Speaker 4 (39:54):
Are you, like me, a super fan of reality TV
and you know the Kardashian sisters better than you know
your own sisters. Maybe you hate Reality TV and anybody
who watches it you roll your eyes immediately. Wherever you
fall on that spectrum, we want to.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
Hear from you.
Speaker 4 (40:07):
You can get at us on Instagram at stuff mom
Ever Told You, on Twitter at mom Stuff podcast, and
as always, we love getting your emails and our inbox
at mom stuff at HowStuffWorks dot com
Hey, this is Anny and Samantha and all the stuff
I ever told you production by Heart Radio, and today
we are bringing back a classic about which I know
little about, just reality TV.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Yeah, you know what.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
I have decided we need to come back when revisit
this conversation because the growth, the up and down of
reality TV has been a lot, especially in this time
of influencers, tik talkers and ads like Meta, which we
just recently talked about with Bridget. And speaking of Bridget,
(00:48):
she is with Emily. This is one of those classics
where they talk about can you be a feminist?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
And also like reality TV?
Speaker 3 (00:55):
And that's a great question, and I think Bridget does
a pretty good job in kind of having internal conversation atward.
I love it and I think it's important. But I
do want to come back and have this conversation because
it's been a long time since I've watched reality TV,
but in actuality we tink about it, like with the
videos that I watch on YouTube that's technically reality TV
(01:16):
in a different format. But with that, I think it's
time to have that conversation again and might as well
start with revisiting this classic.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
So we hope you enjoyed this classic.
Speaker 4 (01:32):
Hey, this is bridget and and you're listening to stuff
Mom never told you. And today I'm pretty excited to
talk through one of my favorite topics, reality TV.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Not just any reality TV, trashy reality TV. I'm talking shows.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
Like The Cards, keeping Up with Them, keeping up with Them,
not just Kim, but Kim, Chloe, Kylie, the entire crew
crewk Crew with the k of course, I'm talking shows
like Basketball Wives.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
I'm talking shows.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
Like Real Housewives, which is everywhere, Real Housewives of Everywhere,
particularly Atlanta, because it's my very favorite one.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Basically, if you're anything like.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
Me, you love love, love love love kicking back with
a good trashy reality TV show. Sometimes, I'm not gonna lie,
it's pretty fun that just turn off your brain and
just watch people have really inane conversations and have arguments
about things that are super trivial that really don't matter,
and you know, throw drinks in each other's faces.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Sometimes that's fun. Right.
Speaker 5 (02:45):
First of all, I feel like reality TV is more
nuanced than it seems.
Speaker 4 (02:49):
Oh, as a kinnoisseur of reality TV, I could one
hundred percent vouch for that. It absolutely is probably my
favorite thing about reality TV is how campy and over
the time it is. There are things that come up
on reality TV shows that are so over the top
you can't believe they've actually happened, And of course they're
scripted in YadA YadA.
Speaker 6 (03:08):
YadA, but right, they didn't actually happen.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
I can't beieve that happened because it's fake.
Speaker 4 (03:13):
But that's why I love it so much, is that
it's sort of this hyper reality that imagine.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
If this was the actual world that we lived in.
It's not, but imagine if it was.
Speaker 5 (03:22):
Yeah, there's almost this need to like suspend belief for
a moment. To really enjoy reality TV, you have to
suspend belief and not to mention, suspend your feminist ideology,
which I think The Onion parodied so perfect in their
article satirical article obviously titled woman takes short half hour
(03:42):
break from being feminist to enjoy TV show.
Speaker 4 (03:46):
That article is basically my life when I come home
from a long day of being mired and feminist politics
and super depressed. Sometimes I just want to come home
and watch my dang shows right and turn off my
brain and not think about things for a while. The
article says, saying that she just wanted a little time
to relax and not even think about confining gender stereotypes.
Local healthcare industry consultant Natalie Jenkins reportedly took a thirty
(04:08):
minute break from being a feminist last night to kick
back and enjoy a television program. Jenkins told reporters that
after a long and tiring day at the office, all
she wanted to do was return home, sit down on
her couch, and turn on an episode of TC's reality
show Say Yes to the Dress, and treat herself to
a brief half hour where she could look past all
the various and near constant ways popular culture undermines the
(04:30):
progress of women.
Speaker 5 (04:32):
There's a quote from said women in this article saying
between nine and nine thirty, I'm not even going to
take notice of all the two dimensional portrayals of women
as fashion and shopping obsessed prima donnas.
Speaker 6 (04:43):
That part of my brain will just be switched off.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
You're here, Natalie, I am right there with you. And
it's funny, but it's also true and fictional. Natalie and
I are not alone. Women watch more reality TV than men.
According to Civic Science, a market research firm, women are
ten percent sant more likely than men to be what
they call super fans of reality TV.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
That's people who watch more than five hours a week.
Speaker 6 (05:05):
Would you say that you're a super fan.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
I'm a super super fan.
Speaker 4 (05:08):
If you look at my DVR, my DVR is all
Judge Judy, Law and Order, criminal Intent.
Speaker 6 (05:13):
Well, that's not reality TV. I mean it's inspired by
real events. Yeah, I love Mysonalan ar Oh.
Speaker 4 (05:18):
I could if I my dream of dreams is to
host a podcast spit off that's just law and order focused.
Speaker 6 (05:24):
Yes, you need to pitch that right away.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
I love that. Networks call me. No, it's real.
Speaker 5 (05:31):
I mean, you're a Kim Kardashian selfie book owning reality
TV fan, are you not?
Speaker 4 (05:36):
Can I say people gave Kim Kardashian a lot of
crap about that selfie book. If her name were Andy Warhol,
it would be on the top ten best art book
lists of the year it came out.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
I agree.
Speaker 5 (05:46):
I think the I mean, for me, I'm not a
reality TV super fan, but I am a Kardashian super fan,
So we really should devote an entire episode to them
on another day. But I think the Kardashians have shown
how much reality TV can be a platform for your business,
that is your whole life, and they've turned their lives
(06:07):
into business machines, into money making machines.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Definitely.
Speaker 4 (06:13):
So I mentioned earlier in the show that I'm obsessed
with the show Real Housewives of Atlanta. Nini Leaks is
someone who I quote often.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
She's great.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
Fun fact, her picture is hanging in the African American
Cultural Museum here in DC. If you go to that museum,
they have a wall dedicated to black gestures and her
iconic point is in the museum as an iconic black gesture.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Yeah, so fun fast.
Speaker 6 (06:40):
She's the most giffable person, Nimi Leaks. Oh, Jeff, pardon me.
Speaker 5 (06:45):
She's a very highly referenced jiff On, Jiffy or Giffy
she is.
Speaker 4 (06:51):
She is as much as I love Real Housewives of
Atlanta as this light, fluffy, mindless entertainment. Recently, I've had
to sort of contend with the fact that they're entertainment
might not just be for entertainment value.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Actually it can be kind of heavy.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
I'm talking about the controversy earlier this week that one
of the characters on the show, Kenya, was found making
some pretty transphobic statements on the show, And even before that,
Kenny had a situation on the show where she was
actually the victim of intimate partner abuse, and rather than
showing this as the serious and very scary thing that
it was on the show, it was more handled like
(07:25):
a juicy plot line, which I found very, very upsetting
and troubling. I actually wrote a piece on Huffing and
Post and I just wondered, why is this not being
treated as very.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Very serious abuse.
Speaker 4 (07:36):
Why are Bravo executives putting a camera in this woman's
face and having her talk about.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Her situation as if it's a.
Speaker 4 (07:41):
Juicy, you know, argument at a party, when in fact
it's really.
Speaker 6 (07:45):
Scary, really scary.
Speaker 5 (07:46):
I think the same sort of reality TV washing over
serious issues happens again and again on Real Housewives. I'm
not the most avid watcher of the Real Housewives empire,
but I do recall that The Real Housewives of Beverly
Hills featured some really scary footage of Kim Richards dealing
with drug and alcohol abuse issues, or purported drug and
(08:10):
alcohol abuse issues, and keeping the cameras rolling when this
is a woman who's experiencing a medical low point in
her life, who needs serious intervention and help and support. Instead,
they're making money off of her spectacle, which I just
thought was really not okay exactly.
Speaker 4 (08:28):
And even furthermore, when Russell Armstrong killed himself, he was
a husband of one of the characters on our Real
Housewives franchise, it was later revealed that he was abusive
towards his wife.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
And I like reality.
Speaker 4 (08:40):
TV, but that's scary and serious, and I don't feel
good about promoting people's darkest moments as a spectacle.
Speaker 5 (08:48):
Yeah, it's pretty gross actually if you think about the
fact that, like, they're using your attention to sell ads,
and they're using someone's very real crisis as drama that
is being commercialized.
Speaker 6 (09:02):
I just find that really gross.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
And I think back to one of the earliest reality
TV shows, The Real World. I remember the character Ruthie,
who have actually met in real life.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
When I was in college.
Speaker 4 (09:12):
She came to give a talk at my college about
safe sex and healthy choices. So shout out to Ruthie.
But I don't know if you guys remember I'm kind
of dating myself here. Reality TV didn't used to be
the spectacle of people making dangerous and abusive decisions. It
was just showing people what they were doing. And it
was Ruthie drunk driving outside of a nightclub one night.
(09:33):
That was kind of a turning point where you actually
saw MTV producers in real time trying to figure out
what to do. Do they let her drive home and
film it? Do they stop her? And it was really
for me a turning point of Oh, one, reality TV
is going to be a big part of our culture. Two,
what is the responsibility of the people who produce this
kind of programming to make sure they're putting out content
(09:54):
that is responsible.
Speaker 5 (09:56):
Or just to make sure that the people who are
in front of the camera are safe, playing and simple.
And when abuse and sort of spectacle is made the norm,
then we end up with reality TV that's not just
harmful for the people on it, but it's harmful for
the people viewing it. It normalizes behavior that should not
be normalized.
Speaker 4 (10:13):
Absolutely so, even though I'm someone who is a huge
advocate for coming home after a hard day, putting your
feet up and just watching four hours of Jersey Shore,
you have to ask yourself, am I actually contributing to
something negative and harmful? Can you really just turn off
your brain and consume this entertainment mindlessly or is something
else going on.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
We're going to dive into that after this quick break
ed we're back.
Speaker 4 (10:43):
I've been just admitting some of my favorite guilty pleasure
TV and thinking about whether it is a guilty pleasure,
if I should feel guilty about it, or if I'm
contributing to something a little more harmful than I might realize.
So one thing that you talked about is the people
in front of the camera, whether or not they are
being treated in a way that is safe and healthy.
But it's a it's important to think about those who
are in front of the TV consuming this programming as well.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
It probably isn't a surprise to y'all.
Speaker 4 (11:06):
Reality programming isn't really that helpful when it comes to
young girls.
Speaker 5 (11:10):
It's not good for young girls. It's probably not good
for all of us. But there's been a lot of
research done by the Girl Scouts Institute on the rise
of reality TV and how it has some troubling consequences
for young girls consuming it. Forty seven percent of girls
and young women say that they're regular viewers.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
That's a lot.
Speaker 5 (11:27):
That's almost fifty percent of the population, with thirty percent
saying that they sometimes watch so that's almost eighty percent
of girls and young women saying that they sometimes or
regularly view reality TV. Eighty six percent of girls believe
these shows quote often pit girls against each other to
make the shows more exciting, and another seventy percent say
(11:50):
that these shows make people think it's okay to treat
each other badly.
Speaker 4 (11:54):
That makes me so sad, because if all of these
young girls are consuming this media and a lot of
them are agreeing that it makes people think it's okay
to treat each other in a way that's not nice,
you would just have to ask, like, what are they consuming,
what are they learning about. I'm a big proponent in
reminding folks that some kind of content is only suited
for adults, and I think reality TV might fall in
that category. But according to a study by Parent Television Council,
(12:18):
a lot of young folks are consuming reality TV, particularly
on MTV. And what's kind of interesting is that MTV
reality TV programming is actually some of the most harmful
out there.
Speaker 5 (12:29):
Yeah, we're talking about things like teen Mom and Jersey Shore,
and I'm surprised to hear that teen Mom falls into
that category of being sort of slammed as being bad
for children and especially young girls watching it. A study
actually released by the National Bureau of Economic Research says
that Sixteen and Pregnant ultimately led to a five point
(12:49):
seven percent reduction in teen births in the eighteen months
after its premiere on TV.
Speaker 6 (12:55):
That actually postulates that this.
Speaker 5 (12:57):
Show alone accounts for a third of the overall decline
in teen births in the United States during that period.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Wow, that's really something.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
So full disclosure, I'm a big watcher of teen Mom
and Sixteen and Pregnant, but I always wondered if the show,
even though it makes teen motherhood look very difficult and
look very stressful and look like something that's not a
walk in the park for sure, part of me always thought, well,
if I'm a teenager watching this, even if this looks
stressful and difficult and hard to do, it's still on TV.
(13:28):
And so I wonder if some young people watch this
and say, gee, this doesn't look fun at all.
Speaker 6 (13:32):
But if she can do it, I can do it.
Speaker 4 (13:34):
If she can do it, I can do it. And
she's in magazines and I'm watching on MTV right now, so.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
It can't be all bad.
Speaker 5 (13:39):
And now she's an influencer, and now she's getting plastic surgery,
and now what's happening beyond the show.
Speaker 6 (13:45):
Yeah, I think it definitely.
Speaker 5 (13:46):
Has long term harmful consequences, even if the short term
impact was a positive one, if you want to put.
Speaker 6 (13:51):
It that way. I just think it's complicated.
Speaker 5 (13:54):
And what's worse is that even shows like teen Mom
or sixteen and Pregnant, like Jersey Shore, like The Real
Housewives pit women against each other. It reduces women to
caddy stereotypes that are not positive depictions of all that
women can be exactly.
Speaker 4 (14:12):
Going back to that Parent Television Council study for a minute,
one of the things they found in that study is
that shows like Teen Mom, you might think of it
as being really sexist in terms of men making sexist,
harmful comments to women. Actually, the study found that you're
more likely to see women making negative comments toward other
women or to.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Themselves than men.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
And so I think if you're a young person watching this,
that might normalize this idea that as a young woman,
it's okay to be negative toward your female peers and it's.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Also okay to be negative toward yourself.
Speaker 6 (14:45):
Oh, that is so depressing.
Speaker 5 (14:46):
And the other part of this research that I found
really frustrating and reductive was the fact that this cool
girl narrative seems to be very popular and common in
reality TV. Males tended to refer to females as quote
cool and view them more favorably when females displayed characteristics
(15:07):
that males considered more male, like basically not caring about
having an emotional connection with the people that you're sleeping with,
and not viewing sex as an indication of a greater commitment,
not requiring romance prior to intercourse, not being jealous when
the males were sexual with other females, That cool girl
who's emotionally detached.
Speaker 6 (15:29):
That sort of trope plays out.
Speaker 5 (15:31):
Over and over again. What is that teaching girls watching?
What is that teaching girls watching like about how they
should respect themselves or what they should emotionally require for
partners and equally respectful relationships that they choose to enter into.
Speaker 4 (15:44):
Yeah, there's nothing wrong if you're an adult woman who
is getting into consensual sexual relationships and you don't feel
very emotionally attached. But I don't think that we should
be telling young teenage girls that.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
That is the way for boys to think that you're cool,
That you're cool if you're this kind of person.
Speaker 4 (16:00):
Girls should be figuring out what kind of person they
want to be and what kind of sexual relationships feel
right and healthy and respectful for them if they're getting
this message that the only kinds of sexual relationships you
can have and still be considered quote cool are ones
that are detached and icy and all of that.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
I don't think that's good.
Speaker 6 (16:17):
No, it's not.
Speaker 5 (16:17):
And not to mention, reality TV shows like The Real
Housewives tend to portray women not as nuanced characters with
full careers and lives and interests, but instead they really
reduce women to these oversimplified stereotypes that aren't just based
on gender but race too.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
Exactly Emily, and we're gonna hear more on that topic
and how reality TV shows can really treat women of
color in some nasty, toxic ways, and hear from a
guest who pretty much wrote the book on how that happens.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
After a quick break, and we're back and.
Speaker 4 (16:58):
For more on reality TV whether or not it is
just a harmless, guilty pleasure or if it can be
a little bit more harmful. We're joined by Jennifer Posner.
Jennifer Posner is a media critics, speaker, and founder of
Women in Media and News. Her book Reality Bites Back,
The Troubling Truth about Guilty Pleasure TV exposes how reality
TV functions as a backlash against gender and racial justice.
(17:20):
She's been published in The New York Times, Newsweek, Bitch,
Miss the Nation, Politico, among others, and has appeared as
a commentator on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox,
among many others. Jennifer, we are so glad to have
you here today.
Speaker 7 (17:34):
Thank you. I'm glad to be with you.
Speaker 4 (17:36):
So, Jennifer, we started today's episode with me talking about
my love of reality TV and sort of it. Being
a guilty pleasure writer is turn off my brain and
watch it. Can you really consume reality TV in this way?
Speaker 7 (17:47):
Do you think? Well, it's not so much, can you?
It's more should you?
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Right?
Speaker 7 (17:53):
And it's not even only should you consume reality TV
this way? Should you engage with any kind of media
that way? So, as a media literacy educator, my main
goal when I wrote the book Reality Bites Back, just
as when I do media literacy talks or workshops on
how to engage with journalistic media, my goal is not
(18:18):
to get people to stop watching reality TV or to stop,
you know, watching a particular news show that they enjoy.
The goal is to just be able to arm yourself
with a critical deconstruction tools that will allow you to
watch these shows if you really want to still have
(18:41):
fun with it, but not subtly take in all the
really damaging messages that are always beaming out from so
many of these so many of these programs in the
genre that really get you when you're in the state
of turning your brain. That's the one thing that I
(19:02):
really hope that people don't do is continue to think
that it's okay for us, that we won't be harmed
if we turn our brain off. Is really tempting to
want to though. Look, I mean, I'm human. I'm a
huge TV fan, right, I grew up. I grew up
in the eighties. I was the quote unquote latchkey kid.
(19:23):
You know. I didn't have siblings. TV with my sister,
you know, and it's texting. We have hard lives now.
We go to work, we go to school. It's difficult,
the world of the dumpster fire. We want to come
home not think about things. But when we don't think,
when we are in a passive state. That is when advertisers,
(19:47):
and that is when media producers have us at our
most intellectually and emotionally vulnerable. That's when the deep seated
messages around gender, around race, around class, around secual reality
can sort of subtly sink in in ways that can
do us damage.
Speaker 5 (20:05):
It sounds like you're advocating for conscious consumption of really
trashy TV, Is that right?
Speaker 6 (20:12):
Well, like, if you're going like almost, if you're.
Speaker 5 (20:16):
Going to go there, if you're going to consume it,
consume it actively with a critical I right, I mean,
what are those harmful messages that you see over and
over again in this genre, and specifically messages that are
harmful for women and girls and women of color.
Speaker 7 (20:33):
Well, it's it's so incredibly.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Dense.
Speaker 7 (20:38):
The amount of misogyny and racism in reality TV has
been it's almost incalculable. Although I did my best document
ten years of it, the first ten years on network
and cable TV, the first ten years on network TV,
and the sort of proliferation of it on cable from
(20:58):
two thousand to twenty ten, and.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
I can tell.
Speaker 7 (21:02):
You that there are a number of incredibly damaging tropes,
including the idea that women in general are caddy bitchy,
not to be trusted, especially not by other women.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
That women are.
Speaker 7 (21:18):
Stupid, ditsy bimbos intellectually inferior to uh two men. That
they can't get ahead unless they trade on their sexuality.
That women are sort of overly emotional and over sensitive
(21:39):
to things that are so not a big deal, you know,
like violence against women. Yeah, And that that women are incompetence. Also,
they're incompetent at work, but they're also incompetent at home.
They're bad moms, they're bad wives, they're bad girlfriends. It's
(21:59):
very very rare that women are portrayed in reality TV
as doing anything right. And there's also, of course the
notion that women are tello greedy gold diggers, that women
are mercenary and only interested in love for what it
can give them financially. And finally, that women are in
(22:23):
general in particular single women are in general they're pathetic, desperate,
man hungry losers who can never possibly live full, happy
or successful lives without husbands. And I should say they
don't have to even be good husbands. They can be
sort of chauvinistic and disrespectful and not loyal cheaters and
(22:48):
even abusive to them. But if their husbands then maybe
those women can live you know, acceptable lives. But otherwise
they're going to be losers forever.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
And those tropes.
Speaker 7 (23:02):
That I mentioned apply to all women in reality TV
across the board. In and I'm not just talking about
dating shows. I'm talking about dating shows, makeover shows, lifestyle shows,
even some of the you know, the talent competition shows,
(23:22):
the how to Change your house and you know, flip
it shows, the Dior shows, cooking shows. I've seen these
tropes across the genre. Let's talk in another question about
the apprentice and business shows. But even as all women
(23:44):
are represented in those kinds of ways, women of color
face even more extreme stereotyping and discrimination and bias in
reality TV. So in addition to the stupidity and the
loser and the gold diggers and et cetera, you have
(24:05):
the idea that black women are incurably angry, belligerent, uneducated, ignorance, violence,
ready to pop off verbally or physically at.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
The drop of a hat.
Speaker 7 (24:21):
That hypersexual, of course, very much going between the Mammy
and the Jezebel stereotypes from back from minstrel days. And
then when it comes to Latina women, there's been this
very consistent stereotype of the sort of trope of the feisty,
(24:46):
hot latina, the quote unquote houci the very much focused
around sex and sexuality, but in an exploited way, not
in a way that assumes that that woman has agency,
not in a sex positive way, more in a sexploitative way.
(25:09):
And with Asian women, there's who have appeared very rarely
on reality TV. There's a lot more invisibility. But when
Asian women have not been completely invisible, they've been portrayed
as very much the sort of dragon lady stereotype or
the kind of geisha stereotype.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
It's really base.
Speaker 7 (25:30):
A lot of the stereotypes about women in particular, women
in general and women of color in particular are incredibly
venal base regressive ideas about who we are as people.
And men too have been portrayed in these negative, in
(25:51):
negative and limiting ways. Men are portrayed as basically mister
wright as long as they have a firm ass and
a firm financial portfolio and the only you know, like.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
That's all you need.
Speaker 8 (26:04):
Boys, you know, make it big on Wall Street and
you can you know, you can do anything, you can
grab it by the Oh wait, I think we've seen
what reality TV tells us is mister Wright right in
the most grand, world threatening sense.
Speaker 7 (26:20):
And in a very This is part of why I
have not been surprised by Trump, because I monitored the
genre for ten years, I analyzed, I transcribed personally every
episode of The Apprentice for like a decade. None of
this was surprising to me because I saw it all
(26:42):
on TV and we all did too, but not in
a critical way. And that goes back to why I
think it's really important to watch in a critical, active
way so that we understand what's coming at us.
Speaker 4 (26:56):
So, Jennifer, in addition to our president, what are some
others with the examples that you've seen this play out
on TV?
Speaker 7 (27:03):
Well, let's see what do we want to talk about.
Speaker 6 (27:05):
First.
Speaker 9 (27:06):
Let's let's talk about Everybody's one of everybody's favorites sort
of either actual favorites or hate watch favorites, The Bachelor
and The Bachelorette.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Because one of.
Speaker 7 (27:21):
The reasons I start out with that a lot of
the time is because a it's one of the very
first major reality shows that ever hit network television, and
it's the longest running dating franchise on TV, but it's
also the franchise that started, or at least revived for
contemporary audiences. Many of these tropes about women, many of
(27:44):
made many of these stereotypes about women and about gender
roles in general, sort of Derrek Gurr across the board
in the burgeoning reality TV genre that it was at
the birth of. And so you look at the way
that The Bachelor was set up in the beginning as
(28:05):
a cattle call, basically to portray women as having so
little self respect and so little prospect, so few prospects
in life, that they would subject themselves to live in
a house with zero access to outside information or phone
(28:28):
calls to their kids or their friends, or newspapers or
magazines or Internet, just so that some dude they've never
met before, who they don't know from Adam, who could
be anyone. He could be a rapist, he could be
a loser. Who knows, But ABC says he's great and oh,
he has a great ass, so let's marry him, ladies
(28:49):
otherwise will die alone? That the phrase die alone was
a constant since the beginning of that franchise, One after
another after another, woman in her early twenties to early thirties,
constantly saying I don't want to die alone? What's wrong
with me? Why can't anybody love me for who I am?
(29:12):
I try to be skinny enough, I try to be
beautiful enough, I try to be nice enough. Why would
anybody love me? This is my only shot, this is
my only chance, This is my only And they'd have
these repeated narratives about how women are nothing unless some
dude chooses them, and the portrayal of the man is
(29:34):
just they're perfect, they don't have to actually be very smart,
and they're usually not. They'n't really be very interesting, and
there's usually not. All those fantastic vacations and glamorous dinners
and very expensive gifts and rings and dresses and cars
(29:55):
are a stand in for how dull the man is,
and women are kitted against each other in pursuit of
that one dude, because they are telling the audience, the producers,
I say, I don't mean the women themselves. The producers
are telling the audience that one of these women will
(30:17):
emerge happy and in love, and being in love is
the only successful accomplishment a woman can make in her life,
is the implication and all the others are going to
go home being losers like they always were. It doesn't
matter what they do professionally, It doesn't, you know, they
shouldn't have ambition. Ambition has been portrayed on that franchise
(30:39):
until very recently. Only in the last couple of seasons
have there been exceptions. Ambition was almost always portrayed on
that franchise as being extremely unattractive and wrong.
Speaker 5 (30:53):
So I feel like these examples you're giving are so
spot on and also so omnipresent that how is a
feminist like me or a reality TV show loving feminists
like bridget here, how are you supposed to enter into
conscious consumption?
Speaker 7 (31:11):
Like?
Speaker 5 (31:11):
Is there a right way to watch reality TV while
being conscientious of the messages we're receiving.
Speaker 7 (31:19):
There absolutely are ways to reduce the home and still
be able to get pleasure from your entertainment. I have
a whole chapter in the back of the towards the
end of my book, Reality writes Back called fun with
media Literacy. And the reason that I am really, I'm
really passionate about media literacy is because it allows you
(31:43):
to sort of strike back at propaganda, strike back at
sort of intellectual brainwashing without sacrificing sort of the human
need for entertainment without sacrificing on right, So here are
some ways when you when you watch a reality TV show,
(32:08):
just like when you engage with any other form of media,
what are ask yourself some very key questions. Who created
this image? And when I say who created it, who
owns it? Who is the image for? Who profits from it?
(32:33):
What are the are the sort of financial investments in
this image? So, for example, reality TV as opposed to
a lot of other kinds of media, Reality TV, a
lot of the reason that that it's so toxic is
it's incredibly cheap to make and it comes because it's
(32:55):
you know, they don't use union uh weight, you don't.
They don't pay union wages, they don't workers. But they
also come in before the show is ever on the air,
they have sold usually some of these big franchises like
American Idol or The Bachelor or The Voice, etc. They've
sold millions upon millions of dollars of product placement advertising
(33:17):
before the show has ever gotten to air, So they
don't even have to get the really high ratings. They
can stay on the air with much lower ratings than
a scripted show because they've already made half their money already, right,
and advertisers have been notoriously sexist and racist.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
As we know.
Speaker 7 (33:34):
If we've ever studied any kind of media literacy before,
one of the things you want to be conscious of
is whether or not you're being sold something, whether that
thing you're being sold is commercial or ideological. So what
are the messages you're being sold alongside this entertainment? What
is the master narrative? Right? How have the producers and
(33:59):
the edits worked in conjunction with each other behind the
scenes to get you to think and feel certain things
about characters, about people, about scenarios, And if you believe
most people, let's be frank, if I said to most people,
(34:22):
you don't even like you love reality. See if I
said to you, do you think it's real?
Speaker 6 (34:25):
What would you say?
Speaker 4 (34:26):
I would say it's I would say it's probably not real.
If I had to say, I know it's not real.
I watch it and pretend that it's real, but I
know it's not.
Speaker 7 (34:33):
And you know, I think most people at this point
in the beginning of the genre, when I would do
media literacy workshops or talks with students in like two
thousand and three two thousand and four, they really did
think it was real. But in the last ten years
or so, people have started to get hip to it
and they understand it's not real, or at least they
think they do. So they'd mostly say exactly what you
(34:56):
just said, or some version of it.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
But if I then asked.
Speaker 7 (35:00):
People, and I've done this so many times, it always
works out the same way. If I then ask people
about a character on their favorite reality show and I say,
what do you think about that person? I get back, oh, so,
oh she's a oh he's told oh.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
She's such a sweet girl.
Speaker 7 (35:17):
Oh. But if you believe you know a person who
you've seen on reality TV and what you think they're
really like, you don't really know reality TV is not
real because you don't know what frank invite editing can do.
Frank invite editings is the lifeblood of a genre, and
what it does is it can take little bits and
pieces of conversations that people have had with entirely different
(35:40):
people on entirely different days about entirely different subjects, splice
them together and make it seem like somebody who was
talking about their puppy is actually in love with the Bachelor,
or somebody who was crying about their father getting a
phone call that their father's in the hospital was actually
crying on the job. So there are a bad candidates
(36:03):
at The Apprentice or et cetera. The manipulations that go
on behind the scenes from producers, both in the in
the editing, and structurally in many other ways often are
aims at selling you some very specific ideas about individual characters,
(36:24):
but also about women and men, people of color, trans people,
queer people, straight people, you know, poor people, rich people,
et cetera, and you know, white people, black people, and
we need to be really conscious to break of that
selling process. To break it down, we also need to
be conscious of when a product itself is being sold
(36:47):
to us, so that we're not just watching, we're not
just devoting ourselves to something we think is entertainment, but
really it's just a major commercial. Like every episode of
The Apprentice, half the episode is all about selling something
for a company.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
Well, well, Jennifer, it sounds like you're really.
Speaker 4 (37:05):
Giving us the tools that we need to really be
more critical viewers of this kind of content so that
we're not just sort of mindlessly viewing it thinking that
it's a guilty pleasure that's super harmless.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
Where can our listeners find out more about all the
great work that you're doing.
Speaker 7 (37:18):
That was just a tip of the iceberg. If you
want more tips like that, my book Reality Bites Back
The Troubling Truth about Guilty Pleasure TV. You can find
out more about it at Reality bites backbook dot com.
I actually do media literacy talks and workshops both on
reality TV as well as on a variety of other topics,
(37:40):
in particular right now on rape culture, rape culture and
gun violence in the media. So if anybody is interested
in that, they can contact me on Twitter at at
j E n n p o z n e R
or on Facebook. Find me there, Jennifer L. Posner, and
I would love to. I'm always happy to answer media
(38:03):
literacy questions and keep the conversation going, So feel free
to tweet at me and let's all, you know, let's
never turn our brains off, but still enjoy our entertainment
here here.
Speaker 4 (38:16):
Thanks so much, Jennifer, We really really appreciate it.
Speaker 7 (38:19):
Thank you.
Speaker 5 (38:20):
I thought that was so interesting, Bridget like, those are
some core tips and strategies for how we can still
consume the garbage television that we all love and those
quote unquote guilty pleasure shows that we want, But just
be a little bit more mindful about not passively absorbing
bad messages that really distill women down to these two dimensional,
(38:41):
simplified characters.
Speaker 6 (38:42):
Like you do not actually know people who are on
reality TV.
Speaker 4 (38:45):
As much as I like to think I know Nini Leaks,
I don't actually know her, and I don't actually know if.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
What she says on the show is actually what she said.
Speaker 4 (38:53):
As Jennifer pointed out, those shows can be so heavily edited,
I don't actually know what I'm seeing or how real
any of this reality TV is, so it's always important
to keep that in mind. I also think it's super
interesting how so much on this show comes back to
being critical and being critical consumers, and so it doesn't
matter if you're buying that. Nevertheless, she persisted Sweatshirt that
you think the proceeds go someplace good, but who actually
(39:15):
knows because it's etsy or you're watching a reality TV show.
Really it comes down to being critical about what we
are consuming and making some choices based on that.
Speaker 5 (39:23):
Yeah, because in media, you're the product, You're what they're selling.
So the fact that your eyeballs are on a certain
TV show. If you're getting that TV show for free
or you think it's free, keep in mind someone's profiting
off of your attention. So you have to see those
macro level motivations behind the media that we're consuming and
(39:45):
just and be mindful about the kind of information diet
that you're feeding your brain and your mind and your heart.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
So it's beIN te listeners. We want to hear from you.
Speaker 4 (39:54):
Are you, like me, a super fan of reality TV
and you know the Kardashian sisters better than you know
your own sisters. Maybe you hate Reality TV and anybody
who watches it you roll your eyes immediately. Wherever you
fall on that spectrum, we want to.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
Hear from you.
Speaker 4 (40:07):
You can get at us on Instagram at stuff mom
Ever Told You, on Twitter at mom Stuff podcast, and
as always, we love getting your emails and our inbox
at mom stuff at HowStuffWorks dot com
Stuff Mom Never Told You News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Samantha McVey
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Betrayal Weekly
Betrayal Weekly is back for a new season. Every Thursday, Betrayal Weekly shares first-hand accounts of broken trust, shocking deceptions, and the trail of destruction they leave behind. Hosted by Andrea Gunning, this weekly ongoing series digs into real-life stories of betrayal and the aftermath. From stories of double lives to dark discoveries, these are cautionary tales and accounts of resilience against all odds. From the producers of the critically acclaimed Betrayal series, Betrayal Weekly drops new episodes every Thursday. If you would like to share your story, you can reach out to the Betrayal Team by emailing them at betrayalpod@gmail.com and follow us on Instagram at @betrayalpod and @glasspodcasts. Please join our Substack for additional exclusive content, curated book recommendations, and community discussions. Sign up FREE by clicking this link Beyond Betrayal Substack. Join our community dedicated to truth, resilience, and healing. Your voice matters! Be a part of our Betrayal journey on Substack.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com