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http://www.zimbio.com/Lisa+Bloom/articles/eusw88wWExF/How+Talk+Girls+Reality+TV
How to Talk to Girls About Reality TV
<!-- google_ad_section_end -->By Think_Lisa_Bloom on February 9, 2012<NOSCRIPT></NOSCRIPT>
<!-- google_ad_section_start -->
From left: Bethenny Frankel of Real Housewives of New York, Pauly D and Snooki from Jersey Shore, Kim Kardashian. (Pacific Coast News)
Editor's Note: Regardless if you're a parent, know someone with kids or don't even like kids, chances are you were forwarded Lisa Bloom's article "How to Talk to Little Girls." The accessible genius in her work, along with some very practical advice relative to young people and popular culture, I think, transcends a parent-only readership. Full disclosure: We watch reality television. Not all of it, but definitely more than Lisa and probably a lot more than young girls (we can call it "work" so it's okay). But like professional wrestling, Medieval Times and Criss "Mindfreak" Angel, we know it's not real. Kids, not so much. After getting to know Lisa a bit better, we asked her thoughts on reality television and how she'd suggest the subject is discussed with young girls. So she wrote this article. Enjoy.
The typical American teenager watches 3 hours, 20 minutes of TV daily, and reality shows have been girls' hands-down favorites for over a decade now. If you're having a hard time getting your daughter away from treacly dating contests, backstabbing housewives, and boozy Jersey brawlers, you're not alone. But how do you talk to her about the shows when telling her what you really think ? that they're dropping her IQ into the toilet and turning her into a shallow, narcissistic mean girl ? seems ill-advised? Here's the script:
Hey, what are you watching?
The first step is to watch with her, and engage. Sit down quietly and observe in a calm, nonjudgmental manner. What does she like about this show? Why'd she choose it? Listen to her point of view. The more you respect her perspective, the more you'll have a chance of getting her to respect yours.
Does she care what you think? Very much so. Researchers periodically ask kids who their #1 role model is. Actresses and athletes and pop stars get a few votes, but every time, hands down, it's you: parents.
Maybe she's watching to laugh at the shows. Hey, that's a start. Some kids stick to one network. Maybe you just need to broaden her range. Learn to differentiate between the shows. Not all reality programming corrodes your daughter's brain. Talent contests like American Idol, The Voice or Dancing with the Stars showcase the rewards of hard work and sometimes, stirring performances. The Amazing Race is a travelogue that spurs interest in the world outside our borders. Watched in moderation, no harm done.
Does this show seem "real" to you?
Unfortunately though, most reality TV isn't so benign. Dozens of shows follow around rich, bored, talentless people, mostly women, in their "real" lives. They cruelly exclude friends from parties, bitch and moan about petty complaints, break up, make up, work themselves into a lather, rinse, repeat. Ask: Who are these women? Why are their lives so empty? Do you think that's what makes them mean? Adolescents are naturally cynical. Tap into that.
In 2009, a group of reality survivors whose confidentiality agreements had expired, revealed a pattern of "isolation, sleeplessness and alcohol" being used "to encourage wild behavior."- New York Times
Dating shows fake love and romance. Dozens of women compete for the love of one man, bursting into tears because the guy they somehow fell in love with upon first meeting yesterday chose another bikini-clad girl after twelve seconds of conversation. Ask your daughter: Really? Watch together as pretty young things moan, "I would have given it all up for him!" Ask: Given up their education? Their job? Their dignity? Moved to another state? All of the above, for a virtual stranger, because he's handsome and the show has enabled him to buy her stuff? Are you kidding me?
It's as though the women's movement never happened in this genre: Her identity, creativity, brains, and personality are all subsumed under one goal: Snare the Man. He doesn't have to get bogged down with learning about her skills, her history, her dreams for the future. If she's got a good "bikini body," she's in! (Until the end of the series, when he always dumps her, generating tabloid headlines.)
Do you buy this as anyone's "reality"? Do you actually know any girls or women like this?
Explain that every reality show is staged. Compare the show to a cell phone video she may have made. Quality is a million times better on TV, right? In the real world, none of us cohabits with expensive theatrical lighting in our living rooms, camera operators with giraffe-sized equipment moving around our homes, boom mikes hovering overhead, sound guys in our bedrooms adjusting the sound, microphones hooked on our bras. But all this equipment is stuffed into a set for a reality show. If they were all in your living room, how authentic would you be?
Why did the producers choose these cast members to be on this show, and how do they get them to behave that way?
Reality shows are about 1 percent reality and 99 percent show. Producers seek loud, outrageous characters, and manipulate them into confrontations. In 2009 the New York Times spoke with a group of reality survivors whose confidentiality agreements had expired, revealing a pattern of "isolation, sleeplessness and alcohol" being used "to encourage wild behavior."
Nothing is left to chance. Fleets of producers tell the performers what to say before, during, and after the tapings, requiring endless takes and re-takes, just as on sitcoms and dramas. Participants hear a constant pep talk in their earpiece of "Get mad!" "Show it!" "Tell her how you really feel ? don't hold back!" "Give it to her!"
Does this show reflect our values?
In 2010, Brigham Young University published the results of a study showing reality TV averaged 52 acts of aggression per hour compared to 33 on popular dramas, soap operas and comedies.Ask your girl what the most important character traits are, in her opinion. What kind of person does she want to be? What qualities does she prize in her best friend? Kindness? Compassion? Loyalty? Sense of humor? Intelligence? Perseverance? Spirituality? Does she ever see these on the reality shows she watches? No? Instead, what values predominate?
We know that meanness reigns supreme in the reality genre. In 2010, Brigham Young University published the results of a study showing reality TV averaged 52 acts of aggression per hour compared to 33 on popular dramas, soap operas and comedies. Researchers found that at least half the meanness is obviously baited by producers, who, for example, put the contestants in a box and prod them to make cruel comments about other contestants, from whom they then provoke angry retorts, and so on, back and forth.
In my experience representing a number of reality show performers as an attorney, I'd say that more like 90% of the reality shows are loosely scripted by producers, who constantly push the performers to the ugly outer extremes of nasty human behavior. And thus Teen Mom and Kourtney & Kim Take Manhattan both featured "caught on camera" incidents of domestic violence in 2011, in which performers actually punched each other in anger.
As late as the 1990s, values like "benevolence" (kindness) were the primary characteristics of the lead characters on the most popular TV shows. With the rise of reality programming, that's changed radically. Achieving fame, popularity, and making money are now the goals of your daughter's admired television personalities, according to a UCLA study. Ask your daughter, what's more important to her: being famous, or improving the world? As I discuss in my book, Think: Straight Talk for Women to Stay Smart in a Dumbed-Down World, 25 percent of young American women would now rather win America's Next Top Model than the Nobel Peace Prize. This is what reality TV has done to us.
[To read and excerpt from her book Think, click here.]
Ask: If there was a show about people being kind, and working out problems without drama, yelling or violence, would anyone watch? Would you watch? Why/ why not?
What message is this sending about women?
In the real world, females have passions, goals, careers, families. Women volunteer and contribute to their communities. We work part time while we get a college education. We study at night after we put the baby to bed. We read books to stay sharp. We manage our money. Girls in real life have close friends they turn to for joy or solace, who they would never backstab for a man or for any other reason. We can be super achievers. All three winners of this year's Google science fair were girls!
Reality show producers could choose females like these to star in their shows, but they never do. Instead, they look for the worst of every negative female stereotype: vain, bitchy, shallow women with no jobs at all, or at best, jobs from the pre-feminist era: modeling, singing, cheerleading.
Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner once said, "We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make a statement. To make money is our only objective."Ask your daughter: Why do we find these jiggly, giggly vacuous girls entertaining? Why does reality TV seem to find intelligent, kind, emotionally stable women so threatening that they're almost completely shut out of the genre? And: Why are there so few women of color on these shows? Why has there never been a nonwhite Bachelor or Bachelorette, for example? And why do women of color so frequently embody the worst stereotypes on reality TV, like the "angry black woman"? How do they get away with calling them "ghetto" or "ho" so often?
What do you think the purpose of this show is?
Here's the biggest question to ask your daughter. Why are these shows on, anyway? Unscripted programming, like all other commercial media, exists for one and only one purpose. If she says, "to make money," ding-ding-ding! Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner once said, "We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make a statement. To make money is our only objective." (Disney is one of the handful of megacompanies that owns the majority of all television in the U.S.) Now, more specific, please: How, exactly, do these shows make money? If she says, "by selling commercials," she gets partial credit.
"We are here to serve advertisers," the head of CBS once said, "That is our raison d'etre." Commercials are a big part of that, but product placement is embedded everywhere on reality shows. Any time you see a label, or hear a brand mentioned, that's not an accident: It's negotiated, bought and paid for. Many shows, especially on cable, are hour-long commercials for one company after another, lovingly mentioned by the hosts and contestants. "Our friends at Ford..." They're not friends. Friends don't have to pay you to say nice things about them. It's a sales job. Don't fall for it. In our home, we shout out "product placement!" anytime we notice one on TV. Some shows generate a lot of yelling.
On many makeover shows, the entire message is that buying stuff is the key to happiness. A new outfit! Now she is utterly changed! Plastic surgery! Now she can be happy for the first time!
Ask your daughter: Why isn't what God gave them just fine? Why are these shows defining us by our appearance? Why are they constantly trying to sell us stuff we don't need for problems we don't have? How often are they sneaking in product placements? How many minutes of commercials do we have to sit through per hour of programming? If the shows were about improving our character, would they have anything to sell us?
Let's make a deal.
In Think, I advocate a 30-day tabloid and reality show fast to reboot your brain. If you're not ready for that, make your daughter a one-for-one deal. She can continue to watch one or two hours of her favorite reality shows a week, but there's a catch. For each hour of reality programming she watches, she owes you ? she owes her brain! ? one hour of reading a good book, like Reality Bites Back, a funny, smart critique of unscripted programming, or, of course, my book, Think ("product placement!"), an indictment of our dumbed-down culture and a step-by-step guide for your daughter to reclaim her brain. Or any book from my reading list at the end of Think.
Five of the biggest companies in the world control most of American television programming. But you are still the boss in your house. You are your resident, in-house media critic. And ultimately, you have the power to do the one thing reality TV will never do: Respect and engage her mind.
Lisa Bloom is the author of the New York Times bestseller,THINK: Straight Talk for Women to Stay Smart in a Dumbed-Down World. www.Think.tv.
Follow @LisaBloom on Twitter or Facebook.
Click here to read part of Think on Amazon.
How to Talk to Girls About Reality TV
<!-- google_ad_section_end -->By Think_Lisa_Bloom on February 9, 2012<NOSCRIPT></NOSCRIPT>
<!-- google_ad_section_start -->
From left: Bethenny Frankel of Real Housewives of New York, Pauly D and Snooki from Jersey Shore, Kim Kardashian. (Pacific Coast News)
Editor's Note: Regardless if you're a parent, know someone with kids or don't even like kids, chances are you were forwarded Lisa Bloom's article "How to Talk to Little Girls." The accessible genius in her work, along with some very practical advice relative to young people and popular culture, I think, transcends a parent-only readership. Full disclosure: We watch reality television. Not all of it, but definitely more than Lisa and probably a lot more than young girls (we can call it "work" so it's okay). But like professional wrestling, Medieval Times and Criss "Mindfreak" Angel, we know it's not real. Kids, not so much. After getting to know Lisa a bit better, we asked her thoughts on reality television and how she'd suggest the subject is discussed with young girls. So she wrote this article. Enjoy.
The typical American teenager watches 3 hours, 20 minutes of TV daily, and reality shows have been girls' hands-down favorites for over a decade now. If you're having a hard time getting your daughter away from treacly dating contests, backstabbing housewives, and boozy Jersey brawlers, you're not alone. But how do you talk to her about the shows when telling her what you really think ? that they're dropping her IQ into the toilet and turning her into a shallow, narcissistic mean girl ? seems ill-advised? Here's the script:
Hey, what are you watching?
The first step is to watch with her, and engage. Sit down quietly and observe in a calm, nonjudgmental manner. What does she like about this show? Why'd she choose it? Listen to her point of view. The more you respect her perspective, the more you'll have a chance of getting her to respect yours.
Does she care what you think? Very much so. Researchers periodically ask kids who their #1 role model is. Actresses and athletes and pop stars get a few votes, but every time, hands down, it's you: parents.
Maybe she's watching to laugh at the shows. Hey, that's a start. Some kids stick to one network. Maybe you just need to broaden her range. Learn to differentiate between the shows. Not all reality programming corrodes your daughter's brain. Talent contests like American Idol, The Voice or Dancing with the Stars showcase the rewards of hard work and sometimes, stirring performances. The Amazing Race is a travelogue that spurs interest in the world outside our borders. Watched in moderation, no harm done.
Does this show seem "real" to you?
Unfortunately though, most reality TV isn't so benign. Dozens of shows follow around rich, bored, talentless people, mostly women, in their "real" lives. They cruelly exclude friends from parties, bitch and moan about petty complaints, break up, make up, work themselves into a lather, rinse, repeat. Ask: Who are these women? Why are their lives so empty? Do you think that's what makes them mean? Adolescents are naturally cynical. Tap into that.
In 2009, a group of reality survivors whose confidentiality agreements had expired, revealed a pattern of "isolation, sleeplessness and alcohol" being used "to encourage wild behavior."- New York Times
Dating shows fake love and romance. Dozens of women compete for the love of one man, bursting into tears because the guy they somehow fell in love with upon first meeting yesterday chose another bikini-clad girl after twelve seconds of conversation. Ask your daughter: Really? Watch together as pretty young things moan, "I would have given it all up for him!" Ask: Given up their education? Their job? Their dignity? Moved to another state? All of the above, for a virtual stranger, because he's handsome and the show has enabled him to buy her stuff? Are you kidding me?
It's as though the women's movement never happened in this genre: Her identity, creativity, brains, and personality are all subsumed under one goal: Snare the Man. He doesn't have to get bogged down with learning about her skills, her history, her dreams for the future. If she's got a good "bikini body," she's in! (Until the end of the series, when he always dumps her, generating tabloid headlines.)
Do you buy this as anyone's "reality"? Do you actually know any girls or women like this?
Explain that every reality show is staged. Compare the show to a cell phone video she may have made. Quality is a million times better on TV, right? In the real world, none of us cohabits with expensive theatrical lighting in our living rooms, camera operators with giraffe-sized equipment moving around our homes, boom mikes hovering overhead, sound guys in our bedrooms adjusting the sound, microphones hooked on our bras. But all this equipment is stuffed into a set for a reality show. If they were all in your living room, how authentic would you be?
Why did the producers choose these cast members to be on this show, and how do they get them to behave that way?
Reality shows are about 1 percent reality and 99 percent show. Producers seek loud, outrageous characters, and manipulate them into confrontations. In 2009 the New York Times spoke with a group of reality survivors whose confidentiality agreements had expired, revealing a pattern of "isolation, sleeplessness and alcohol" being used "to encourage wild behavior."
Nothing is left to chance. Fleets of producers tell the performers what to say before, during, and after the tapings, requiring endless takes and re-takes, just as on sitcoms and dramas. Participants hear a constant pep talk in their earpiece of "Get mad!" "Show it!" "Tell her how you really feel ? don't hold back!" "Give it to her!"
Does this show reflect our values?
In 2010, Brigham Young University published the results of a study showing reality TV averaged 52 acts of aggression per hour compared to 33 on popular dramas, soap operas and comedies.Ask your girl what the most important character traits are, in her opinion. What kind of person does she want to be? What qualities does she prize in her best friend? Kindness? Compassion? Loyalty? Sense of humor? Intelligence? Perseverance? Spirituality? Does she ever see these on the reality shows she watches? No? Instead, what values predominate?
We know that meanness reigns supreme in the reality genre. In 2010, Brigham Young University published the results of a study showing reality TV averaged 52 acts of aggression per hour compared to 33 on popular dramas, soap operas and comedies. Researchers found that at least half the meanness is obviously baited by producers, who, for example, put the contestants in a box and prod them to make cruel comments about other contestants, from whom they then provoke angry retorts, and so on, back and forth.
In my experience representing a number of reality show performers as an attorney, I'd say that more like 90% of the reality shows are loosely scripted by producers, who constantly push the performers to the ugly outer extremes of nasty human behavior. And thus Teen Mom and Kourtney & Kim Take Manhattan both featured "caught on camera" incidents of domestic violence in 2011, in which performers actually punched each other in anger.
As late as the 1990s, values like "benevolence" (kindness) were the primary characteristics of the lead characters on the most popular TV shows. With the rise of reality programming, that's changed radically. Achieving fame, popularity, and making money are now the goals of your daughter's admired television personalities, according to a UCLA study. Ask your daughter, what's more important to her: being famous, or improving the world? As I discuss in my book, Think: Straight Talk for Women to Stay Smart in a Dumbed-Down World, 25 percent of young American women would now rather win America's Next Top Model than the Nobel Peace Prize. This is what reality TV has done to us.
[To read and excerpt from her book Think, click here.]
Ask: If there was a show about people being kind, and working out problems without drama, yelling or violence, would anyone watch? Would you watch? Why/ why not?
What message is this sending about women?
In the real world, females have passions, goals, careers, families. Women volunteer and contribute to their communities. We work part time while we get a college education. We study at night after we put the baby to bed. We read books to stay sharp. We manage our money. Girls in real life have close friends they turn to for joy or solace, who they would never backstab for a man or for any other reason. We can be super achievers. All three winners of this year's Google science fair were girls!
Reality show producers could choose females like these to star in their shows, but they never do. Instead, they look for the worst of every negative female stereotype: vain, bitchy, shallow women with no jobs at all, or at best, jobs from the pre-feminist era: modeling, singing, cheerleading.
Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner once said, "We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make a statement. To make money is our only objective."Ask your daughter: Why do we find these jiggly, giggly vacuous girls entertaining? Why does reality TV seem to find intelligent, kind, emotionally stable women so threatening that they're almost completely shut out of the genre? And: Why are there so few women of color on these shows? Why has there never been a nonwhite Bachelor or Bachelorette, for example? And why do women of color so frequently embody the worst stereotypes on reality TV, like the "angry black woman"? How do they get away with calling them "ghetto" or "ho" so often?
What do you think the purpose of this show is?
Here's the biggest question to ask your daughter. Why are these shows on, anyway? Unscripted programming, like all other commercial media, exists for one and only one purpose. If she says, "to make money," ding-ding-ding! Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner once said, "We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make a statement. To make money is our only objective." (Disney is one of the handful of megacompanies that owns the majority of all television in the U.S.) Now, more specific, please: How, exactly, do these shows make money? If she says, "by selling commercials," she gets partial credit.
"We are here to serve advertisers," the head of CBS once said, "That is our raison d'etre." Commercials are a big part of that, but product placement is embedded everywhere on reality shows. Any time you see a label, or hear a brand mentioned, that's not an accident: It's negotiated, bought and paid for. Many shows, especially on cable, are hour-long commercials for one company after another, lovingly mentioned by the hosts and contestants. "Our friends at Ford..." They're not friends. Friends don't have to pay you to say nice things about them. It's a sales job. Don't fall for it. In our home, we shout out "product placement!" anytime we notice one on TV. Some shows generate a lot of yelling.
On many makeover shows, the entire message is that buying stuff is the key to happiness. A new outfit! Now she is utterly changed! Plastic surgery! Now she can be happy for the first time!
Ask your daughter: Why isn't what God gave them just fine? Why are these shows defining us by our appearance? Why are they constantly trying to sell us stuff we don't need for problems we don't have? How often are they sneaking in product placements? How many minutes of commercials do we have to sit through per hour of programming? If the shows were about improving our character, would they have anything to sell us?
Let's make a deal.
In Think, I advocate a 30-day tabloid and reality show fast to reboot your brain. If you're not ready for that, make your daughter a one-for-one deal. She can continue to watch one or two hours of her favorite reality shows a week, but there's a catch. For each hour of reality programming she watches, she owes you ? she owes her brain! ? one hour of reading a good book, like Reality Bites Back, a funny, smart critique of unscripted programming, or, of course, my book, Think ("product placement!"), an indictment of our dumbed-down culture and a step-by-step guide for your daughter to reclaim her brain. Or any book from my reading list at the end of Think.
Five of the biggest companies in the world control most of American television programming. But you are still the boss in your house. You are your resident, in-house media critic. And ultimately, you have the power to do the one thing reality TV will never do: Respect and engage her mind.
Lisa Bloom is the author of the New York Times bestseller,THINK: Straight Talk for Women to Stay Smart in a Dumbed-Down World. www.Think.tv. Follow @LisaBloom on Twitter or Facebook.
Click here to read part of Think on Amazon.
