Reality Television

I used to watch a lot of Reality TV when I was in high school, but now I just don't have the patience for it. I hate that it is marketed as reality, when so much of it is staged or edited to have higher stakes. Its a distorted view of reality and it can be harmful if people see it and think that its true. I also feel like because it is TV there is always that wall that keeps people from being themselves. People are often a caricature of themselves on TV and it is a shame that so many people want to be seen as that.

I don't keep up with any reality shows now, but one that I used to watch all the time was America's Next Top Model. I loved the competition aspect and it was interesting to see people transform from normal girls into high-fashion models. I ended up stopping watching it after realizing how fabricated it was and how much drama the show had. Every single cycle had so much drama between the girls and it just didn't seem all that authentic. Most reality shows, even ones with a competition, tend to focus on the drama, which makes people either love it or hate it. The show also experimented with gender roles and one episode in the eighth cycle, "The Girl Who Takes Credit," focused on a photo shoot that had the girls dress up as men and pose with a drag queen. They were given a couple to portray, some examples were outdoorsy, power-couple, bohemian, hip hop, and collegiate. The one girl that excelled at this challenge was Natasha who was a part of the hip hop couple. As shown in the picture below, she really adapted to the male role. She was the most comfortable with this shoot and even had the idea to have tin foil in her mouth to make it seem like grills. It was interesting to see how easily she slid into this role, even though she was portraying mainly a stereotype. The judges praised her and how comfortable and creative she was. Some of the other girls struggled because they weren't comfortable being in the men's clothes and couldn't break their femininity. The people that succeeded in this were the ones that weren't bothered by portraying a man and embraced it. Natasha ended up winning the photo shoot and everyone was very impressed with her. Her gender was portrayed as something that she knew and didn't care about.