The Stereotypes Of Reality Television

Images of the “housewives” are excessively pictured on the internet. Bravotv.com has pages full of group photographs of the women in their exotic southern outfits, sparking smiles and diva personas. Pictured on the first page is a photograph from Bravotv.com, featuring the cast of The Housewives of Atlanta. It is intriguing to note that this portrait has been cropped together as one unit. In reality, however, each woman is a picture in its self that the producers of the show pushed together to appear as one photograph. Each woman is given certain characteristics to make them, in turn, an actual character on a show. Characters are needed so that the viewer’s cans stereotype each woman, thus providing a cast of characters. This provides an array of misconceptions of who these women

The sexualization of women in many of today’s reality shows leads to a negative effect on young girls. How girls learn about their value and worth can be greatly impacted by the degrading roles many of these “reality” stars portray. It sets high unrealistic expectations of the way young girls are supposed to act. Women are

Television networks are continually expanding their programming slates, and many in the past have switched to a year-round programming schedule that makes the phrase “summer return” basically absolute. On every channel, in every magazine, every darken theater, we see the way pop culture limits women’s role- girlfriends, victims, hookers, corpses, sex bombs, and “teases,” but why? Television, for most women, was the first place where they were able to visually see themselves represented. And for quite a while, they didn’t see much besides the loving wife, the dutiful daughter, gossiping girlfriends, fashion models, and the occasional maid, granny, or nanny. In Where the Girls Are: Growing Up

It is very well known to all that media is a big part of society today. It influenced how we see ourselves and the world to some extent. There are different types of media that is offered today, for example: TV, movies, radio, and newspapers. Within the different forms of media, women and men are represented in a certain way, all with different characteristics. In this essay, I will argue that there is similar gender stereotypes presented in the shows Modern Family and Every Body Loves Raymond, and how they differ from the show Full House.

What dictates the social roles, the individual responsibility everyone has in society, and stereotypes, an overgeneralized and oversimplified belief of a particular person or group, in America’s 21st century society? Can rationale and critical thinking be held accountable for the establishment of ethical beliefs involving people and their sex, gender related value systems? The following readings covered in this essay are both found within the textbook, Signs of Life in the U.S.A.: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers; the Introduction: Popular Signs written by coauthors Sonia Maasik, a writing programs lecturer at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Jack Solomon, an English Professor at California State University, and located within the second chapter of the textbook, the brief article, Dove’s “Real Beauty” backlash, written by Jennifer L. Pozner, the executive director of Women In Media & News (“Sonia Maasik”)(“Jack Solomon”)(194). Mass entertainment culture, the popular interests of the majority broadcasted in the media, can be attributed for constituting and sustaining the potentially hindering culture myths, a fictitious but widely accepted belief of a certain culture, regarding all genders. These cultural myths are not exclusive to men and women as they also involve transgender individuals and others who identify as another gender not classified under ‘cisgender.’ An extensive analysis of mass entertainment culture and

Modern media has a massive audience with more than 115 million American household families owning a television (NewsWire). Everyday viewers devote time to watching programs and are intrigued by the attractive actors and the situations they encounter. Although these characters and their lives seem to be unbelievably attractive, many of the shows have stereotypical gender qualities. Regina George in Mean Girls frequently portrays qualities that are often seen as ideal ways for women to live, though a closer look reveals the limitations with these ideas.

In Katha Pollitt 's essay entitled "The Hunger Games ' Feral Feminism," Pollitt writes about what reality television might look like if taken to extremes. Reality television is a huge part of our culture today, and I not only agree with Pollitt 's views and ideas of what reality TV would look if taken to the extremes, but I believe that we have already gotten to that point. Today 's reality TV shows such as "Keeping up with the Kardashians", "The Bachelorette" or any of the "Real Housewives" are among many of today 's popular shows that focus on extreme aggression, bullying, physical beauty, and sex appeal. These TV shows teach us that it is not only ok to compromise morals and values, but that type of behavior accepted and rewarded. In today 's age, reality TV generally has to go negative and go to the extreme in order for it to be interesting despite the lasting impact that it may have on viewers. Reality TV has an impact on the values of their viewers and alters how they may perceive real-life situations. Therefore, it 's important to take a look at some of the standards portrayed by reality TV.

The Girl Scouts Institute did a study in 2011 entitled “Real to Me: Girls and Reality TV” in which they gave many statistics to support the way in which reality TV affects young women. In this study, they collected data from over 1,100 girls around the country and what they found was astonishing. Many of the girls, 50 percent of them to be exact, believed that real-life reality shows are “mainly real and unscripted” (Girl Scouts Institute 1). Their study showed that girls who consumed reality TV are more likely to be focused on their physical appearance. Seventy-two percent say they spend a lot of time on their appearance versus 42 percent of non-viewers. Thirty-eight percent of

As reality TV is becoming more popular in American society the personality changes seen in people across the nation is staggering. Keeping Up with the Kardashians is a well-known TV show across the United States that features cosmetic surgeries being administered on the cast. Some women in American society

A reality television show where cameras follow affluent women as they enjoy their lavish lifestyle in Orange County, California is depicted in Bravo’s The Real Housewives of Orange County. The American reality television series focuses on the personal and professional lives of several women living extravagantly wealthy lives mostly due to their wealthy husbands. Over the past 5 years the success of the innovative reality TV show has allowed for an expansion of several installments of The Real Housewives franchise into various regions, including Beverly Hills and New York. Viewers have been riveted by the fictionalized version of such lavish lifestyle on television, however, The Real Housewives series has evolved as one of the most controversial reality television shows aired due to its depiction of women. The Real Housewives of Orange County have manipulated the audience to believe their fictionalized depiction of reality and with this have created a negative representation of women through their representational casting strategies.

Let’s examine a few specific examples of mindless shows that are underlining harmful to the distortive view of womanhood; “Bad Girls Club” – depicts women as loud, unruly, angry, bitter, jealous, envious, and non-supportive of one another; “All About the Game” – is a dating show that has women competing against each other for the attention of one man, hence women are illustrated as desperate, conniving, gossipers, attention seekers, insecure, and spiteful; “The Housewives” series – extremely materialistic, vain, over emphasizes a lack of morals, promiscuous, heartless, unmerciful, cold-hearted, remorseless and dresses provocative for attention; “Mob Wives” – known for physical fights, being callus in their treatment towards others, unbending,

Reality television has been around for many years influencing the minds of the people around the world. Producers make everyone think that reality television is real when most of the time it’s just lies and drama on the shows. Producers do not care about what they throw on television, if they are winning money and ratings they are happy. Reality television has a negative effect on young adults by the acting and the different stereotypes about women, men, people of color, and more groups of people. The show I choose to analyze is The Bachelor because it shows lies, drama and gives really bad stereotypes about women. The Bachelor is a show where twenty five women compete for the love of one man and do anything to win. This show is a great example of how women treat each other and how they portrayed them in reality television.

Reality television has recently become a staple item in the world of entertainment. Capturing the actions, attitudes, responses, and behaviors of real people on camera appealed to a wide range of audiences. The Bachelor, showcasing one eligible bachelor who is given the chance to select his final mate from a pool of beautiful women each season, is a perfect example of a highly successful reality TV show. However, this decade-long reality dating show embodies sexism, misogyny, and racism. Therefore, this paper analyzes The Bachelor within the perspective of race and gender.

In this way, self-objectification has become an additional way for the media to make money from women’s comparison of themselves to an unachievable standard. Heldman does not mention this in her article, but this phenomenon can be seen on a variety of reality television shows. For example, on The Bachelor, women willingly sign up to compete in a competition that will end in an engagement and emphasizes that “airtime for the women clearly correlates with sunbathing frequency, bikini size, and salacious tendencies…” (Frank 94). In this case, the women do seem to be aware of their own self-objectification because as they await their judgement from the Bachelor, they wear “…revealing cocktail dresses [and] stand in a formation reminiscent of the Miss America pageant” (91). Another reality show that relies upon women’s self-objectification is Pussycat Dolls Present: The Search for the Next Doll. On this program, women compete for a role on a popular singing group by using their ‘hot power’ (Zeisler 130). Reality shows based on the idea of makeovers are also popular because they connect women’s physical appearances with their abilities to be otherwise successful, as if “…it simply wouldn’t have been okay for her less conventionally attractive former self to have such plans” (ibid). All of these shows create problems for their young

The shows are aware of the excess of their characters. In following the consumerist lifestyles, it does not validate or idolize them, but instead provokes populist scorn on these women and their failures (Lee and Moscowitz, p. 80). The shows critiques and demonizes women specifically, which, in this setting, is deeply intertwined with class through their use of the Bravo “wink.” Bravo ‘winks’ when it showcases the irony in a scene for the viewer. Bravo executive, Andy Cohen, explained the practice as, “Trying to let the audience in on the fun of the story. We wink at the audience when someone says, ‘I’m the healthiest person in the world’ and then you see them ashing their cigarette” (“For ‘Housewives,’” p. AR24). “The fun” Cohen describes is setting up cultural expectations of gender and class behavior only to have them violated so the audience can laugh at the housewives’ shortcomings as both socialites and mothers. The Real Housewives franchise is already self aware enough to be a show about, “rich women to crass to be classy, too superficial to be nurturing and too self-obsessed to be caring” (Lee and Moscowitz, p. 64). Because of this reflexive critique, 30 Rock’s criticism is of race and the medium of reality television is more poignant the violation of the expectation of class from the elite is already ridiculed.