Self-esteem is just bad TV. In the industry that means “bad” for ratings, as in not entertaining. Or so it seems by today’s prevailing littered landscape of cheap-to-produce reality shows. And our female role training is incomplete without some good ole culturally traditional women-on-women trash talkin’, table flippin’, hair pullin’ hataration. A Parents Television Council (PTC) study has shown that the channel targeting youth most, MTV, uses women to sell female humiliation. And oh yes it is! possible to become de-sensitized to insensitivity.
The only TV reality show contrary to this female-hating/-demeaning trend that pops to mind is ‘Bethenny Ever After’. But in its season two, even this show has become a therapy-lint-gazing, self-promoting, Skinny-marriage-on-the-rocks-Girl commercial. Great. The only one of us who is celebrated and represented by the media as “making it,” (edit, inconclusive to date :has to resort to bloating her financial worth, and by acting like a Showboaty, Inspiration-dispensing Blingy Oprah-bot to be deemed interesting enough for us to watch.
Ladies, work your ADD-trained media memory way back to two whole party Saturdays ago when the Rodney King/LA race riots had their 20th. The most famous, ungrammatical phrase of that event applies to the vast majority of women on reality TV: “Can we all just get along?” I don’t know. Can we, chicas?
To further put my challenge in reality TV show speak: “I am a growed ass wo-man who don’t know why other biotches can’t just stop their hating, and get each other’s back.” In other words, maturity and self-esteem (vs. ginormous ego) are ratings killers, so you will just have to go experience these things to practice and build them off-line, in the Real World and work on it for yourself. No script. No season storyline. No instant fame whoring gratification for being famous as a fame whore.
As unglam as that sounds, trust me, the rewards are high, sustainable and doesn’t produce belly fat, muffins.
Here are a few resources to help you and/or the young and impressionable females in your life understand and challenge how the media represents, packages and sells “acceptable female” images right back to us all:
Dove’s Self-Esteem workshop toolkit.
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