Reality TV Reinforces Demeaning Social Stereotypes

Reality TV Reinforces Demeaning Social Stereotypes
By Dara Andriani

We can’t deny that television shows make a huge impact towards our society, our culture, and how we interact with other people surrounding us. There are many things that we can learn from watching television shows like ‘The Voice’, ‘American Idol’, ‘The Biggest Loser’, and so on. Shows like that really give you an idea about how all of us as a person can accomplish anything, but then how about those TV shows such as MTV’s ‘Jersey Shore’, ‘My Super Sweet 16’, and ‘16 and pregnant’? Even though we are supposed to only take everything in a positive way, but I can’t help but to notice that some of these TV shows is one of the main reasons that creates social stereotypes within our society. In this essay, I will provide some of examples that I think will be proofs that reality TV shows reinforces demeaning social stereotypes.
One of the examples that can be taken from is the infamous reality TV called America’s Next Top Model. This show has been going on for many years resulting in 20 cycles that will be aired later in summer this year. It is about a competition between twelve girls who compete to win a once in a lifetime opportunity of a modeling contract with an infamous model agency in America, along with opportunities working with the biggest names in the fashion industry. The show might look okay at first glance, then why do I think this reality TV really shows how it shapes demeaning stereotypes on society? This show is well known because of its famous “catfights” that is happening between the contestants. Each episode seems to be filled with the bickering of the girls that are forced to live in a same apartment for a couple of months. As the audience can see that this show’s contestants varied from Caucasian to African-American. For being a regular viewer of the TV show, I cannot help but to notice that it seems that the girls that are more ‘aggressive’ when in an arguments are the African-American girls, the show doesn’t mind all those swearing words and violence like pulling each other’s hair seem to be an activity that are ‘normal’ to this particular show. I think this is one of the reasons that when I look at African-American girls, I can’t help but to think that they’d have an attitude same as the girls in the show. I also think that it also portrays that girls in general would all act the same as the girls in the show, they would only argue, fight, and talk behind each other’s back, while actually not all girls would do that.
Another thing that I will discuss is about another TV show that is pretty popular among teenagers that is broadcasted through MTV called ’16 And Pregnant’, this show tells stories about girls who are still in their teenage years already having their own child and it is being televised to the whole world. I can’t find any positive thing from this TV show because personally I don’t think that having a baby at that age is appropriate. For me, this is one of many ways that reality TV really reinforces social stereotypes that if you are a sixteen-year-old American girl, then it is normal for you to have a baby already. I even have a friend who is American and she feels insulted whenever someone would make a joke that teenage American girls are more likely to have babies at that age. It shapes how people from all over the world view that American teenagers are careless, and ignorant about the norms and act so disrespectful to their parents as well. It is really shameful to have such stereotypes if those kinds of reality TV show keep on airing for everyone to see.
Following to that I have another example of a show that is also broadcasted through MTV called ‘My Super Sweet 16’, this tells stories about fifteen-year-olds who are about to celebrate their sixteenth year of life in the most outrages way with spending all of their parents’ money to have a extraordinary party. The sadder part of this is that MTV itself only aired parts where the girls seem to act so snobbishly instead of showing their real side. There was once an episode where a girl had a band performed in her party and an interview was held with one of the members, they talked about how nice the girl actually is and those parts where MTV shows do not represent how the girl actually is. Here is an excerpt of the interview, ‘“MTV was trying to get a juicy story out of us,” Kirch says. “They were like trying to get us to say stuff that wasn’t true, but we weren’t doing that. I was bummed when I watched the show because they like made it sound like (the 16-year-old) was this spoiled girl”’ (Atias, 2009). This shows that reality TV only aired those cuts that they think would sell to the audiences because it is said that people loves drama and stuff such as that are the ones that captures the audiences’ attention.
What really sickened me the most is that this would only strengthen the stereotype that teenage American girls are just spoiled girls who only care about them selves while in reality that is far from true. Another part taken from the interview where one of the members of the band says that the girl was extremely nice and she actually donated $25.000 to charity and MTV didn’t show any of that (Atias, 2009). That would be another proof that reality TV is not really ‘real’ like all of us thought.
To conclude, I really think that the ratings that control all of the reality TV shows has to be stricter in deciding which shows should continue and which shows should not. This can really make a huge impact to our society and how we put meanings to things that are surrounding us. We know that in order for us to view everything positively, we have to be influenced by things that are educational and not stuff that would only create demeaning stereotypes.

Reference:
Atias, C. (2009). The Maine Talk New Record, John O’Callaghan’s Arrest, and Filming ‘My Super Sweet 16’. Retrieved from http://www.poisonivy.tv/2009/11/maine-talk-new-record-john-ocallaghans.html