Disturbing Reality TV
So, today I caught a fragment of a reality show on VH1 which I’ve never seen before. The show is about a bunch of women who compete for a chance to “get with” Flava Flav, apparently. As you can imagine, a woman who’s “big break” is to sleep in a room with a bunch of other women, all competing for pimp daddy Flava Flav’s attention, is not at a good place in her life. These women have some serious issues. They need therapy, not a washed up rapper. Despite (or perhaps because of) their questionable appeal, these women dress as provocatively as possible, and use every trick in the ghetto fabulous playbook (”She doesn’t love you, she just wants to further her modeling career” or “Mrs. Flav, I LOVE your son”).
My first thought was, it’s not ethical to exploit women like this. The producers could use the time and money to teach these women some self respect, and put them on a better path. Then I thought, this really isn’t something we should be showing on TV. “Cops” was cool, because it showed people how dumb criminals can be. But do we really want lots of wanna-be Flavs getting a firsthand example of how exploitable some women are?
Well, it wasn’t long before my drifting thoughts were put on hold, and my attention was drawn again to the show like an 8 year-old boy to the bearded woman at the circus. Flava Flav was taking the whole stable of women to MEET HIS MOM, and AT CHURCH! They have to compete to impress his mom. Flav parades into church wearing his big clock and pimp hat, and the whole stable of women is put on display. They sure don’t seem comfortable. Finally, when the pastor takes a moment to recognize all of the people in the congregation celebrating wedding anniversaries, one of the women breaks down.
Imagine that; take a woman who has serious self-esteem issues and has reached a point in her life where she doesn’t really expect to get anything other than maybe a grab from a pimp rapper who is macking on 8 women at once; and PARADE HAPPY, NORMAL, MARRIED COUPLES IN FRONT OF HER! It’s utterly surreal.
Maybe I’m missing something. I only watched half an episode. But as far as I can tell, this one ranks right up there with bumfights.