Tuesday, January 31, 2012

What I've Learned from the Jersey Shore

If your underwear is showing, then your dress is too short.

If you insist on wearing a short dress, then make sure that you wear underwear.

Fighting strangers in public just because they threw a drink at you/pulled your weave/looked at you in the wrong way does not make you look like a man (or a woman). It makes you look violent and stupid.

Orange is not a good look for anyone. It's also a sign that you've spent too much time in the tanning booth.

If you wear your hair so high that you start to resemble Frankenstein's monster or the monster's bride (Pauly and Snooki, I'm talking to you), then the villagers just might come after you with flaming torches and pitchforks.

Referring to yourself in the third person does not make you sound smarter (and who gives himself a lame nickname like "The Situation", anyway?).

It's okay to swim in the ocean. It's not actually full of whale sperm.

When your boyfriend/girlfriend screams at you on a regular basis, destroys your belongings, freaks out if you talk to someone of the opposite sex, and/or shoves you around, it's time to break up and cut that person out of your life for good. It doesn't mean you should take that person back again and again just because he/she is so "awesome".

Even if you pull the blanket over your heads, everyone still knows what you and your date are doing.

If you are lucky enough to get a free trip to Italy, don't spend the whole trip partying with tourists. Looking at art, eating Italian food, interacting with the locals, exploring the different cities, and experiencing all the other things that Italy has to offer should not be an afterthought that is saved for the last couple days of your trip. 

It's good to exercise and lift weights on a regular basis. It's also good to lift a book and actually read it every now and then.

Spraying your hair with a bunch of hairspray is not the same as shampooing it. And spraying yourself from head to toe with cologne (which is so strong it makes other people hold their breath and back away quickly from you) is not the same thing as taking a shower.

When your fifteen minutes of fame are up, at least you'll have a career to fall back on selling T-shirts in the Shore Store.

When I first started watching Jersey Shore, I did it because I was bored and nothing else was on. I hadn't even really watched reality TV (except for the occasional episode of Millionaire Matchmaker) since I stopped watching The Real World almost a decade ago. I'd gotten irritated with that show because it had gone way downhill since the show first aired. Now every show centered on drunken catfights, hot tub orgies, and pretty, spoiled brats whining about how hard life was for them even though they didn't have to work and got to live rent-free in fancy penthouses.

And yet, I later found myself tuning in to watch Jersey Shore, which is full of drunken catfights and hot tub orgies, except the cast of this show is a lot more orange and have turned partying into a career. I could never live or act the way that they do (nor would I ever want to), and yet I couldn't help watching them. (On the other hand, I haven't been watching the show as often as I used to, because the episodes started getting repetitive three seasons ago. For example, it gets boring to watch Snooki and the Situation get thrown out of clubs again and again.)

One reason I watched the show was because they're so stupid it's funny. They say and do the stupidest things sometimes, and they don't even realize how stupid they look. I guess it's bad for me to say this, but I actually feel better about myself when I watch them. I think, Well, at least I've never done anything THAT dumb. 

I know I'm not the only one who indulges in reality television. Millions of people take pleasure in being voyeurs to other people's lives; they say it's "reality", but it's anything but. The episodes are edited by the show's "writers" and producers, and certain events and emotions are magnified to make them seem much more dramatic than they actually are. Some of the people on these shows are so greedy for fame and money that they let the shows bring out the worst in them without considering the long-term consequences. We watch people get engaged to people they've only known for a few weeks, only to break up a few months later. We watch women who see nothing wrong with marrying for money so that they can have luxurious lifestyles, and we watch men treat women like sex objects.

We also watch teen moms who spend more time obsessing over their abusive boyfriends than their own babies. That's one reason I'm seriously considering not watching Teen Mom anymore, because the show has become so disturbing. What kind of mother would rather scream at her mother and drive off to smoke weed than stay home with her son? What kind of mother would slap her emotionally abusive boyfriend around in front of her child? What kind of mother prevents her ex-boyfriend from spending any time with their son just to punish him? Several of the girls on Teen Mom, that's who. Yes, there are older women who act like this too, but the behavior of some of the girls on this show in particular makes me worry about the example that several (though not all) of the girls on that show are setting for other teenagers.

We watch teenagers and twentysomethings on other reality shows get drunk, take their clothes off, and do the kinds of wild things that make us wonder how they'll ever get hired for real jobs when they finally come to their senses, because employers who are not Joe Francis (of the Girls Gone Wild notoriety) will probably not want to hire young adults who do those things on national television. (That might explain why some of them continue doing reality TV well into their thirties and forties.)

And even though we may be frustrated, repulsed, or horrified by their behavior, we continue to watch because it's "entertainment". It's also very easy for us to judge these people, seeing as how we only get the edited version of their lives. I've read the online message boards for some of these shows, and many of the people post extremely hateful, nasty, and ignorant  comments on those boards that bash the people on those shows.

But on the other hand, I think that we can actually learn something from reality television. For one thing, we can learn about how we shouldn't act, and we can learn that all that fame and money can't really make up for the fact that the people on those shows have no privacy and have made themselves vulnerable to millions of viewers' criticism. Reality TV also teaches us that loving, lasting, and genuine relationships are nothing like the ones that we see on TV.

What about you? Do you watch reality TV? If not, why not? If you do, which shows do you watch and why?

16 comments:

  1. I watch jersey shore. Can't look away. Not proud.

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    1. Hi Gia,
      I'm not proud of myself for watching Jersey Shore either. If I lived with those people (though I think I would only be able to survive one day as their roommate, if that), I don't think I could handle their lifestyle. And the cast of this show also makes me worry about the message that they're sending to the young viewers, because even though a lot of people make fun of the cast, at the same time there are some people who may think that partying every night and hooking up with random strangers is what all twentysomethings should do.

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  2. I'm not a huge MTV fan, but boy did you hit the nail on the head. I'm more of a Bravo fan. Top Chef is my favorite, but my dirty little secret is Real Housewives (of anywhere). Funnily enough, many of the things you learned from the Jersey Shore hold true for Real Housewives. : )

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    1. Hi Emily,
      I think that a lot of people don't like the Real Housewives any more than they like the Jersey Shore cast, but on other hand, their shows would probably be a lot less entertaining if they were all kind and decent to each other. (I feel guilty for saying that, but it's kind of true.)

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  3. I have a broken ankle and for a long time, I was so heavily medicated I could do little but watch reality shows (no plot = good if I fell asleep in the middle). At first I watched a lot of Discovery-type reality - Mythbusters, Dirty Jobs, Pawn Stars, and Say Yes to the Dress. Now I've moved on to Teen Moms and I find myself compulsively googling the names of the mothers to see which ones have been arrested recently. I kind of hate myself, but what else are you going to do when you're essentially housebound?

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    1. Hi NGS,
      I hope you feel better soon! I must confess that like you, I've found myself Googling the Teen Moms too; Jenelle and Amber in particular just can't seem to stay out of trouble! And they're still so young, too, which makes their situations even more worrisome.

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    2. Sadly, Teen Moms 2 is not available on Netflix on Demand, so I haven't tortured myself with that yet. But Amber? I spend so much time worried about Little Leah. Send Leah to me!! I will take care of her!!! (Man, I need to get better SOON...)

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    3. Hi NGS,
      I feel sorry for Amber's daughter Leah too, because Amber and Gary are both very immature. Last I heard Gary had custody of Leah. Although he's not as bad as Amber is, and he definitely didn't deserve to have Amber hit him, at the same time I don't have a good opinion of him; he was always passive-aggressive with Amber and kept pressuring her to get back together with him even when she didn't want to.

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  4. I think pretty much everything on MTV is trashy. I don't get it at all. I'm sure I'm not the target demographic, but still...what happened to the music MTV?

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    1. Hi Angela,
      I think there's at least one or two hours of music on MTV in the morning, and I think there's an MTV2 or something that shows music. But you're right in that MTV is not the same as it used to be. I think I'm not really in the demographic anymore either, because I can't really relate to most of the people on those shows anymore.

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  5. I honestly can't stand most reality tv--simply for the fact that i can't stand to watch large groups of people act stupid LOL. Now, I occasionally enjoy Survivor, but it's more because my family was really into it and it was a bonding experience. But also most reality tv isn't that "realistic"--it seems more like a soap opera to me 99% of the time.

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    1. Hi Catherine,
      I think that reality TV is basically this generation's version of soap operas. It's kind of ironic that actual soap operas are getting cancelled because not as many people watch them anymore. And yet there are tons of people tuning in every week because they want to watch these "real-life" soap operas.

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  6. I watch about twenty-two minutes of Jersey Shore on two different sittings. Can't do it. Can't reward people for being stupid on television. You don't have to have skills to be on TV anymore, just being more stupid and obnoxious than anybody else around you will do the trick.

    And it's not an anti-reality-TV add. I watch it. I watch Undercover Boss, Auction Hunters, America's Next Top Model even (blush). Shows where there's something to be gained, lives to be changed. Purpose is the keyword here.

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    1. Hi Ben,
      I think if there were more intelligent people on television, the shows would improve. That's one reason I like The Big Bang Theory; it's not a reality show, but I like the fact that it's about a group of friends who happen to be geniuses.
      I tried watching America's Next Top Model, but Tyra's shrill antics got on my nerves. I can see what you mean about how some shows do change people's lives for the better. I particularly like the idea of Undercover Boss, because it's about time CEOs found out what their employees' jobs are really like.

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  7. I watched Jersey Shore episodes 1 and 2. But I didn't watch the 3rd one I got sick of it. I can't watch the teen mom things because that's just too sad.

    I got sick of the steroid guy and the whiney one fast.

    I love all the tattoo shows. My new one is NY Ink.

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    1. Hi Theresa,
      The teen mom shows make me sad too, because the girls are forced to grow up really fast. And what makes it even more difficult to watch is that some of the girls refuse to grow up and take responsibility for themselves and their children. (Not to mention some of the teen dads on that show aren't always helpful to them, if at all.) There are a few girls on the shows, though, who became stronger and more mature after becoming mothers, so that gives me hope for them.

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