It’s Just Entertainment

Reality TV has failed black women.  I have always been opposed to watching pseudo-celebrities go about their daily and often mundane life.  However, the wave of women-focused reality shows just makes my heart sink.  The Not- So Real Housewives of Whatever City, Bad Girls Club, The Girls Next Door, so forth and so on, may be a plan to systematically perpetuate the destruction of black women.  Well, maybe that is a stretch, but maybe it is… accurate.

Beyond the obvious child-like drama {staged to keep ratings up}, the shows have no objective or theme.  Usually when a pilot show is presented to a network, the objective and what it contributes to TV have to be apparent and not a complete waste of a time slot.  These shows do, however, have a message – a tragic one.  The emergence of catty women reality shows has desensitized black women’s views on what is acceptable behavior in both public and private.  I am not saying that prior to shows of this variety, black women were never prone to curse each other out, be sneaky and manipulative but there was a clear distinction between what was right and wrong.  The line, systematically, has been blurred.

Reality TV teaches women desperation.  The lack of sisterhood to obtain the fleeting attention of a man is frightening.  I constantly see this perpetuated in society- that a woman’s worth is directly correlated to if she has a man.  A worth that should be sacrificed at all costs to garner a man and/or his status. Furthermore, the relationships between the women are at best strained, at its worst, toxic.  Loyalty, friendship, and sisterhood are concepts targeted to be destroyed.

So let’s recap this leaves black women minus sisterhood, loyalty, friendships, and the gravest of all, self worth.

But hey, I could be wrong. It could be just entertainment…