The Bad Girls Club. Love and Hip Hop. Basketball Wives. The Real Housewives of Atlanta. Much to the dismay of my husband I watch them ALL. Black Woman, (and yes I'm speaking directly to us because we ARE the ones that are watching) what have we become? Why do we do this to ourselves? Every evening during these shows and especially the morning after, we run to Twitter and Facebook to lament, criticize, and encourage the actions of these overnight celebrities who look so much our own sister-girls. "Girrrl....NeNe is tripping". "Chrissy is a bitch." "I would have slapped her too". You know who you are.
My rantings come on the heels of season 3's Love and Hip Hop finale where Mona Scott-Young, executive producer, sat down in a one-on-one interview with each cast member for the obligatory season recap. The typical panel-style reunion show (which usually ends up in a Jerry Springer-esque all out brawl) was scrapped as we were told that some cast members, grown women mind you, were unable to sit in the same room with one another after this season's unfoldings. Juicy stuff. I'm interested...go on. As usual some women couldn't get over the he-said, she-said backstabbing while others (no names mentioned, Emily) hoped to "shame" their superstar men back into a loving relationship with their appearance on the show.
Surprisingly, my WTF antennae perked up as some of the women got all up in Scott-Young's face about how they were portrayed on the show. Olivia was seen as weak whereas Erica and Kimbella came across as gold-digging, nail-clawing hoochies in the flesh. Scott-Young was crafty enough play the soothing nurturer during their boo-hoos though she pulled the strings in orchestrating the Vaseline and sneaker showdowns. I don't get it. If you're wise enough to try to teach these women a valuable lesson about their ways then why be the one exploiting the ugly? (Oh right, money). And why cry about it later anyway? Nobody made you get into full costume and makeup to shoot the afternoon-brawl-by-the pool scene. Puh-lease. Somaya was perhaps the only one to call a spade a spade when she accused Scott Young of choosing to edit parts of the storyline that suggested her to be fiercely headstrong in branding herself while the fight scenes made the cut. Again, Puh-lease.
What is wrong with this picture? This is exactly what is meant by Double Consciousness at its finest. Now I gotta worry about what "the other" thinks of me? Now I gotta see it on "Shit White Girls Say About Black Girls (funny as it may be).
To this lowly little social worker who prides herself on being a strong black woman (whatever that means) the cognitive dissonance is astounding! (Basically it means there's an inconsistency between my beliefs and my actions). These shows are my guilty pleasure for sure yet they set Black women far back in overcoming negative stereotypes. Everything in my being says that the actions of these women are disgusting and they don't represent me yet I'm human and compelled to watch. Help!
Maybe we watch to feel better about ourselves. Or maybe we're just sheep, slaves to the whims of the entertainment biz. I mean, Flavor of Love. Really? Anything for a buck. How about this. I'll work on my integrity and tune out and you (White people) stop referring to a place or situation as "ghetto". Not okay.
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