Best.Ruby.Episode.Ever!
On the one hand, it feels inappropriate, presumptuous, to compare my own journey, my own challenges, to Ruby's.
While I have, to be sure, a heaping plate of "health issues," my own situation cannot be compared to the urgency, the immediacy, the right-now-no-shit-life-or-death state of affairs Ruby faces.
But has Ruby herself not stated that her very motivation for the show is the hope that her story might inspire others?
That is, after all, her reason for subjecting herself to months of taping, allowing camera crews into the home, into the life of an individual who is about as far from the typical reality show hamster as it is possible to get - to inspire and help people who are struggling with all kinds of addiction, all kinds of problems?
It is her intention that we identify with her, each in our own way, and today's episode totally hit home for me.
Although we have seen some advancement in the last few decades, the fact is that the principle of inclusion in the area of ladies' ready-to-wear receives a lot more lip service and advertising hype than facts on the rack.
When my own five two-and-a-fraction self tipped the scale at 175, I found that my (western-style) clothing choices were, to say the least, limited. Again, let me stress that I do not compare my own weight issues with Ruby's, the point is that the exclusion, the cutting-off point, starts at less than half what Ruby's weight is now - after losing almost a hundred pounds.
A hundred pounds since the show began - remember she had already lost over two hundred before that, on her own.
When I lost over 50 of my 175 pounds, I was overwhelmed with fashion choices at every turn. Not that it was all "made for me," or even becoming, much less flattering. I was still short, still a bit "top-heavy," in a culture where the ideal of feminine figure pulchritude is basically Paris Hilton, but there was plenty of stuff that fit, a large enough pool of it so that I was able to accomplish that once-in-a-lifetime experience of Complete Wardrobe Replacement on a budget that, due to my "health challenges," had taken a one-way plunge from just a smoosh of discretionary income to poverty practically overnight.
As I gradually gained almost half of the weight back, that "cutting-off point" has come into a much sharper focus.
From a perspective that will be all too familiar to anyone who has lost weight and re-gained it, the ruthlessness of that exclusion, the constricting narrowness of that "acceptable" range decreed by the industry can cut off, if we let it, much more than our fashion options.
The exact "tipping point," measured in pounds, will be different for each of us, for me it has been somewhat soul-chilling, to say the least, to contemplate that it occurs far below 175.
There is a difference - a world of it - between being a slave to fashion, a superficial Barbie doll whose sense of self is dependent on labels and price tags and which celebrity or glossy magazine is adorned with the same or a similar garment, and taking pride in looking one's best as an expression, a celebration of respect and love for our uniqueness, who we are.
In fact, the two are diametrically opposed. The former seeks to achieve, through outward accoutrement, the self-esteem the inner joy that the latter seeks to manifest, to rejoice in, by the simple and joyous expedient of simply decorating herself.
When we consider what a small percentage of women not only fail to be shaped like Paris Hilton, but fall completely below that "inclusion point," we are compelled to reflect on the impact of that, the ripples and dominoes of that bleakness, that most of us are not considered to be worthy of decoration.
Of course the reality is not as sinister as all that sounds. It is, like most things in this particular cultural context, about business, about profit.
Obviously, if all the Rubies and all the ShimmaPuffs and all the everybodies in between could just breeze into any retail store from Wal-Mart to the 'leetest boutique on Rodeo Drive, according to our budget and preference, and put together a flattering, versatile wardrobe with the ease and from among the same wide selection as our size 2 sisters, made up of those classic, basic pieces on the Tim Gunn list, items that will continue to delight us as we smile into our mirrors, season after season, year after year, updated here and there with strategic accessories, that would mean, to put it simply, a dramatic decrease in industry profits.
That is not to say that We Who Love To Shop would shop less. We would, however, spend less.
If we did not have to buy those basic black pants and just hope that they would "look OK" with a different top, that our all-occasion top would "look OK" with a different bra, because we had not "chosen" them.
They do not excite us or thrill us or reflect our good taste or our personality.
They were the only pants, the only top, in the store that we could tolerate and with which we could "fit the largest part" of ourselves, especially We Who Can Neither Sew Nor Afford Alterations, oh, we would still be back in the store the next week - with bells on - but we would be there to buy that strategic accessory, not the basic top and pants all over again, take two, maybe these will...
In fairness, even the size twos might make many of the same arguments with respect to the quality and workmanship of their dazzling array of choices, including the very valid point that they, too, are likely to be back to replace those basics long before the passing of "season after season," because the things simply did not look too good after a couple of washings, the seams did not hold up to normal wear, the fabric, dependent on "sizing" as opposed to sewing for its shape-holding properties, collapsed into a sad little rag.
As the old saying goes, "if it don't crack your head coming in the door, it'll kick your ass on your way out."
Rambling now? Possibly. Ranting? Oh, definitely!
Today's episode of Ruby touched a particularly sensitive nerve.
Even as I marvel, as always, at the magical splendor of her spirit, even as I am, as she hopes we will all be, inspired and encouraged by her ebullient and blessedly "hippie-loving" ;) magnificent self, I am also angry.
Obtaining new clothing should NOT require that the head of the local Art and Design college call together his star pupils to design a wardrobe especially for her.
That is not to say that this should not have happened or that I did not enjoy watching it happen. On the contrary, I think this episode should have been a Feature-Length Very Special Episode. I would like to have seen more of it, the whole process - both of making the clothes for this part of Ruby's journey as well as the designers' own journeys, briefly alluded to by Andrew.
Ruby is a Star in the best sense of the word, and more than deserves many racks of beautiful clothes made specifically for her, at the weight she is right now.
But it should have been a choice. An option, not the only possible way that she could hope to get new clothes that she actually likes and that actually fit her.
I am inspired, empowered and emboldened by her courage to tell the truth. Ruby and all of us deserve many racks of beautiful clothes that fit us - in stores. We deserve to be included, even if it means less money for rich men.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
The Hills: Through All The Days of Your Lies
The Hills: Through All The Days of Your Lies
What a night! A full feature-length 90 minutes of Hills magic that will have tongues wagging for days! Right now, I guess most people are understandably still trying to process it all.
Not one, but TWO Spedi not-weddings, Justin Bobby giving Audrina a not-engagement ring, and then, just when you think things can't get any not-better, Lauren appears on the aftershow and reveals that there are more episodes, thus making the blockbuster 4minute Hilltacular we just witnessed the official season not-finale!
Of course we knew something was up last week when the Associated Press was running stories casting some leaks of doubt on the legalizing of the not-legal Patron product placement nuptialoids engineered by marketing genius Spencer Pratt on a Speidaneous weekend trip to Cabo, but it wasn't till I heard the not-judge utter the words "through all the days of your lies" that all the loose ends were tied up.
On the fashion front, who wants to bet Whitney's remarkable aftershow ensemble makes Who Wore it Why on The Dish?
Finally, a moment of pathos, as we all suddenly realize that there is no one left on earth who will tell Lauren Conrad that she should not wear red lipstick, ever.
What a night! A full feature-length 90 minutes of Hills magic that will have tongues wagging for days! Right now, I guess most people are understandably still trying to process it all.
Not one, but TWO Spedi not-weddings, Justin Bobby giving Audrina a not-engagement ring, and then, just when you think things can't get any not-better, Lauren appears on the aftershow and reveals that there are more episodes, thus making the blockbuster 4minute Hilltacular we just witnessed the official season not-finale!
Of course we knew something was up last week when the Associated Press was running stories casting some leaks of doubt on the legalizing of the not-legal Patron product placement nuptialoids engineered by marketing genius Spencer Pratt on a Speidaneous weekend trip to Cabo, but it wasn't till I heard the not-judge utter the words "through all the days of your lies" that all the loose ends were tied up.
On the fashion front, who wants to bet Whitney's remarkable aftershow ensemble makes Who Wore it Why on The Dish?
Finally, a moment of pathos, as we all suddenly realize that there is no one left on earth who will tell Lauren Conrad that she should not wear red lipstick, ever.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
The Gilmore Girls: Which Gilmore Girl Are You? (Not a Quiz)
Media conglomerates spend millions on market research to learn which shows appeal most to which market segments, but in the case of The Gilmore Girls, no sophisticated data mining techniques are required.
scour the earth, and you will not find a more avid gaggle of Gilmoristas than daughters who do not get along with their mothers and mothers who do not get along with their daughters.
Granted, the fantasy relationship between Rory and Lorelai is the stuff of legend precisely because it IS fantasy, but if Gilmore Love were a red line on a graph, as the tiny numbers representing mother-daughter relationship quality goes down, the red line on that graph will go up, up, up!
One of the reasons the show is so popular, and so talked about even after going off the air, is that there is no mother or daughter who cannot relate to at least some aspects of the relationships between Emily and Lorelai, Lorelai and Rory, indefinable yet palpably miasmic things that transcend culture and creed.
Whether nightmare or idyll, dysfunction or delight, the relationship between mother and daughter is like no other, it is a story that never ceases to tell itself to those who live it, and all whose lives are touched by it, a story that the Gilmore Girls tells remarkably well for what appears at first glance to be essentially an hour-long sitcom!
For We Who Cannot/Could Not Just All Get Along, The Gilmore Girls gives us the gift of vicariously reveling in the mother-daughter relationship we can only wish we had, an emotional do-over, with the delicious twist of a catharsis, not of tears, but laughter.
Because all of that is so obvious, it's sort of embarrassing to confess that for a while I was completely baffled as to why I like this show. I never watched a minute of it when it was on, but upon discovering it sometime around the fall of 2007, I was instantly hooked, obtained all 7 seasons and sat there and watched, enthralled, with alarmingly minimal breaks for things like sleep and work and shampoo.
It's still on my Tivoid and I have now seen the whole thing at least twice.
It is a veritable chowder of a show, lousy and lumpchunky with cheese and corn, but I cannot bear to miss a single episode.
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of my unexpected enjoyment of this pretty standard 90s TV offering is how much I identify with the Gilmore Girls, even apart from the not-get-along-with-mother thing.
I don't identify with Rory, nor Lorelai either really, though, like me, she does enjoy making a wisecrack or two now and then.
It is, I am mortified to admit, the crotchety, imperious, insufferable old bitch of a grandmother with whom I have, to my horrified amazement, the most affinity.
Emily Gilmore knows what she wants, she knows what she likes, and she knows who she is, and so do I.
And when a situation involves other people, places or things that dare to diverge from the first two, in clear and utter disregard of the third, Emily is not one to stand on the ceremonies of reticence. And neither am I. Though I do try to be as polite about it as one can under such circumstances. Emily, not so much.
For the benefit of the two elderly lurkers in Mogadishu who join me in being the only people on earth who did not watch this show ten years ago, the premise is this:
Lorelai Gilmore, the witty but only very slightly unconventional only child of parents so conventional that her father is played by the same actor whose starred in the most famous made-for-TV movie about Franklin Roosevelt, gets pregant in high school, and decides to raise the baby herself, which she does, and when we meet them all, she is pretty much done with that, as the baby is now a teenager and in high school herself.
Rory, the erstwhile baby, enjoys very close if very different relationships with both her mother and her grandmother (hence the name of the show) who each believes herself to be much more different from each other than they really are.
While Emily may prefer a more overtly old-fashioned and traditional lifestyle, Lorelai's ostensible rejection of tradition is wafer-thin, confined to things like the occasional comical household accent piece, and while Rory dutifully plays along with her mother's charade, she is, even at sixteen, clearly headed more toward Emily's side of the chart.
Most fictional works require, for maximum enjoyment, some level of suspension of disbelief on the part of the reader/viewer, but the UN-believeability quotient of the Gilmore Girls saga attains lofty heights seldom seen in works lacking a supernatural element.
Lorelai supposedly shows up at a small New England inn as a runaway teen with a babe in arms, is given work as a maid and a shed to live in, by the sympathetic manager, and goes on to work her way through the ranks, so that by the time we meet her, the baby is now in high school, Lorelai has become manager of the inn, and now owns both a home and a car.
Now even if we accept the premise that Lorelai's career advancement has been due to her exceptional abilities, and assume that the shelter of the shed remained a gift from that sympathetic hotel manager, AND that she paid Lorelai well above the going rate during those pre-'executive" years when she was working as a housekeeper, and I guess we can assume she would have done a stint as a desk clerk, nothing is ever said about who took care of Rory while Lorelai was doing all this laudable quasi-bootstrap-pulling.
As the show begins, Lorelai is obliged to reluctantly, for the first time, invoke the safety net of her wealthy parents, in order to send Rory to an expensive private school, thus we are also asked to assume that never once in sixteen years did neither of them ever have an injury or illness or other situation whose cost would exceed the means of a low-level hotel worker, or if she did, that we can assume the manager took care of the bill?
The relationship between the two of them seems patently indicative of their having spent more time together than would be possible for someone trying to raise a child on the salary of a hotel maid, even a hotel desk clerk, for whom it would not be realistic to spend a lot of time at home engaging in and developing these longstanding traditions related to recreational activities like watching TV and movies.
And in the last couple of seasons, it seems like all of the characters have suddenly and mysteriously acquired unlimited funds.
We see things like Lorelai taking a birthday partyfull of tweens to a cosmetics store and giving them baskets, telling them to fill them up, a couple who work as a cook and a vegetable vendor, respectively, with two small children, taking spur of the moment ski trips and too many other instances to recount of various characters making purchases and expenditure choices that would not be commensurate with the discretionary income of the particular character.
While it does not affect the fun of the show as a situation comedy at all, if you move outside of that suspension-of-disbelief bubble and attempt to examine the actual story line and the characters "in depth," you will invariably fall into the massive believability gap!
When I make the mistake of thinking about it too much (as I clearly did to write all this) it is baffling that I find any of the characters remotely likeable or interesting, since about the only thing I really have in common with Emily (aside from what I consider to be just a healthy amount of basic arrogance) is a penchant for a well-appointed dinner table. Maybe it is an inversion-based attraction. If Lorelai's contempt for tradition is confined to superficialities, I guess you could say the same thing about my predeliction for it. I do love me some fine textiles and bone china.
It is probably most accurate to say that the show relaxes me, kind of like the way Ina Garten does.
Lorelai's little quips, her bantering with Rory, are funny in the same sort of comforting way the Three Stooges and Max and Ruby are funny, and the way the show adheres to all the standard sitcom conventions has a calming effect somehow. There are no surprises, no onion-like layers of character depth to be plumbed, everyone is consistently and satisfyingly exactly as their one-dimensional true-to-genre sitcom self is supposed to be.
The younger, single Gilmore girls have a full contingent each of the expected wacky friends, engage in all the expected romantic hijinks, all of whom and which Emily variously approves, disapproves, or knows nothing about.
The acting is, at worst, slightly a cut above the average sitcom level, the casting is excellent, and the pace is fast enough to engage me, which is saying a lot.
I highly recommend this show to that afore-mentioned pair of Mogadishu elders, my fellow Ina Garten fans, and anybody else who seeks an amusing, entertaining televiewing experience, every bit as bewilderingly soothing as Max and Ruby.
scour the earth, and you will not find a more avid gaggle of Gilmoristas than daughters who do not get along with their mothers and mothers who do not get along with their daughters.
Granted, the fantasy relationship between Rory and Lorelai is the stuff of legend precisely because it IS fantasy, but if Gilmore Love were a red line on a graph, as the tiny numbers representing mother-daughter relationship quality goes down, the red line on that graph will go up, up, up!
One of the reasons the show is so popular, and so talked about even after going off the air, is that there is no mother or daughter who cannot relate to at least some aspects of the relationships between Emily and Lorelai, Lorelai and Rory, indefinable yet palpably miasmic things that transcend culture and creed.
Whether nightmare or idyll, dysfunction or delight, the relationship between mother and daughter is like no other, it is a story that never ceases to tell itself to those who live it, and all whose lives are touched by it, a story that the Gilmore Girls tells remarkably well for what appears at first glance to be essentially an hour-long sitcom!
For We Who Cannot/Could Not Just All Get Along, The Gilmore Girls gives us the gift of vicariously reveling in the mother-daughter relationship we can only wish we had, an emotional do-over, with the delicious twist of a catharsis, not of tears, but laughter.
Because all of that is so obvious, it's sort of embarrassing to confess that for a while I was completely baffled as to why I like this show. I never watched a minute of it when it was on, but upon discovering it sometime around the fall of 2007, I was instantly hooked, obtained all 7 seasons and sat there and watched, enthralled, with alarmingly minimal breaks for things like sleep and work and shampoo.
It's still on my Tivoid and I have now seen the whole thing at least twice.
It is a veritable chowder of a show, lousy and lumpchunky with cheese and corn, but I cannot bear to miss a single episode.
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of my unexpected enjoyment of this pretty standard 90s TV offering is how much I identify with the Gilmore Girls, even apart from the not-get-along-with-mother thing.
I don't identify with Rory, nor Lorelai either really, though, like me, she does enjoy making a wisecrack or two now and then.
It is, I am mortified to admit, the crotchety, imperious, insufferable old bitch of a grandmother with whom I have, to my horrified amazement, the most affinity.
Emily Gilmore knows what she wants, she knows what she likes, and she knows who she is, and so do I.
And when a situation involves other people, places or things that dare to diverge from the first two, in clear and utter disregard of the third, Emily is not one to stand on the ceremonies of reticence. And neither am I. Though I do try to be as polite about it as one can under such circumstances. Emily, not so much.
For the benefit of the two elderly lurkers in Mogadishu who join me in being the only people on earth who did not watch this show ten years ago, the premise is this:
Lorelai Gilmore, the witty but only very slightly unconventional only child of parents so conventional that her father is played by the same actor whose starred in the most famous made-for-TV movie about Franklin Roosevelt, gets pregant in high school, and decides to raise the baby herself, which she does, and when we meet them all, she is pretty much done with that, as the baby is now a teenager and in high school herself.
Rory, the erstwhile baby, enjoys very close if very different relationships with both her mother and her grandmother (hence the name of the show) who each believes herself to be much more different from each other than they really are.
While Emily may prefer a more overtly old-fashioned and traditional lifestyle, Lorelai's ostensible rejection of tradition is wafer-thin, confined to things like the occasional comical household accent piece, and while Rory dutifully plays along with her mother's charade, she is, even at sixteen, clearly headed more toward Emily's side of the chart.
Most fictional works require, for maximum enjoyment, some level of suspension of disbelief on the part of the reader/viewer, but the UN-believeability quotient of the Gilmore Girls saga attains lofty heights seldom seen in works lacking a supernatural element.
Lorelai supposedly shows up at a small New England inn as a runaway teen with a babe in arms, is given work as a maid and a shed to live in, by the sympathetic manager, and goes on to work her way through the ranks, so that by the time we meet her, the baby is now in high school, Lorelai has become manager of the inn, and now owns both a home and a car.
Now even if we accept the premise that Lorelai's career advancement has been due to her exceptional abilities, and assume that the shelter of the shed remained a gift from that sympathetic hotel manager, AND that she paid Lorelai well above the going rate during those pre-'executive" years when she was working as a housekeeper, and I guess we can assume she would have done a stint as a desk clerk, nothing is ever said about who took care of Rory while Lorelai was doing all this laudable quasi-bootstrap-pulling.
As the show begins, Lorelai is obliged to reluctantly, for the first time, invoke the safety net of her wealthy parents, in order to send Rory to an expensive private school, thus we are also asked to assume that never once in sixteen years did neither of them ever have an injury or illness or other situation whose cost would exceed the means of a low-level hotel worker, or if she did, that we can assume the manager took care of the bill?
The relationship between the two of them seems patently indicative of their having spent more time together than would be possible for someone trying to raise a child on the salary of a hotel maid, even a hotel desk clerk, for whom it would not be realistic to spend a lot of time at home engaging in and developing these longstanding traditions related to recreational activities like watching TV and movies.
And in the last couple of seasons, it seems like all of the characters have suddenly and mysteriously acquired unlimited funds.
We see things like Lorelai taking a birthday partyfull of tweens to a cosmetics store and giving them baskets, telling them to fill them up, a couple who work as a cook and a vegetable vendor, respectively, with two small children, taking spur of the moment ski trips and too many other instances to recount of various characters making purchases and expenditure choices that would not be commensurate with the discretionary income of the particular character.
While it does not affect the fun of the show as a situation comedy at all, if you move outside of that suspension-of-disbelief bubble and attempt to examine the actual story line and the characters "in depth," you will invariably fall into the massive believability gap!
When I make the mistake of thinking about it too much (as I clearly did to write all this) it is baffling that I find any of the characters remotely likeable or interesting, since about the only thing I really have in common with Emily (aside from what I consider to be just a healthy amount of basic arrogance) is a penchant for a well-appointed dinner table. Maybe it is an inversion-based attraction. If Lorelai's contempt for tradition is confined to superficialities, I guess you could say the same thing about my predeliction for it. I do love me some fine textiles and bone china.
It is probably most accurate to say that the show relaxes me, kind of like the way Ina Garten does.
Lorelai's little quips, her bantering with Rory, are funny in the same sort of comforting way the Three Stooges and Max and Ruby are funny, and the way the show adheres to all the standard sitcom conventions has a calming effect somehow. There are no surprises, no onion-like layers of character depth to be plumbed, everyone is consistently and satisfyingly exactly as their one-dimensional true-to-genre sitcom self is supposed to be.
The younger, single Gilmore girls have a full contingent each of the expected wacky friends, engage in all the expected romantic hijinks, all of whom and which Emily variously approves, disapproves, or knows nothing about.
The acting is, at worst, slightly a cut above the average sitcom level, the casting is excellent, and the pace is fast enough to engage me, which is saying a lot.
I highly recommend this show to that afore-mentioned pair of Mogadishu elders, my fellow Ina Garten fans, and anybody else who seeks an amusing, entertaining televiewing experience, every bit as bewilderingly soothing as Max and Ruby.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Twilight Rants Moved to Their Own Blog
The Twilight-related rants that used to be here glared fiercely into my un-topaz eyes, and in a voice that was more growl than speech, commanded me to vampire-swoosh them into their own special bedless mansion.
"Did you really expect that I would share even such a wretched scrap of cyber-squalor as this," they hissed, "this blog," spitting out that last word as if it were a globule of half-coagulated Tila Tequila blood, "with the likes of Cris Abrego?"
I was resolved to keep my composure. I would not give them the satisfaction of seeing my fear. The rants could not read my mind, and I was not about to concede that advantage - at least not on this point...
What happened next, I will never know, but the rants can now be found on their own blog:
Twilight: Random Layers of Lemons and Lulz
"Did you really expect that I would share even such a wretched scrap of cyber-squalor as this," they hissed, "this blog," spitting out that last word as if it were a globule of half-coagulated Tila Tequila blood, "with the likes of Cris Abrego?"
I was resolved to keep my composure. I would not give them the satisfaction of seeing my fear. The rants could not read my mind, and I was not about to concede that advantage - at least not on this point...
What happened next, I will never know, but the rants can now be found on their own blog:
Twilight: Random Layers of Lemons and Lulz
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Bad Girls Club Season 3 Premiere
I finally watched season premiere of Bad Girls Club, and once again was disappointed that Cami from Laguna Beach is not among the cast.
At first glance, though none shine with the radiance of a Tanisha, or the fundamental dysfunction of that Season 1 girl from the Mennonite community, Whitney is my initial pick for entertainment potential. (Suggested Drinking Game: every time Whitney mentions "Baah-ston," take a shot).
After breaking into the house, the girls eagerly obtain sex toys and hooker shoes.
Kayla ges a vibrator from the convenient in-home vending machine, and claims that she has never owned one before. She expresses confidence that the Bad Girls Club experience will bring unity and enlightenment.
The girls go out for an evening of brawling, but return home after being ejected from only two clubs.
Amber M. suggests to her fellow Amber that they look for men, but Amber B. complains that there are only "Chinese" and some unintelligible characterizations present, and asserts that she does not "date outside her race," but that she would be nice to an African-American person who came into a club, but that Mexicans are "a little different" because she thinks they are illegal.
Amber B offers to pay the other girls to clean up after her, and expresses a desire to tell "Asian jokes."
The Ambers soon find themselves somewhat isolated, and Amber B, who wishes to employ her roomates as household staff and tell Asian jokes begins to wonder if the Bad Girls Club is right for her, as she emerges as the most isolated of the two, probably because only the other Amber was around when shared her thoughts about African-Americans and Mexicans.
Amber B later delivers a smirkful "apology" to Kayla and Ailea, and the girls decide to try to put their disagreements behind them and dine out.
After they have been ejected from the restaurant, they are nevertheless provided with go-boxes for their food, but Whitney is angry, and shares this with Kayla.
Kayla's anger management issues have been prominently featured in all the girls' outings, but this subplot is nearly completely subsumed by the discomfort of the Ambers.
It is impossible not to wonder whether these girls realize, when they sign up for the show, that there may be an ethnically diverse cast.
This is not the first time I have gotten the impression that producers of a reality show, motivated by a desire for "drama" and "good TV," have made very deliberate casting decisions to put hamsters into an environment in which not only will they feel very uncomfortable, but that will actually be at variance with their beliefs.
Although bounds of good taste may not be a concept frequently heard in discussions of the genre, it is, in my opinion - an opinion which is, by the way, amply backed up by even a cursory glance at the history of Reality Television, not to mention the unexplored and under-touched elements of even this single episode of this very show, that this is not only a practice which smacks of questionable ethics, but even leaving such niceties aside and examining the question under the cold hard lense of business, unnecessary to not only achieving, but surpassing, ratings and revenue goals and objectives.
Note: My apologies to both if I have confused the remarks, etc of the respective Ambers. Although I have categorized them rather broadly as "blondes," they are actually that particular flavor of blonde who has obviously put a great deal of work into closely resembling each other as much as possible. My remarks should not be taken as an accusation that either of them was born with yellow hair, or any reflected aspersion against the millions of people who were, and who look nothing alike.
At first glance, though none shine with the radiance of a Tanisha, or the fundamental dysfunction of that Season 1 girl from the Mennonite community, Whitney is my initial pick for entertainment potential. (Suggested Drinking Game: every time Whitney mentions "Baah-ston," take a shot).
After breaking into the house, the girls eagerly obtain sex toys and hooker shoes.
Kayla ges a vibrator from the convenient in-home vending machine, and claims that she has never owned one before. She expresses confidence that the Bad Girls Club experience will bring unity and enlightenment.
The girls go out for an evening of brawling, but return home after being ejected from only two clubs.
Amber M. suggests to her fellow Amber that they look for men, but Amber B. complains that there are only "Chinese" and some unintelligible characterizations present, and asserts that she does not "date outside her race," but that she would be nice to an African-American person who came into a club, but that Mexicans are "a little different" because she thinks they are illegal.
Amber B offers to pay the other girls to clean up after her, and expresses a desire to tell "Asian jokes."
The Ambers soon find themselves somewhat isolated, and Amber B, who wishes to employ her roomates as household staff and tell Asian jokes begins to wonder if the Bad Girls Club is right for her, as she emerges as the most isolated of the two, probably because only the other Amber was around when shared her thoughts about African-Americans and Mexicans.
Amber B later delivers a smirkful "apology" to Kayla and Ailea, and the girls decide to try to put their disagreements behind them and dine out.
After they have been ejected from the restaurant, they are nevertheless provided with go-boxes for their food, but Whitney is angry, and shares this with Kayla.
Kayla's anger management issues have been prominently featured in all the girls' outings, but this subplot is nearly completely subsumed by the discomfort of the Ambers.
It is impossible not to wonder whether these girls realize, when they sign up for the show, that there may be an ethnically diverse cast.
This is not the first time I have gotten the impression that producers of a reality show, motivated by a desire for "drama" and "good TV," have made very deliberate casting decisions to put hamsters into an environment in which not only will they feel very uncomfortable, but that will actually be at variance with their beliefs.
Although bounds of good taste may not be a concept frequently heard in discussions of the genre, it is, in my opinion - an opinion which is, by the way, amply backed up by even a cursory glance at the history of Reality Television, not to mention the unexplored and under-touched elements of even this single episode of this very show, that this is not only a practice which smacks of questionable ethics, but even leaving such niceties aside and examining the question under the cold hard lense of business, unnecessary to not only achieving, but surpassing, ratings and revenue goals and objectives.
Note: My apologies to both if I have confused the remarks, etc of the respective Ambers. Although I have categorized them rather broadly as "blondes," they are actually that particular flavor of blonde who has obviously put a great deal of work into closely resembling each other as much as possible. My remarks should not be taken as an accusation that either of them was born with yellow hair, or any reflected aspersion against the millions of people who were, and who look nothing alike.
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