As many of my readers know, I really hate The Hills. If I were to choose between that show and another, also mostly semi-scripted "reality" show about women in their early twenties, my choice, by far, would be the always-excellent The Bad Girls Club (TBGC), on Oxygen.
Here are some reasons why!
Here are some reasons why!
1. The Hills is boring and nothing happens on it. Seriously, nothing happens. It's as boring as real life but at least real life is actually happening, but this show is just a bunch of bitches being like, "Justin Bobby texted me...I'm so upset," and the other one being like, "LA fashion week that no one cares about anyway because it's LA fashion week is coming up and I'm supposed to put a belt on a model within the space of six hours." Who cares? No one! Then we have The City, which is the same format as The Hills because it's a spin-off, but it's set in fabulous NYC so everything is really "chic" and "urban" and they "go" to "art openings".
2. The ladies of The Hills look like crap. I would take the spandex mini dresses, huge hair, large earrings and giant silver shoes of the bad girls over the bland sacks The Hills/City crew are regularly seen in.
2. The ladies of The Hills look like crap. I would take the spandex mini dresses, huge hair, large earrings and giant silver shoes of the bad girls over the bland sacks The Hills/City crew are regularly seen in.
Check out the Bad Girls style! Trashy exuberance, i call it!
3. The Hills reinforces female stereotypes, whereas TBGC reinforces male stereotypes, but stars women- thus rejecting female stereotypes! It's not that the bad girls never backstab and gossip, but that whole aspect really takes a backseat to them establishing dominance in a stereotypically male fashion, whether the girls are knocking down someone at a club for looking at them funny or challenging someone else to a fight. There's always a lot of screaming to "Bring it!" on - quite a contrast to the classic passive-aggressive "Mean Girls" style The Hills endorses.
We may recall Andrea, a latecomer to the bad girl house on Season 2, who basically got challenged by the rest of the ladies for not being enough of a bad girl/a weak anorexic, and endured a lot of her housemates' screaming and threats for no reason. ("You're a moron and food tastes good!" yelled one, notably.) Not soon after, Andrea left the house, having been chased out because she couldn't, you know, take the hazing ritual she was being subjected to. And the rest of the bad girls were like, "We don't know what's up with her! I guess she's not a bad girl! She couldn't take it!"
5. Race and class are often discussed on TBGC. "Whathat?" sayeth Whitney, who may be functionally retarded, no? I'm not going to pretend TBGC is, like, intent on helping and/or positive for women or anything (I'm talking about reality TV here!) but many episodes have the stars discussing their economic and racial backgrounds and how they are shaped by them. On The Hills, everyone is from the exact same background, which is that of an orphan raised by the studio. In Laguna Beach.
4. No one, to my knowledge, has ever pushed anyone into a pool on The Hills, or yanked out someone's weave, or peed in the kitchen sink. Not once. In TBGC, everyone knows the big rule is that they get sent home of they actually physically assault anyone else on the show. But is there even a reason for such a rule on The Hills? No.
Vs:
5. The men on TBGC a mere props, clearly introduced by the show with BS and/or porn jobs like "party promoter", "surf instructor", "poolboy", "handyman", and "stripper." There are some episodes that revolve around men, but they're mostly there for the bad girls to have sex with, like bunnies in their own personal Playboy mansion. No fucking Spencer types with faces too small for their heads further ruining their hopeless lives, dude!
In conclusion, fuck The Hills!!!!! Especially Lauren Conrad and especially all the other boring-ass skanks on that show!
I have always thought that the hills (as well as the city, now, i guess) would be a lot better if you got to vote someone off the island every week, so to speak. and by that i mean, in each episode someone dies.
ReplyDeletethe funny thing about the city is that in the hills there are all these masturbatory shots of LA and the ocean and all the glittering houses and lauren conrad having lunch at some swanky outdoor place... and they try to do that in new york, and it's like, even if you're super rich in new york, there's still dog poop on the street everywhere. seriously, bitches on the city have arguments with their boyfriends next to piles of garbage bags on the sidewalk. of course, that's not enough to make me watch it. at least the hills you could just get hella baked and it was, like, fun to watch (only while baked). the city is totally unbearable. though a) Olivia Palermo's cousin, who is on the show, tried to pay for a blow job with oxycontin once, because rich people are THE WORST and b) on the last episode i watched part of, whitney's old "boss", kelly cutrone, totally called whitney's model friend anorexic and refused to apologize for it. and also made this whole schpiel about how the fashion industry has a really sick perception of beauty. of course, she was talking to whitney, who looks like a coathanger herself, she just has a potato face.
there's so much i could say about the bad girls club... i'll just leave it at, i would like to see a bad girls vs the hills girls smackdown.
also, note that it's called "bad girls club" because it's considered "bad" for women to strong opinions and be powerful in any way. the hills and the city should really be called "the good girls club" or maybe "the true womanhood club."
spencer. what a douche.
ReplyDeletethe passive aggressive element is really what bothers me, on the hills and every damn day in my interactions with other women. i'm so up front and i like to believe tactfully honest that it throws others off at times because they're so used to the passive aggressive mode of relating to other women. and the worst part is, it's a veritable training ground for my adolescent girls who watch it and, whether or not they know it's scripted (most do), undoubtedly ape the relationships they see between friends on that show.
"friends" i should say
ReplyDeleteI'd like to see a reality show with geek girls forced under one roof.There is potential for just as much drama (selective editing does wonders!), and there might even be a Monty Python reenactment. I'd give "Reality" TV some merit if it had people who were generally interesting in character, but everyone on reality TV seems to be in the same social circle. you never see goths, punks, or anyone in the "fringe" lifestyles mixing with those people(unless, of course, they're the watered-down "Token Wierdo Chick").Those are the people whose lifestyles are just as interesting as those other girls. It's kind of ironic that reality TV is not as complex and interesting as reality.
ReplyDeletei agree, lizbit- i don;t know why mtv and stuff HAS to focus on the exact same type of people all the time. how far they've gotten from anything even mildly "alternative." i wonder whether this was a conscious choice for them or what.
ReplyDeleteand besides the passive aggressive element, the hills just makes women seem BORING in general.
I agree the Hills and City are major boner killers in the world of reality television.
ReplyDeletelol at whitney being "functionally retarded"
shows like the hills seem like shows i would enjoy because of my love of shallow reality tv, but really i find them unwatchably dull. a least they're ending now, right? isn't that true?
ReplyDelete