Most people describe watching “reality” dating shows as synonymous to watching a train crash… you know you shouldn’t be watching… in fact, you know its really horrible that you are watching and that it goes against everything you “stand” for… and yet… you just can’t turn away.
As for me, I’m pretty much able to watch reality television shows guilt free. I tend to be of the mind that we shouldn’t take our television watching and music listening that seriously all of the time. But I will say, that the renaming of contestants, particularly of female contestants is something that gets under my skin every single time.
Ever since the Debut of Flavor of Love it has become par for the reality television dating show course, for the bachelor or bachelorette in question to “rename” the contestants.
On this season of For the Love of Ray J these alias’ include such goodies as
"Paradeez"
"Gifts"
"Caliente"
With the exception of Rock of Love (which notably doesn’t rename its contestants) the majority of these dating shows feature women of color. Chance of Love, Flavor of Love and for the Love of Ray J all feature black men searching for love among a bevy of mostly black, latino, asian and [a couple of] white women.
The first episode is always the same. The women wear next to nothing, they step up to the sitting bachelor and they twirl around in front of him as he evaluates them from top to bottom. He then focuses in on their most noticeable physical aspect and then proceeds to give her the name she will go by for the rest of the show (for “paradeez” it was her Southeast Asian identity and her large breast size… “paradise” became “paradeez”).
Notably, the less “voluptuous” women tend to get names that reflect their personality like “extra,” or “flossy” (pictured below):
"Flossy"
It seems that these reality shows that center on women’s bodies as the centerpiece of their drama/entertainment cannot get away from slavery/auction block imagery. As I watch every woman of color flaunt their physical attributes to be evaluated by the man in question, I can’t help but think about the way in which slave women were asked to do the same thing.
When African women were brought to the United States, one of the first things they had to undergo is bidding at the auction block. Here, all of their clothes were stripped off of their bodies, and the white auctioneer would point to their breasts, hips, age, and other physical attributes as proof of their viability as good “breeders” or “workers.” Women who were less voluptuous, or considered more delicate, you could imagine, would be relegated to house work.
In reality television drama, these women of color are either given markers as a sex object (“gifts” name refers to her breast size) or as a woman of class (see a picture of “Mz. Berry” below).
"Mz. Berry"
While the sexual objectification of all women is obviously problematic. The racialized sexualization of these aliases makes this practice even more troublesome for me. The way in which the more petite women are renamed to personify a series of assumptions about innocence and purity, versus the way in which the fuller women’s bodies are assumed to be hyper sexual, “loose” and unfeminine, makes my point all the more obvious.
This renaming practice isn’t just about another reality television ploy to create drama. It is a practice that is fundamentally rooted in the way in which we, as a culture, assume that we can assess a woman of color’s sexual way of being (and as such, her moral value), just by looking at her physical attributes. This evaluating framework is one that started on the auction block and was carried into the Jim Crow era. During Jim Crow all the way through the mid-90’s, we saw tropes of women’s bodies that evaluated the black woman’s ability to take care of children (mammy: see picture below), her proclivity to get into a fight (Sapphire) or again her sexuality (Jezebel).
Hattie McDaniel in Gone with the Wind
Today, although these tropes are not as blatant, it is important that we not pretend as if they are not still at work. It is important that as consumers of this form of television drama, we continue to question and push back on the problematic, even as we may be simultaneously entertained by it. Recognizing the way that even the most revolutionary of us can sometimes mindlessly absorb stereotypes about those very communities we fight for is central to understanding the way internalized oppression continues to operate in our lives.
peace.
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Shine Your Light AMB !
Nice analysis!!!