Beauty and the Geek
I was originally going to watch the bachelor when stumbled upon this solid gold reality television show. I watched Beauty and the Geek on cwtv.com. It is produced by Ashton Kutcher and Jason Goldberg, the producers of Punk'd.
As described by the CW Network, the show is about "gorgeous but academically challenged women pairing with brilliant but socially challenged men." Just as I was preparing my rant about the opening credits which include women in bikinis standing next to normally dressed men, I noticed that there was a half naked man standing next to a woman wearing a button down and glasses. That's right, they threw in a monkey wrench and added one "beautiful" man and "geeky" girl to the competition. Though at first glance the description of the show seems accurate, it isn't. The women are beautiful according to Hue Heffner, and the men aren't all intelligent. In fact the "geeks" are mostly comic book collecters and gamers, not brilliant scholars. The beauties are comprised of women with long straight (or straightened) hair and slim bodies, and one man with chiseled abs and a fake tan. The show suggests that beauty and character are one dimensional qualities, and that one can be either smart or pretty, so directly in fact that there is a survey at the bottom of the screen asking you whether you are a beauty or a geek. The show is a prime example of intersectional analysis of ones self, asking people "are you beautiful or smart, and which is more prevelant, which do you identify with?" The show is a competition where beauties are paired with geeks and forced to engage in ridiculous and pointless challenges. Allesandra Stanley says, as cited in Myra Mendible's Humiliation, Subjectivity, and Reality TV, "humiliation is the unifying principle behind a successful reality TV show," and knowing the producers' hunger for humiliation, exhibited in Punk'd, the challenges are no doubt a mechanism for embarrassing the contestants. The show also raises the issue of normalizing the view of women as objects and men as subjects. In general the geeks assume the position of leader and dictate a plan of action while the ditsy women do as they are told. Even the pretty man takes charge while his passive geeky woman follows suit. According to the advertisements for a pageant show, the target audience of this show is teenage girls and voyeuristic horny men.