Flavor of Love Show
The reality t.v. show I decided to watch was a rerun of the season 2 finale of the Flavor of Love show. For those not familiar with this show, it is about an old rapper named Flavor Flav and he is looking for a girlfriend. There's about 10 to maybe 12 women staying in his mansion with him and they are competing against each other to be his one and only. In the finale, there were two women left, New York and Deelishis. I find this show highly disgusting and a horrible reputation for women. When it comes to the "gaze", it is almost impossible to argue that the gaze is not a male gaze. You can see the camera zooming in on the women's bodies as they are in bathing suits or kissing Flav and on top of him. I also noticed this notion of the Jezebel, which is a concept developed by Kimberly Springer in her article "Waiting to Set It Off". The Jezebel is a slut, whose presence is to only serve the sexual needs of a male counterpart. The women on the show would have sex with Flav. A lot of the women seemed to not care about their bodies or their self-dignity. The black women on the show just further represented the stereotypes in today's society and were a great disappointment to me being that I am a black woman. They were loud, ghetto, and violent, and some portrayed themselves as easy hoes. They represented what Springer also called the Sapphire. Although the show did have some white women in it, I just think it was a further breakdown in the representation of black women. All this show did was further concur society's painting of black women: voluptous body and violent.