You know, one day I was thinking, “man, reality television has truly become a staple of our society.” So I started doing some reading about, well, reality TV. The complexity of the genre has expanded to the point of literally no return. From Who Wants to Be a Millionaire to The Bachelor reality TV has definitely leeched into every facet of our TV watching experience. So it makes sense to say that reality TV has had a hand in the way we look at society. The impact of the genre has helped to shape and mold our views on the world due to a constant portrayal of stereotypical caricatures from show to show. AND ALL WE DO IS STEREOTYPE PEOPLE. Correlation much? More than anything, these caricatures help perpetuate negative thoughts on gender. Have you seen the women on TV? They’re wild.
Anyway, after learning all of that I started thinking of shows that “changing the world,” kind of sort of, but also definitely yes. Bad Girls Club was the first to come to mind. This Oxygen original debuted in December of 2006, ten years later and we haven’t gotten enough of the cat fights yet.. The negative tropes we see in the show have helped give birth to the “Catty” sub-genre of reality TV. The whole show is based on negative portrayals of women. Women are chosen to be on the show because of their bad behavior, often shown in the audition tapes. If they prove to be bad enough in their tapes they make it into the house and live together. There really is not much to the show. They must live together and survive each other—that is it.
In the show the women are constantly fighting for dominance. Each season women seem to be most focused on being the leader of the house; the most memorable woman of the season. The objective is to make it the entire season without being kicked out for inexcusable behavior. Dismissal is usually because of extreme acts of violence such as several women beating one individual girl, or using weapons to fight with. Audiences are met with an extreme version of the “bad girl” caricature, a trait often associated with women in reality television. You’d think the extreme bad girl trope would deter audiences, but no, Bad Girls Club is extremely popular.
According to The Rentrak Stickiness Index in 2014 Bad Girls Club ranked number eight. What is The Rentrak Stickiness Index you ask? Well, it’s an index that reveals which basic-cable shows have the highest social engagement, and given the amount of attention Bad Girls Club gets I think we can all agree that the show has impacted our culture, but how? Positively or negatively? And how exactly has that changed the world’s perspective on women? So many questions! But, just look at the show’s title. It’s literally named Bad Girls Club. The series is arguably one of the main culprits of promoting “bad” behavior in women. But I contend that BGC simultaneously empowers women to be unapologetically themselves; as bitchy, nasty, and BAD as they want to be. These women are pushed to their breaking points, and though their goal to survive the house without being kicked out is kind of rudimentary, these women leave having grown so much.
The show helps women associate freedom and liberation with off-the-wall behavior. The women on the show display their freedom by doing whatever they want. It just so happens that whatever they want to do often involves punching another women in the face, but still, don’t you just want to punch someone in the face sometimes? I mean really, when do women ever get to be that free? We live such critiqued lives as women, but on BGC you get to do the things you only think about doing any other time. Now I do feel that the women on the show are way too violent, but it’s the principle. Women get angry, women poop, women like sex, women are gross sometimes, women like to drink, women like to yell, and WOMEN ARE HUMAN. I think that’s why Bad Girls Club is so popular. We get to live vicariously through these women who bare it all like we WISH we could.
