My Fidelity

"What came first, the music or the misery?...Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable, or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?"

Here’s a little thing I wrote for one of my classes in response to a lecturer who discussed history/histories as an open, fluid concept:

While listening to Peter Haratonik’s lecture last week, and in particular his discussion of how history is organized, I involuntarily though of the great scene in Nick Hornby’s book High Fidelity (the scene is also in the movie starring John Cusack) in which the protagonist, Rob Gordon is in the process of organizing his enormous record collection chronologically—as a sort of personal chronicle, a history. For me, music is a great example of a “living” history, a history constantly being enriched and expanded, a personal history full of constant self-referentiality, interconnectedness, gaps in memory, vivid imagery and a great deal of creative non-fiction (facts colored by emotion and memory to the point where I can no longer distinguish the already-blurred lines between fact and fiction). Music is something I’m incredibly passionate about—I have an enormous collection, the contents of which might seem a bit schizophrenic or chaotic to some. It’s a collection I’ve cobbled together over the years and there’s nothing neat or orderly about it. Like me, like the life I’ve lived as I’ve been assembling it, it’s messy. There’s redundancy, there’s contradiction, there’s trendiness and anger and sadness and quietude, sweetness, gentleness, crassness, and the just plain bad. It’s me, and it’s my history on many levels.

First, as in High Fidelity, it’s a chronological path through my life. It helps me to map who I was when certain music was important to me or where I was when a song burned itself into my consciousness forever. A great deal of my music recalls to me a particular person, or people, sometimes because they were the one(s) who introduced me to a band or artist, sometimes because they gave me an album, sometimes because I shared an experience with them while listening to a particular song or album or a feeling with them that is perfectly encapsulated by a particular piece of music. So, music can be not only a chronological history but an emotional and sensory one as well. Like the way the smell of chlorine takes me instantly back to my pre-teen swimming lessons at the YMCA, just a few notes of a certain song may instantly overwhelm me with a sense of a different place and time—sometimes an entire period of time, sometimes a particular moment. Music in so many ways represents one of the most personal and accurate histories of myself and my own life that I can think of. Perhaps this isn’t necessarily the same kind of a history Professor Haratonik was speaking about, but so much of what he said seemed relevant to this example. And, in relation to Foucault’s quotation above, it seems to me that in an age when we are starting to explore the idea of “literacy” in the context of a number of different media, there is no reason why a song or an album cannot be just as much of an historical, meaningful “document” as any book or piece of paper.

I Wish I Had a River

Aerial view of an ice skating rink

Let’s hope a picture is really worth a thousand words, because it’s all you’re getting for now one way or the other. Just another day or two and I’ll be back in the land of the blogging. Until then, back to the books!

The Revolution Will Be Televised

Exam-week insanity=no time for a real post, but the crazy upheavals and uprisings going on at my school while I’m sequestered here in my room with my head in the books is a little hard to ignore. Essentially, as I understand it, a rather complicated and long-building set of circumstances having to do with dissatisfaction with New School president, Bob Kerrey, vice president, Jim Murtha and other high ranking members of the school administration reached a point of critical mass last week, resulting in an almost-unanimous vote of “no confidence” from the school’s tenured faculty, and this week from the entire faculty of the university, a move modeled after actions taken by Harvard against its former president and current Obama appointee, Lawrence Summers. To make a long story short, students have been protesting publicly all week–there have been town hall meetings, a blog started  by administrators to create another forum for discussion, etc. Kerrey, backed by a stacked board of directors, has refused to step down, despite obviously overwhelming public sentiment against him. Last night at 8:00 PM, a large group of students took over the graduate student center and as of now continue to be barricaded inside. New York City police have been brought in to try to disburse them, and there were reports of some students being forcibly removed from the premises and one girl being attacked by a New School security guard. 

One thing that struck me immediately in looking at the coverage of these unfolding events, and something that I think is pertinent to the kinds of issues I’m interested in exploring on this blog, is how interesting it is to see the ways in which modern technologies have changed the face of protest. Looking at pictures of the event, it calls to mind the kinds of images everyone has seen of student protests from generations gone by–students holding hand-made banners and looking defiant, students standing on tables and shouting out strategy. Yet, the web presence of this movement reveals how different modern protest movements are. The first thing is the real-time coverage…there are students inside that building who are live blogging updates  for those on the outside. Furthermore, students have continued calls on the internet–through their hastily constructed website and through email and comments on other blogs, to try to mobilize other students to come and join them as well as to try to mobilize greater news coverage, seemingly with some success. As I say, I unfortunately don’t really have the time at this point to fully explicate what the implications or significance of these changes are, but it’s just interesting to think–if these technologies had existed in the 1960s and 70s, a heyday of the “student protest/sit in”, how would that have changed things, altered outcomes, etc? Marshall McLuhan famously said that “the medium is the message”, so how do the changing media of communication and activism change the message and, by extension, the movements producing the messages, if indeed they do at all?

Links to coverage:

New School In Exile Blog (Protesters’ Blog)

New School in Exile Website (Protesters’ Website)

Protest At The New School Seeks Kerrey’s Ouster (New York Times)

New School Students Protest for President’s Ouster (US News & World Report)

New School Students Stage a Sit-In (Gothamist)

New School Student Occupation: Day Two (Gothamist)

‘Mr. Kerrey Has Retreated into the Swayduck‘ (Gawker)

The Naked Truth

I’m so sick of PETA. As a long-time vegetarian and animal lover, I think it’s great that there are organizations that are working for the ethical treatment of animals, particularly the kinds of inhumane practices that go into the mass production of meats like beef and chicken. But while fighting for the ethical treatment of animals, PETA seems too often to forget about the ethical treatment of people. While I disagree with the intimidation and scare tactics used by PETA to garner attention and get their message across–tactics like throwing red paint or pies on the fur coats of famous women in public and similar public spectacles, which I believe are counterproductive and give a radical, extremist, and thus marginalized face to animal rights, what I want to talk about  is PETA’s longstanding series of ad campaigns which portray naked women with some variation of the words “Fur? I’d rather go naked”.

It bothers me that PETA considers it a good idea, an appropriate strategy to objectify women in order to try to call attention to their cause. Of course, it’s not as if the women featured in the ads (Eva Mendes, Pamela Anderson, Christy Turlington, Alicia Silverstone and Khloe Kardashian, above, to name just a few) were forced to be in them. But in my mind these ads just cheapen PETA’s message and reflect poorly on the organization. Of course, any activist cause wants to call attention to their message. But to me, it seems that if the only way to do that is to resort to hiding behind something as simplistic and cheap as naked female flesh, then your message must not be all that strong or clear. How about instead drawing attention to the many vegan clothing options that are now available? Or to any number of strong and persuasive arguments against meat and fur?

I just hate it when, in pursuit of their own cause, people totally lose touch with the contradictions inherent in their actions–an extreme example is pro-life protesters bombing abortion clinics, killing or injuring those inside. Of course, PETA’s behavior does not even begin to approach the magnitude of this example. It’s in a totally different category. It doesn’t physically hurt anyone, at least not directly. It does, however, participate in and breed a culture of misogyny and female objectification which seems to run at cross purposes with any movement working toward the ethical treatment of anything. To look at these ads, it appears that only young, nubile, skinny, buxom women are compelled to throw off their furs in favor of their birthday suits. Larger women: it appears PETA would prefer that you keep your fur and use it to stay clothed. 

If PETA really wanted to enact some change, there are plenty of effective, fact-based media campaigns they could be launching. If they focused on using all that ad money to get out the facts, I am quite sure they could have a real impact, one that would actually bring broader awareness and cultural shifts in attitude. And factually based advertising doesn’t have to mean dry and preachy. But I honestly find it difficult to believe that anyone, male or female, looks at those ads and, in a conversionary moment, casts off their mink stole. If PETA is so committed to ethical treatment, they should consider the contribution these ads make to the barrage of hyper-sexualized, objectified images of women that face girls and women each day. Participating in a culture which breeds female objectification by men and women alike, a culture that causes girls and women to starve themselves, sometimes to death, trying to look like the ideals they are presented with, a culture in which girls even before puberty are already behaving and dressing in ways that represent their already-instilled belief that their greatest worth is in their appearances and sexuality, it is ethically irresponsible to be actively participating in generating these kinds of messages. PETA should consider whether the values they are perpetuating are contradictory to the very mission of their organization and whether it is constructive or necessary to resort to these kinds of lows in order for their voice to be heard at the table. I, for one, believe that it’s not.

Ad Nauseum

Ad for Preowned BMWs. The text reads: "You know you're not the first"

Dovetailing nicely with my last post, Alternet today republished a piece by Alex Leo originally posted on the Huffington Post on December 8 entitled “Five Sexist Trends the Advertising World Just Can’t Shake.” Examining examples of misogynistic advertising imagery and messages in categories like “Bondage,” “Rape,” and “Sluts,” Leo writes that “the advertising world has not caught up to the advances of half our population and continues to use stereotypes and violence to prey on our most vile desires.” She illustrates her points with examples of the kinds of advertising she discusses, ads for products by companies like BMW (above), Nikon, and Remy Martin.

Leo makes some great points. My only point of contention with the piece is with her argument that “The fact that these trends are so widespread is not the fault of the advertising world,” that “these people are paid to appeal to our ids, they are often self-aware in their tendency to make the world harder for women, that’s the life they’ve chosen.” She contends that the blame lies instead with “mainstream companies like BMW, Mitchum, Nikon, mainstream publications that host these images, and mainstream readers who use these products despite their appalling treatment of women.” I don’t disagree with this second statement and on one level, I understand the distinction she is making. But, personally, it seems to me that there is more than enough guilt to go around. Those at every level of production and consumption of these images and messages are complicit on different levels, for different levels, to different degrees. The argument that advertisers are merely ”react[ing] to client demands and consumer activity” just doesn’t hold water for me.  

Change, if it is to occur in a real, substantive way will have to be systemic and not selective. No single part of the system can be truly reformed without the complicity of the the other parts. As writer and activist Audre Lorde put it so well, “the master’s tools can never dismantle the master’s house” –consumers and companies can’t be expected to change their patterns of consumption, values, and behavior in a system where the “master’s tools,” of the advertising industry still largely dictate the terms of the discourse. This is not to suggest that change cannot start within a smaller group, that we as consumers should not exercise the power we have in resistance of negative, sexist messages in advertising. But giving advertisers immunity from their share of the blame is counterproductive to enacting broad-based, systemic change in cultural discourses.

Dead Sexy

Just…wow. I know that by it’s very nature, there is something deadly about sexuality and something sexual about death. I know that this relationship, the tensions between these two, are a source of endless fascination, particularly in a culture as puritanical as ours. But good grief, Duncan Quinn (is he a real person or just a brand? In my mind, he’s the guy smugly holding the noose around the dead girl’s neck), this is taking that trope WAY over the line. As Feministe puts it, “Gotta love it when images of dead or drugged women are sexy enough to sell men’s clothes.”

 I brought up the eroticization of violence to women in action movies and other cultural media in response to a comment on my James Bond post a while back, pointing to the stylized death of the consulate worker in Quantum of Solace who is pictured sprawled naked across a clean bedspread, coated in shiny black oil, limp and lifeless, a sex object  for display and viewing pleasure even after, and in some ways because of, her brutal death. This kind of thing is everywhere, it’s just not often so blatant as it is here. Though they’re usually more subtle, the message that there’s something appealing and sexy about physically dominated, injured, or even, as in this case, dead women are undeniable. This ad reminds me of another flagrant example from a year or so ago–another high fashion print ad, this one for Dolce & Gabbana, which depicted four men looking on as a fifth holds down a scantily clad woman, her back arched but face blank, passive. The whole thing basically amounts to a stylized gang rape scene. In another ad from around the same time, this one for Cesare Paciotti, a woman with a barely-there dress sprawls half on, half off a couch, her head strained back, one hand gripping the sofa, her eyes glazed and passive in a scene that suggests some kind of date rape scenario.

I’m not sure which is more disturbing–the ad above which is targeting men, or the others I’ve described which target women. These and other ads ranging from offensive to downright disturbing can be found on the National Organization for Women’s Love Your Body website, and there are many more that could easily be added. Not only are these ads disturbing to look at, but, cumulatively, I believe they contribute directly to shaping understandings of gender that are absorbed, largely subconsciously, by both men and women daily. When this kind of thing appears in a magazine opposite an article about pore refining face masques or how to talk your boss into giving you a raise, it becomes normalized. As a result, the sad fact is that many people glance at an image like this and, without so much as a blink of an eye, turn the page.

Belles, Bridezillas, and Bulging Brides

In the days following the ratification of Proposition 8, inundated with “sanctity of marriage” rhetoric from the Christian right, I’ve been thinking a lot about the institution of marriage. But as Christmas approaches, in this season of rampant consumerism and good cheer, I’ve been thinking about something related to, but strangely detached from, marriages–weddings. And not just weddings, but the wedding industry, the wedding EMPIRE . I’m not anti-marriage and I’m not anti-wedding–I hope to get married some day and I don’t think I’ll probably want to just go down to city hall for a license either. But as an intelligent, independent woman, I can’t claim there aren’t a lot of things about not only the institution of marriage but the cultural canonization of weddings, be it in movies, magazines, reality TV or pervading the public discourse, that are troubling to me, or which I feel ambivalent about.

At the basic level, weddings are steeped in anti-feminist symbolism, from the virginal veil-and-all-white look to the exchange of “goods” that is represented by being given away by one’s father to one’s husband, handed off from one man to another. It’s hard, on this level, to reconcile the part of me that finds myself enamored on some level by these traditional trappings, the pomp and circumstance, the romance of it all, and the part of me that doesn’t want to partake in upholding such antiquated values which are in fundamental opposition to my sense of self and of the world around me. I think that’s a hard line for many intelligent, modern, empowered women to walk, in arenas extending far beyond the matrimonial as well. It doesn’t mean we don’t believe in embodying feminism in our lives, it simply means that life is not black and white and also that it can be very hard not to be sucked up in believing we want the things that we are told every day of our lives, from the time we are children, we must want, should want.

This is perhaps what I resent most about wedding culture, what I feel most uncomfortable about–having desires jammed down my throat, expectations foisted upon me. Not every girl dreams of her wedding day starting at age six. I sure didn’t and frankly I hope there aren’t too many six year olds who are dreaming about their weddings. There seems to be a little conflation between “bride” and “fairy princess” going on. It’s perfectly legitimate for a woman to want to feel beautiful, to want to have a special, even “magical” day to celebrate her love with the people she cares about. But to look at the media of matrimony, one would think that the wedding day is more important than the marriage itself. So often, I’ve heard the wedding day referred to as the “most important” or “best” day in a woman’s life. I hope not. Not only that, but the archetypes of womanhood represented by wedding culture are so often silly, frivolous, materialistic, vain, small minded, and frankly pathetic. The bar has been set so ridiculously high that people go into massive debt funding elaborate weddings and buying designer dresses. Women torture themselves to lose weight, to become, literally and not just figuratively that long-imagined fairy princess. Exhibit A: some plastic surgeons actually have Bridal Plastic Surgery packages. These impulses are not some innate part of the female genetic makeup, something I think is too often forgotten. They’re trained and reinforced through a lifetime of cultural cues, overt and covert.

Shows like Bridezillas and Bulging Brides reiterate and reinforce these kinds of stereotypes and expectations . Bridezillas is based around the concept of how ridiculously silly and downright insane women get, pushed over the edge by their compulsive attempts to engineer a “perfect” wedding, with much cat fighting, hyperventilation, crying, and expletives involved. Bulging Brides has the absolutely sickening premise of having brides-to-be buy dresses several sizes too small for them and then work out and diet constantly in the desperate attempt to squeeze into the smaller dress by their wedding day. There are so many other shows based around weddings and brides (with names like ”Engaged and Underage,” “Til Death,” “Wedding SOS”), I won’t even try to list them all. Check out Sarah Haskins‘ as usual hilarious take on this phenomenon. Talking about the large number of wedding-focused shows on the WE television network, she says “They put the ‘WE’ in ‘wedding’ and the ‘end’ in ‘feminism.’”

In terms of other forms of media, it’s crazy to me that a whole genre of wedding-themed magazines continues to appear to prosper even as magazines are going under everywhere you look and even such institutions as Rolling Stone are downsizing. And then, of course, there is Hollywood, which gives us crazy/neurotic bride movies and cute/sweet bride movies and movies where weddings are big and fat and Greek and hillarious. I’m not saying any of this is new. If anyone should be aware of the long and illustrious tradition of idealizing weddings, it’s a Jane Austen fan like me. An Austen story wasn’t over until there was a LEAST one marriage, if you were lucky two (although, back then could you really blame them for rushing to the altar? You could barely even kiss on the lips before marriage, and hand-kissing will only get you so far. Come to think of it, for a lot of people things haven’t changed much in that regard, I guess. No wonder evangelicals marry younger. But I digress). But I guess my thinking is, back then women couldn’t show their ankles and spent most of their time playing the piano-forte and doing needlepoint. They didn’t go to college, couldn’t play sports (besides croquette) and had a habit of fainting as a result of their restrictive corsets. In two and a half centuries, a lot has changed for the better for women. But some things haven’t. We’re still conditioned to be just as wedding-crazed as ever (and we still love a game of croquette once in a while–but there’s nothing wrong with that!). 

I’m not saying women shouldn’t have the right to be excited about their wedding day, to put work into making it what they want it to be. But a modicum of perspective would be nice. Maybe I’m totally off base here, but this reminds me of something Naomi Wolf wrote about in The Beauty Myth. She wrote about the way that dieting in a patriarchal society serves the function of keeping women’s minds frivolously absorbed and thus significantly lessening the threat of them exerting their power, intelligence, and influence in the public arena in ways that might actually challenge the male-dominated status quo. This isn’t meant as an all-inclusive explanation for anything. I don’t think anyone would argue that things like dieting or being a shopaholic or becoming a bridezilla are the reasons patriarchal values persist, but I do believe they represent part of the bigger picture. All of us get wrapped up in capitalist-driven, self-absorbed triviality sometimes. But, increasingly our society, but I think women in particular, as in these examples, are being encouraged to embrace these impulses by those who stand to gain from them.

This Race Isn’t Over

This December 2 post by Lawrence Bobo on the blog The Root makes an excellent point, one I think is important to acknowledge in the wake of Obama’s historic win. Bobo discusses the rise of a discourse, particularly since Obama’s election, which takes Obama’s candidacy and win as evidence that America is now a “post-racial” society. However, he argues that the growing use of the phrase “post-racial America” should worry us all. Bobo takes as evidence for his argument a recent study jointly conducted by the University of Illinois and the University of Michigan which surveyed a large, representative sampling of households in Chicago and Detroit to gather information about neighborhood segregation and attitudes about race. The study concluded that the racial makeup of a community, all other things being equal, had a strong impact on the perceived positive or negative attributes of that community. White participants in particular were likely to perceive neighborhoods with greater black presence more negatively than those more heavily populated by whites. Bobo argues that this study and many others illustrate the fact that racism in this country is still very much a “structural and cultural problem”. 

I’ve thought about this topic a lot as the election process unfolded and read several other interesting articles dealing with this idea. One such article which argues a similar point was written by Aman Gill and appeared in The Indypendent a few weeks before the election. Gill employs a metaphor for America’s race relations that I think is incredibly useful. He writes that:

Racism in America may not look like all-white police forces, dogs on black men or sound like speeches by white supremacist politicians. It’s more like a termite- infested house — political correctness and black representation in business, media and politics compose a nice-looking picture on the outside. But gashes in the façade expose structural disparities as racially aligned as ever. 

I agree with both of these articles in that I think racism still permeates our society, as does sexism, but that they’ve gone underground, so to speak. Racism and sexism have become much less acceptable than they were even a few decades ago, and there have surely been some real, substantive strides. But to claim that America now is post-racial seems like a get out of jail free card, a way for people to justify greater complacency going forward and to avoid dealing with issues which are still very difficult for our society to face. The irony is that Obama’s campaign and Presidential win, the very things used to justify the “post-racial” assertion, provide many examples of the fact that this is not the case (just as Hillary Clinton’s campaign provided evidence of the level of sexism that still exists in our society). I do understand the celebratory impulse that I think spurs a lot of these sweeping assertions, and my point is not to downplay the historic, triumphant nature of Obama’s win. In fact, I think both Obama’s and Clinton’s campaigns represented great strides for race and gender equality in this country precisely because they put a spotlight on inequalities that have in the past been easier to ignore or deny. No one could ignore the man who screamed at Senator Clinton to iron his shirts  or Chris Matthews repeatedly calling her an “uppity woman” and no one could deny the white supremacists who plotted to assassinate Obama or the Fox anchor who referred to Michelle Obama as Barack’s “baby mama” or the college student from Pittsburgh who falsely claimed that a big black man had raped her and carved a “B” into her face, for Barack. Those things didn’t magically cease the moment Obama was elected. I’m fairly sure that the man who told my mother the day before the election, while she was phone banking for Obama, that he wasn’t going to vote for “no nigger” still felt that way the day after the election.

For me, denying the problem is not the solution. I do believe that Obama will change the face of race relations in America simply by being the face of America. I believe that, in the way that one of the biggest determinative factors to changing people’s minds about gays and lesbians in recent years has been the greater visibility of gays and lesbians and the fact that more and more people know an openly gay person, simply by being a public figure, and a man who promises to lead with grace, intelligence, and an approachable charm, Obama will disprove many prejudices that still exist in some people’s minds. But prematurely labeling our society as post-racial simply allows us to be complacent. We have proven that America is “ready” for a black President (or at least a light-skinned black President who, as Gill’s article points out studiously avoids controversial issues of race). Now, it remains for us to move forward with a vigilant awareness that we do not live in a race-neutral or post-racial society (whatever that would even mean) and that we still have much work ahead of us in the process of achieving greater racial equality and understanding. It is only by acknowledging this that we will be able to continue to have an honest dialogue about race and to continue the work that needs to be done.

Prop 8: The Musical

…Because, really, isn’t everything better as a musical? This musical theater number from Funny Or Die features a star lineup including Jack Black, John C. Reilly, Maya Rudolph, Neil Patrick Harris, Allison Janney, Margaret Cho, and lots of other familiar faces. I can’t get WordPress to imbed the video no matter how hard I try but you can see it at the Funny Or Die website. It’s only three minutes long, so don’t take my word for it–watch it!

Smart Girls Have More Fun

“These are things I want to be when I grow up: number one, a pop star, number two, a rock star, number three, a writer, number four, a doctor, number five, a vet, and number six, a mommy.”   -Ruby Carr, feminist, seven and three quarter year old

Amy Poehler’s new web series from ON Networks,  ”Smart Girls at the Party,” is pretty great. In each installment (of which there are so far just a few), Poehler along with two of her friends, Meredith Walker and Amy Miles, interview a pre-teen girl (or girls) on a specific topic about which each girl is passionate or has particular knowledge. So far, episodes have featured a young writer, a budding feminist, and a pair of sisters discussing their relationship and future episodes are set to feature girls passionate about everything from gardening to music to yoga. The episodes definitely skirt the fine line of cutesiness sometimes, but I think Poehler does a pretty good job of taking the girls seriously and not really talking down to them. She manages to keep a genuinely straight face during introductions like: ”With us today is singer, actor, dancer, musician, feminist, entrepreneur, and skate boarder, seven and three quarter year old, Ruby Carr.” 

It’s just great to see a forum which represents the voices of engaged, interested, quirky, opinionated and, yes, smart young girls as opposed to so much of what is geared to girls these days (the whole Bratz mentality–provocative message tees, makeover spa packages for 7 year olds, etc). To me, this sort of reminded me of New Moon magazine, a magazine for pre-teen girls that I subscribed to oh so many (more than ten!) years ago (and which a quick Google search reveals is still going strong). This magazine was a similar kind of forum, sort of for-girls-by-girls, with most if not all of the content, including editorials, factual articles, creative writing, poems and art generated by young girls. I think it’s really important for girls at this age to be reminded that their worth lies in more than just how cute or skinny they are. There are so many societal messages screaming exactly the opposite at young women even before they hit adolescence and adulthood that it’s vital to provide these kinds of counterpoints. 

Speaking from personal experience, I know that it’s incredibly hard for young girls, even smart girls, to hold on to a sense of internal self-worth and a belief in their entitlement to speak up and voice their opinions, especially as they reach the cusp of childhood and begin to enter adolescence. This is a time already fraught with confusion and insecurity for children, but these things are magnified for girls who cannot help but become increasingly aware of the values systems, the codes, models, and expectations of acceptable femininity imposed and enforced by our culture in myriad forms.

I agree with Jezebel’s assessment that it’s pretty jarring to find that the sponsor of this show is Barbie. Indeed, Barbie advertisements bookend each online episode. I know that in order to get worthwhile things done it’s often necessary to take funding from less than ideal sources, but in this case, the sponsorship seems absolutely antithetical to the message the show is trying to forward and it’s pretty disappointing. But, I suppose I’ll just have to give the shows viewership credit and assume that these girls are aware enough, smart enough, to be selective and discerning viewers.