Constructing Reality on MTV

MTV, formerly meaning Music Television, has rapidly changed from its origin as the first channel to host music videos. It now is more focused on reality television with a few time slots dedicated to music. Its audience is definitely in the teenage range, and seem to be more geared towards females, although it is not strictly so. It has many long running reality TV shows, like The Real World, the Real World/Road Rules Challenges, and Laguna Beach, and new additions such as Jersey Shore, Sixteen & Pregnant¸ and Teen Mom. The channel is known for being not exactly family friendly, and a lot of shows contain adult themes and content.

For the purposes of this assignment, I assessed gender representations during MTV’s prime time spot which is from 10-12pm. The first was an episode of the current season of The Real World: Las Vegas, which was followed by the most recent episode of Sixteen & Pregnant.

Cast of current Real World: Las Vegas

This episode of The Real World featured a lot of aggressive behaviors from both men and women, along with a very sexualized portrayal of a roommate. The main conflict during this episode revolves around a replacement roommate, Cooke, who is immediately received harshly by the other women in the house. Instead of having an open mind, they straight away turned on her and an animosity quickly developed. This reinforces the often catty relationships that form between women and are strengthened by the media. This is a very common archetypal relationship that is reality television gold for shows like The Bad Girls Club and Real Housewives. Women will jump to feeling threatened by one another because it has been so emphasized in our media landscape.

In this episode, this animosity quickly escalates because the other girls are jealous that Cooke bonds with the male roommates, including two men who are in relationships with female roommates, at least on a sexual basis. The male roommates take a liking to her and they become fast friends, furthering the girls’ opinion that Cooke will likely hook up with one of the roommates because she gets so comfortable with them.

New roommate, Cooke

This conception of Cooke is not really put at ease given her behavior with the men. She makes the off-hand comment that they need to end the relationship between two of the roommates, Heather and Dustin, and later sits on the lap of Leroy, who has been is a friends with benefits arrangement with Naomi.

Eventually all of this animosity comes to a head when the girls misconstrue that Cooke is talking ill of Heather, when she really is talking about going to the bathroom. Naomi and Nany immediately start screaming at Cooke and calling her names such as “slut” and “bitch.” They follow her up to her bedroom where she has since been sleeping and continue the altercation threatening physical violence against her.

The depiction of Cooke is quite one-sided. It is briefly mentioned that she is an athlete, and obviously has positive qualities that cause the male roommates to start a friendship with her. However, the editing of this episode would make you think all she cares about is sex. All of her confessionals involve her talking about sexual exploits and how she is boy-crazy.

Another side storyline involves Dustin getting into an argument with another roommate, Mike. They get into a yelling match over something trivial, much like the girls’ fight. They both try to defend their macho status during the fight, with Dustin remarking “I don’t want to have to crush your ass.”

The other show I watched was Sixteen & Pregnant. It focused on a girl, Jordan, who becomes pregnant at age seventeen. This episode was actually quite different from most episodes of this series, which often involve conflict between the teenage mother and father. This episode actually had conflict between Jordan and her twin sister, Jessica, who was facing anxiety about not being the number one person in Jordan’s life anymore.

Jordan, Brian, & baby Noah

Many episodes deal with women being left to take care of the infant on her own, while the father reneges his responsibility and chooses to leave all the work on the mother. However, this episode depicted the opposite with Jordan’s boyfriend, Brian, being very supportive and responsible as a father. It was refreshing to have someone who stuck around and was a positive person in both the child and mother’s lives.

I closely examined the commercials presented during these programs. It reaffirmed that women are the targeted audience since commercials geared towards women were about doubled to that of men. The commercials could be boiled down to two basic ideals: happiness and empowerment.

Women were told they could be happy and joyful through such items as shoes, body wash, hair products—all materials devoted to appearance. A Nair commercial features women dancing in the streets in skimpy attire over their delight in this hair removal product, while other women turn to Slim Shots to get their bodies ready for bikini season.

Empowerment for women came in the form of tampons and deodorant. A group of women paint a mural declaring “Take a stand against bland,” which apparently is best accomplished through tampons in bright packaging. Forget those tampons in white packages; you can be the best woman you can be with a neon green tampon wrapper. A Dove deodorant commercial had women become comfortable with the quality of their armpits so that they felt confident enough to cut off their sleeves.

These depictions of happiness and empowerment are trivial and exploit women’s emotions in order to promote products and make money. Female self confidence is commodified in the form of beauty products, which tell women that their worth can be measured by their appearance.

The commercials geared towards men were kind of conflicting. Many featured men with electronics, cars, and sports which promote status and athleticism as masculine qualities. Two commercials featured men who were obviously meant to be unattractive and undesirable. The one was an Axe commercial where the nerdy man obtained female attention after using the product, but no actual physical action. It still featured the tagline “The cleaner you are, the dirtier you get” which is sort of conflicting since nothing actually physical takes place.

Overall, this block of television gave a variety of gender depictions. The Real World featured both men and women exhibiting aggressive behaviors, along with a woman being sexualized. Sixteen & Pregnant shifted gears with the father being a positive figure on the show. The commercials definitely had negative presentations of femininity while the masculine commercials varied between positive and somewhat negative depictions.