I am really, really sorry to admit that I watched the Flavor of Love shows on Vh1. I watched Flavor of Love and Flavor of Love 2, and just finished watched the season finale of Flavor of Love Girls: Charm School, and am waiting with bated breath for the reunion show next week. I didn't watch I Love New York and won't watch the second one, but I will probably watch Rock of Love with Bret Michaels unless Drew cancels Dish Network first.
My bestest friend, Angie, rightfully judged and wagged a finger at me, because the shows are all horrible and shouldn't be watched by anyone. I simply can't help it; I use a lot of brain power during the day, and when it's 9 and I have an hour to myself before it's time to go to bed, I don't feel like watching a documentary on communism - I feel like watching utter mindless crap. I should've started Tivoing Deal or No Deal instead of getting drawn into the world of a crackhead rapper and his quest for his next babymama.
The last time Angie spent the weekend up here, she regaled me with information about the show Girls Next Door, and how she just loves the show and thinks it's so funny. I stayed up entirely too late last week and caught half an episode of Girls Next Door, which, in case you're not aware, is a reality show about 3 of Hugh Hefner's girlfriends. I was appalled at Angie's hypocrisy, which I revealed to her in a text message. She responded with "Fair enough, but you gotta admit, it's not as bad as Flav!"
Perhaps my distaste for all things porn is coloring my opinion, but I think Girls Next Door is a much, much worse show than Flavor of Love and all of its spinoffs. I think they're both drastic evidence of the systematic lowering of the glass ceiling for women, but at least Flavor Flav is not solely responsible for an entire medium of the culture of pornography. I think Hugh Hefner is an awful, awful person and I think that his damage to the struggle for women's rights and respect will never be able to be fixed. He's used thousands of women to grace the pages of his magazine, exploiting their dreams for stardom then dumped them like trash, just like he'll do with Holly, Bridget, and Kendra, but at least they have some career goals to fall back on. Thus is porn.
Flavor Flav rapped and did crack and had some babies.
I restarted this conversation over the weekend, while having lunch with Angie and my sister and brother-in-law. To my shock, my own family took Angie's side.
I wonder what both of my readers think. So I've posted a poll. Which is worse - an overly (and unfairly, might this previously barren woman ask) fertile and drug-loving rapper or a porn overlord?
You decide.
4 months ago
8 comments:
I'll take some low-sodium soy sauce with my spleen, thank you.
Sorry, toots... I gotta agree with your friend. I watch the Girls Next Door whenever I'm home to catch it, but Flavor of love consistently turns my stomach to the point where I have to change the channel. I'm sorry, but watching trashy women act like trash over a low-life like that horse-toothed fool just sickens me.
I think that you just haven't watched the show enough, to be honest. It's really gotten better as they've shown the girls getting more involved with the multi-million dollar empire that is Playboy Industries. Holly in particular has proven over the last season or so that she has an excellent mind for the business side of it all. (heh heh... I almost typed "head" there instead of "mind") In many ways, the show is very much about empowerment of women tho I admit that it's a bit of a stretch to say it like that about women whose sugar daddy imposes a 10 o'clock cerfew on them. Also, they have been showing more of the Girls families, and how they react to making them far more 'real' than any of the hussys you seem to find so entertaining. The real question you have to ask yourself is if Hef was an oil magnate or something with three live-in supermodels would you have the same objections to the show?
And you can't tell me that Kendra doesn't remind you of Becca. ;)
Rob, I have a few points to make.
A) Her name is Angie.
B) Watching otherwise intelligent women act like bimbos over a buck-toothed fool sickens me likewise. The way they lessen themselves to be part of a harem is appalling. The women on Flavor of Love come from nothing and have nowhere to go but up. A woman with a master's in communication prancing around like a show dog so she can get a car? Downgrade.
C) I cannot imagine how, somewhere in your otherwise highly intelligent mind, you can say that Girls Next Door is about empowerment of women. That's like saying that Popeye's fried chicken is about empowerment of health. Both shows are equal disappointments to feminism.
D) Yes, if Hef were an oil magnate with three live-in supermodels who have completely debased themselves to live with an oil magnate, knowing that magnate's penchant for using and throwing women away like trash, I would have objections to the show. The fact that the Hef is a pornographer is the turd icing on the poop cake.
E) Becca's a highly intelligent, vibrant person. Not a touch of ghetto bimbo in her. Also, do you NOT think Kendra would've gone on Flavor of Love if she hadn't become a member of Hef's harem first? She'd fit right in, with her grill.
i'm a vegetarian but i'd still take the spleen.
on a related note, flava flav came into the tiny midtown pizzeria where jessa works, accompanied by a chick that wasn't on the show and their army of children.. so despite the outcome of the show, flav's got hos in all sorts of area codes.
My husband gives me grief over watching 'those' shows too.
Of course he's all Mr. Documentary-History channel type.
I saw why watch the History Channel: you already know the ending! :)
Hi Stacy-
just want to contribute... I caught one episode of FOL and nearly gagged. However, somehow, I found myself watching Charm School and enjoying it. Did I enjoy all the screaming and catfights? No. I did enjoy each time a girl figured out that they didn't have to act like a ho and could act like a real woman.
As for Hef, I think you are being too hard on him. Hef started Playboy not as porn, but as an artistic forum for a sexually liberated lifestyle. Playboy became more "soft porn", when forced to compete with Guccione's "Penthouse" and Larry Flynt's "Hustler". If you want to call anyone the king of porn, I think it's Flynt, not Hef.
Hope you all are doing well!
brig
I find even The Bachelor or The Bachelorette shows appalling. It amazes me that people, men or women, will go on a "date" with said Bachelor or Bachelorette and commence to smooching on them. Do they think they are the only ones getting some? Do they think that makes them the likely candidate for the next step? I can only assume so. Why else would otherwise normal people act like that? Who in their right mind would want to kiss someone that just kissed another person? I'm clueless to that which is why I find ALL of those shows ridiculous at best. Get a life, people, and find someone that really loves you. Sheesh.
I'm with Vicki. I think that they all degrade people (men and women both) and are exactly what love is not. What is supposed to be a self-sacrificing decision gets degraded to a mere fleeting emotion.
They all disugst me, though in very slightly different ways. I think the Flav things are just hideous, too. Those shows probably do just as much to degrade women as Heff has done over the years. (I have occasionally tuned in out of morbid curiousity, and I am completely appalled by those women. I see no difference between the ho's on Flav's shows and the ho's on Heff's show.)
One other thing on the Girls Next Door...what the HELL is wrong with the parents of those girls??? They are all smiling and proud of their daughters for shacking up with some loser (a very rich loser but a loser nonetheless) and his other TWO girlfriends??? Seriously...this is a little girl's dream?
"Mommy, Daddy, when I grow up I want to have meaningless sex with a man who sees no more value in me than my looks and my body, as long as they still please him. I don't care if I'm his first, let alone his only. I just hope that some nice rich man pays me with room and board and parties to have sex with him! If I can't do that, maybe I'll just be a prostitute. Cuz, you know...same dif."
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