consuming the fractured female: lessons from mtv's "the real world"

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

This article was downloaded by: [Stern, Danielle]On: 26 February 2009Access details: Access Details: [subscription number 909060550]Publisher RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House,37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

The Communication ReviewPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713456253

Consuming the Fractured Female: Lessons from MTV's The Real WorldDanielle M. Stern a

a Department of Communication Studies, Christopher Newport University,

Online Publication Date: 01 January 2009

To cite this Article Stern, Danielle M.(2009)'Consuming the Fractured Female: Lessons from MTV's The Real World',TheCommunication Review,12:1,50 — 77

To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/10714420802716353

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10714420802716353

Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf

This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial orsystematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply ordistribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.

The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contentswill be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug dosesshould be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss,actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directlyor indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713456253

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10714420802716353

http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf

50

The Communication Review, 12:50–77, 2009Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1071-4421 print/1547-7487 onlineDOI: 10.1080/10714420802716353

GCRV1071-44211547-7487The Communication Review, Vol. 12, No. 1, Jan 2009: pp. 0–0The Communication Review

Consuming the Fractured Female: Lessons from MTV’s The Real World

Consuming the Fractured FemaleD. M. Stern

DANIELLE M. STERNDepartment of Communication Studies, Christopher Newport University

Using MTV’s popular long-running program The Real World as acase study, this essay examines the interrelationship of the con-struction and consumption of bodies in an increasingly surveil-lance-based, commercial, hybrid media culture. This article ispart of a larger project that employed a multi-method approachgrounded in feminism combining textual data from The RealWorld with interviews with producers and female fans of The RealWorld. The author investigates how Real World viewers makesense of the series’ claims to the real, using the body as the site ofcultural production. Two key frames of bodies on The Real Worldare identified: the troubled body and the heteronormative body.The analysis is situated among studies of media realism to interro-gate the context in which real women today are recreated as the“fractured female” in popular culture. The author argues thatscholars should continue in a move toward interdisciplinaryapproaches that link the cultural with the capital and offers thebody as a major site of cultural production and reception.

Since 1992 The Real World has invited, per the show’s opening sequence,young adults to share in the lives of “seven strangers, picked to live in ahouse, work together, and have their lives taped and find out what happenswhen people stop being polite and start getting real.” The show is anunscripted, half-hour voyeuristic look into the lives of seven young peoplebetween the ages of 18 and 24 set in a different location each season. Theproducers originally intended to create a scripted soap opera for MTV, butcost prohibitive sets and talent fees caused the shift to the reality concept

Address correspondence to Danielle M. Stern, Department of Communication Studies,Christopher Newport University, Commonwealth Hall, Newport News, VA 23606. E-mail:[email protected]

Downloaded By: [Stern, Danielle] At: 04:53 26 February 2009

Consuming the Fractured Female 51

(O’Connor, 1992). Cameras follow the nonactors nearly 24 hours a day, 7days a week. The first season, set in New York, began a 15-year tradition ofbringing diverse young adults to major cities such as San Francisco, London,Miami, Boston, and Chicago. By the time this essay goes to publication, TheReal World will have aired season 21, set in Brooklyn.

Approximately two to three million viewers tune into The Real Worldweekly, and it ranks consistently in Nielsen’s top 10 cable programs, captur-ing MTV’s coveted 12–34 demographic with every season (Aurthur, 2005;Dempsey, 2004; Weinraub, 2001). Season 16, set in San Diego, which endedits run in November 2005, offered episodes that were the most watchedshow in their time period of viewers aged 12 to 34, achieving higher ratingsthan broadcast networks in some cases (Kick off your shoes, 2005).Throughout these rating accomplishments, The Real World has continued toup the ante on sexual displays and bodies. It appears that, as bedroomactivities were revealed and more sexual behavior such as skinny-dippingand hot tub-sharing became the norm, ratings rose, with each subsequentseason garnering record ratings (Juarez, 2002). Despite the popularity ofreality shows that rely on the body and bodily relationships, like The RealWorld and The Bachelor, research is lacking on the creation of and repre-sentation of actual bodies in reality programming. Holmes and Jermyn(2004) and von Feilitzen (2004) have recognized a turn in reality televisionaway from “real life” toward the capture of celebrity and extraordinaryevents. Display and performance are now more important than “ordinary”people. This shift complicates what constitutes the real, with Holmes andJermyn concluding that the discursive, visual, and technological claims to thereal have become a marketing tool. The Real World, I argue, capitalizes on themarketing of a “fractured female” that falls in line with popular culture’s fasci-nation with troubled women such as Britney Spears and Lindsey Lohan.

As part of the MTV conglomerate of branded young adulthood, culture,and sexuality, The Real World presents new challenges for scholars lookingto investigate how viewers negotiate meaning and bodies in media textsthat have blurred the boundaries of fact and fiction. The Real World relieson very specific preproduction, production, and post-production practicesto inform a stylistic, compelling visual narrative that draws from multiplevideo formats, including documentary and soap opera. The Real World isthe longest running program of its kind and continues to rank as one ofMTV’s highest rated programs. Therefore, it is important to understand howaudiences, limited by fabricated, commercial reality programming, negotiatemeaning and the body in such a popular series. MTV targets a young maleaudience, but according to co-creator and executive producer of The RealWorld, Jon Murray, young women constitute more than half of The RealWorld’s audience (personal communication, June 12, 2006) and deserve tobe given a voice. And while the voices of male viewers are no less important,the program’s strong female viewer base and the heavy inclusion of


52 D. M. Stern

personal issues close to women such as drinking, sex, and body image ledme to limit this study to its female viewers. Attention on the female bodybecame apparent as the women I interviewed spoke time and again of TheReal World’s focus on the female cast members over the male cast.

This article is part of a larger project that employed a multi-methodapproach combining textual data from The Real World: Key West, which airedin 2006, with interviews with producers and female fans of The Real World toinvestigate the body and women in reality television. The purpose of thisessay is to explain the intersection of the sense-making process undertaken byfemale Real World viewers of the series’ claims to the real with that of their(the viewers) experiences of the body and understanding of visual expressionof bodies. Essentially, I explain: 1) how young women who view The RealWorld feel that it represents women and women’s bodies; and 2) how thisinterpretation either conflicts with or is similar to their own bodily experiencesas young women. The body, then, is the site of cultural production and mean-ing. Scholars in as varied disciplines as media studies, rhetoric, philosophy,and sociology have progressed from studying constructs of gender and sexu-ality to more complex notions of the body (See Grosz, 1994; McKerrow, 1998;Weeks, 1996). With the rapid rise of reality television to the fore of popularculture discourse, studies have begun to assess the genre’s intersection withaudiences, media economics, and its cultural relevance (see Andrejevic, 2004;Holmes & Jermyn, 2004; Kraszewski, 2004; LeBesco, 2004; Lewis, 2004). How-ever, few studies have looked at how young women, a key audience of realityTV, identify with the bodies of reality programs on their screens. Even fewerhave integrated production, textual, and audience analyses of the genre.

Rockler (1999) has argued for feminist analyses that balance critiques ofpatriarchy with explication of women’s lived experiences. Although I will drawoccasionally from the producer interviews and textual data, these will mostly beused to contextualize the audience analysis, which is the main focus of thisessay. As my work is grounded in feminist theory and methods, I paid closeattention to how the female viewers spoke about young adult, specificallyfemale, bodies as framed by reality television—but more to the point—howviewers’ own conceptions of the body intersected with those bodies found onThe Real World. I identify two key frames of bodies on The Real World—thetroubled body and the heteronormative body—which I argue work together tocontribute to a fascination with the fractured female in popular culture today. Isituate my analysis among studies of media realism and explore more deeplythe themes of women in crisis and attention-seeking by questioning the contextin which real women today are recreated on hybrid television and juxtaposemy arguments to the current crisis of womanhood fostered by celebrity mediaand surveillance culture. In short, this study aims to explain the interrelation-ship of the construction and consumption of women’s bodies in an increasinglysurveillance-based, commercial, hybrid media culture. While I am careful not tolay sole blame on media institutions, the fact that millions of dollars are at stake



for corporations who have time and time again flourished through the com-modification of women’s bodies cannot be ignored.

REALITY TV AND REALISM

Literature on reality television has exploded since the rise in popularity ofprograms such as Survivor and Big Brother (see Andrejevic, 2002, 2004,Bignell, 2005; Biressi & Nunn, 2005; Hill, 2005; Holmes & Jermyn, 2004;Kilborn, 2003; Murray & Ouellette, 2004), but scholars have struggled over themeaning of “reality television,” let alone what the genre means to viewers.Bignell (2005) noted the problems of defining what constitutes reality televi-sion, including production value, aesthetic issues, audience response, andblurred lines of the ordinary and celebrity. According to Biressi and Nunn(2005), reality TV is factual programming that “takes on the burden of makingsense [sic] of reality” (p. 4) through a reliance on editing. They identified a“fly-on-the-wall” (p. 64) genre that includes programs like Big Brother andThe Real World and some of the more recent MTV clones of young urban life,such as Laguna Beach and The Hills, as hyperreal (here they draw from Zizek(2002)) spectacle that feeds into a modern “culture of narcissism.” The RealWorld fits into a subclass of reality television that blends documentary tech-niques with soap opera. Through casting and editing, Real World producersand staff members dramatize roommates’ lives via narrative storytelling.

Kilborn (1994) asserted that the desire to create drama leads reality tele-vision producers to distort “the very reality they claim to be presenting . . . ina way that makes it impossible for the viewer to decide how much is basedon factual evidence and how much is essentially imaginative fabrication”(p. 431). Ouellette and Murray (2004) defined reality television as just that—a claim to the real. In his research on the reality presented in The RealWorld, Bagley (2001) argued that while the use of documentary techniquesestablishes the text as unarguably real, the admissions of cast members andexecutives of a “manipulated production environment” (p. 74) compromisereality in its truest sense of the word.

As von Feilitzen (2004) has suggested, studies are few and far betweenthat assess young adults’ perception of the realism of reality television.Those that do exist often conflict with one another. What is known, shestressed, is that young people watch reality programming in record numbers:

Generally, what young people choose to watch are programs and elementsthat relate to their own lives, which is why their readings of the programsoften are deeply rooted in the contexts in which they live. (p. 42)

Likewise, Ouellette and Murray (2004) found that audiences are aware thatreality television is constructed, often with “fictional” elements, but that this


54 D. M. Stern

has proven to only engage viewers even more. Hobson (2004) argued thatteens are sophisticated viewers who understand the entertainment value ofreality television. Hill (2005) agreed that teens are critical viewers of realitytelevision and that they in fact enjoy the “staged reality” of the genre (p. 177).The studies cited here are helpful in demonstrating the hybrid appeal of real-ity television to young people, including the genre’s dual function of escap-ism and perceived realism. However, studies are needed that tie livedexperience to these interpretations and uses. Because of young peoples’ highinterests in reality television and a reluctance to associate learning from realitytelevision (Hill, 2005), scholars must strive to understand the cultural, social,and personal contexts within which viewers perceive these programs and usethem in their everyday lives. One mode of investigation is that of the body.

THE BODY AND EMBODIMENT

Grosz (1995) contended that while plenty of critical analyses exist on the“representation” of bodies, scholars need to focus on the body as“substance” (p. 38). Rather than explaining how MTV and Bunim/MurrayProductions represent bodies and viewers in turn interpret those representa-tions, this study is informed by Grosz to look under the surface and explainthe significance of actual bodies in reality television. This essay attempts tointerrogate the layers of the body politic in popular culture today, with real-ity television as the flashpoint. Referring to bodies incorporates the multiplefacets of the lived experience of bodies on The Real World—from genderand sexuality to eating disorders and abusive relationships. Corporeal feminismis helpful in this regard, in that it calls for the exploration of how the bodyabsorbs and reflects social, political, cultural, and geographical struggles. Thiswork is best represented by Foucault (1977), who described a political econ-omy of the body, which rests in disciplinary practices and a “collective coercionof bodies” (p. 169). Through constant training and surveillance we normalizeour behavior. He argued that sexuality and femininity are in fact disciplinaryregimes, with long labor processes that force bodies into compliance with asexual and/or feminine ideal. How does this process unravel on reality televi-sion? The “panopticon” of automatic, invisible power is most certainly at playon reality television, especially for the women of The Real World, whose cast istaped all hours of the day, in the bedroom and in the shower.

SPEAKING OF THE REAL

At the time of this study, nearly every Real World season since the late1990s had captured its targeted demographic of 12–34 and garnered recordratings from the season that aired before it according to Nielsen Media



Research (Paul Yuan, Executive Coordinator for Bunim/Murray Productions,personal communication, January 26, 2007; Juarez, 2002). Because the pop-ularity of The Real World has stayed relatively consistent with its youngadult base, and because those viewers feel such a connection to much ofthe onscreen lives of the cast members (Stern, 2005), it is crucial to includethose very audience members in a relational rhetorical exchange about theprogram. Feminist scholars have taken up the task of challenging traditionalrhetorical theories and methodologies (Foss, 1989; Foss & Griffin, 1992).Foss (1989) identified two major aims of feminist criticism: “(1) women’sexperiences are different from men’s; and (2) women’s voices are not heardin language” (p. 90). Critical rhetoric, which gives women agency to expresstheir connection to and around the text and the researcher, also parallelsRiordan’s (2004) feminist sensibility regarding political economy analysis. Afeminist critical rhetoric recognizes absence and presence. What images ofthe body make up The Real World? Which are left out and why? How doviewers talk about bodies, whether their own or those onscreen? The recep-tion portion of my study provided the backbone from which interviews withproducers and examination of the text grew and took shape in order tomake greater sense of the audience’s relationship to the constructed natureof the text.

In an attempt to not compromise the trust and openness of the femaleviewers of The Real World, I tried to give the women as much privacy aspossible and turned to research on self-narratives for theory to ground mymethodological direction. Byrne (2003) drew from Foucault to argue thatnarratives are key entry points into techniques of the self: “Narratives havelong been of interest in accessing an individual’s subjectivity, experienceand reflections of the past” (p. 31). To investigate female viewers’ interpre-tations of The Real World I set out to conduct a narrative analysis of journalentries and individual interviews with young women between the ages of18 and 24—the same age as the roommates of the program—who watchedthe program. I recruited participants in January 2006 by speaking at a gen-eral meeting attended monthly by representatives from each sorority on thecampus. One sorority member was particularly excited by the project andinvited me to speak at her chapter meeting the following week.

Twenty women from a single sorority at a large midwestern universityagreed to write weekly journal responses to each episode of The Real WorldKey West and participate in individual interviews about the program. Muchlike Radway (1984) chose her romance novel readers from a single readinggroup, I selected Real World viewers from an already existing pool ofwomen who often viewed together from the sorority house. It is importantto stress here that while the women came from similar ethnic (Caucasian)and socio-economic (middle to upper middle class) backgrounds, sincetheir demographics matched that of Real World audience data shared withme by Bunim/Murray Productions, the value of the data gathered here is


56 D. M. Stern

useful in understanding young female Real World viewers’ relationship tothe text. However, I would not go so far as to say the women of this studyare representative of all Real World viewers, nor is that the aim of criticalqualitative research.

Twenty-five of the sorority sisters initially showed interest and met withme as a group after a weekly house meeting. I provided each woman witha journal and instructions to write their reactions to the first three episodesof the Key West season, which was set to debut 3 weeks from then. Theironly guiding question was, “What did you think of this week’s episode?” Iintentionally made the question vague so as not to guide the women to par-ticular responses, as the purpose of the journals was to guide me in con-structing a more detailed interview guide. I received 12 journals back,nearly a 50% return rate. Each entry was approximately 1 handwritten page,for about 36 pages of data. During the first reading, I took notes describingthe subject responses. Using Glaser’s (1965) constant comparative method, Iconceptualized and grouped responses into themes based on four readingsof the journals to aid in the construction of my interview guide. Twenty ofthe women participated in the interviews, which demonstrates that nearlyall of the women were willing to give an hour of their time for a one-timeonly interview, but found it more difficult to give 2 or 3 hours—the time itwould have taken to watch three 30-minute episodes, whether alone orwith their sisters, friends, or housemates—to write open-ended journalresponses. Participants’ mean age was 19.4 years old. Nearly half of thewomen had been watching since the Seattle or Hawaii seasons, which airedwhen the women were in middle school. The mean years of viewing for theparticipants was 6.35 years. Each participant was assigned a pseudonym forconfidentiality.

While the women I interviewed were aware from the beginning thatthe focus of my study was on women in The Real World, I left my questionsopen-ended when asking them to describe the roommates, so as not to(mis-) lead them to any particular response. My flexible interview guide isincluded as Appendix A. Interviews were transcribed for a total of 80 single-spaced pages of data. I took notes throughout four readings of the tran-scriptions then, as with the journal entries, analyzed per Glaser’s constantcomparative method for themes of the body.1

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE REAL WORLD: KEY WEST

Real World producers selected Key West, or rather a small island just off ofthe main island of Key West, as the temporary home of the 17th season’sseven strangers. The four men and three women lived for 4 months in alavish beach home with bright, comfortable furniture, a pool, and an indoorhot tub. I list the roommates in the order we are introduced to them on the



casting special (2006, February 21) that aired 1 week prior to the seasonpremiere: Svetlana, 19; Jose, 20; John, 22; Paula, 24; Zach, 22; Janelle, 22;and Tyler, 23. Since the focus of this study is on women and reality TV, Iprovide a detailed description of only the female roommates here. Descrip-tions of the male roommates are included as Appendix B.

Svetlana: As in previous seasons, a woman is positioned as the young-est of the roommates. However, in Svetlana’s casting tape, the focus is moreon her body and emotions than on her age and place in life. Svetlana wearsher thick dark hair smooth and straight, with heavy eyeliner emphasizingher dark eyes. She tells the camera that she is originally from Ukraine and ofJewish heritage, not Russian. She is very clear about the distinction. Sheholds up a poster board with a list of five reasons Real World producersshould pick her. The first is her “Tig o’Biddies,” emphasizing her largebreast size. She grabs her breasts and says, “They’re real.” The secondreason is that she is a drama queen, demonstrated by her pale pink T-shirtwith a gold crown that reads, “Queen.” Third, she loves nudity. Fourth, sheis a “Bitcch” [sic] and, finally, men are her pets. Her edited tape concludeswith her explaining that she is missing friends in her life and that she has aboyfriend.

Paula: In Paula’s audition tape we see that she is lean, very thin in fact,with chiseled, yet delicate features and long, curly blonde hair. She playfullyexposes a unique butterfly tattoo on her lower back. Next she tells us abouther life from a bathroom, where she sits on the bathtub ledge leaningtoward the camera directly in front of her, with her eyes averted to the side:“I recently became kind of, a little bit bulimic. I always had issues withfood. I always thought that I’m going to get fat or too ugly or too some-thing.” In the sequence immediately following the bathroom confession,Paula is seated in front of the camera, and as she is turned to her side,appears to be speaking to a casting director and/or producer: “I need to beloved. So I think, ‘I’ll say it and they’ll say it back.’ So I think it’s like aneedy thing. I cry a lot.”

Janelle: Janelle has light, mocha skin and full, curly dark hair. Sheintroduces herself by saying that she is “somewhat” passionate about lawschool but really has a passion for her job as a make-up artist for M.A.C.Cosmetics. She mentions having an anger problem then declares her prefer-ence for dating Black men: “Because I’m half-Black, I pretty much stayedwithin my race. For the majority, my friends are all Black. My best friend ismixed, just like me.” She says she is a “bit nosy” and that she had her“boobs done.” She is wearing the same queen/crown T-shirt as Svetlana,but in a baby blue color.

In the brief video sequences of the casting special, Real World creativedirectors have already set the trajectory of how the women will deal withtheir situations and each other throughout their time in Key West. Svetlanais the attention-seeking baby of the group looking to prove herself and find


58 D. M. Stern

herself simultaneously. Paula is the emotionally unstable “crazy” girl, andJanelle is the no frills, no-nonsense beautiful Black woman. Most importantfor my purposes here is that each of the three women spoke openly abouttheir bodies in their casting tapes. Svetlana and Janelle discussed theirbreast sizes. Paula shared her body and eating disorder issues. All threewomen can be described as beautiful. The centrality of women’s bodies tothe program cannot be ignored. In fact, the logo for the Key West season,which varies with each location, is displayed on a woman’s body for thefirst time. The Real World logo, the title of the show in a graffiti-like print, isthe only non-tan area on the back right shoulder of a very tan woman. Sheis lying on her side with her back to the camera and her long brown hairslung over one shoulder, next to the logo.

During their interviews, women of this study described male room-mates as the nice guy, the frat boy, and the jock, but also pointed out thatthey notice female roommates getting more screen time. According toAmanda, “The guys don’t get a lot of air time probably because they don’tcreate as much drama.” Executive producers Jon Murray and JoyceCorrington, as well as casting director Sasha Alpert, admitted that femalecast members do tend to provide better drama, often because women maydeal with conflict better than men, and since the show is built around con-flict it makes for better story arcs.

The reliance on women’s bodies was also indicated by the textualanalysis. Of the 72 narratives, or storylines, throughout the Key West sea-son, 32 featured the women, while only 21 featured the men. The other 19were other- or group-centered: six focused on work-related situations, eightcentered on the roommates getting to know each other or team-building,and five were specific to the hurricanes the roommates endured. Of the 21storylines devoted to male roommates, 10 of those involved Tyler, theopenly gay male of the cast. For the other two males, John had fivestorylines, while Zach and Jose each had three. These numbers lose signifi-cance when we see that John’s screen time is always in relation to otherroommates rather than his own situations or personal life. Zach was a littlemore fortunate in that two of his three storylines involved a romanticinvolvement with a Key West local and one as an extension of Paula’s story.Jose’s narratives included improving his life and coming into his own, withone romantic narrative as well.

The Key West season unfolded unlike any other before it. Numerousearly episodes focused on Paula’s struggle with an eating disorder, as wellas other body issues related to drinking and an abusive relationship. Muchof the middle portion of the season had the seven roommates avoiding thehigh winds of three major hurricanes. The severity of these troubled girl andhurricane narratives left little room for the typical bar scenes and make-outsessions viewers had come to expect from The Real World. I had framed myoriginal study with the expectation that the Key West season, like so many



Real World seasons before it, would consist mostly of beautiful peopledrinking, partying, and hooking up. While these elements were at play inKey West, they constituted a significantly smaller portion of the narrativethan past seasons. Such is the nature of studying reality TV. Unlike theclosely scripted process of drama and sitcoms, whose characters and plotscan continue for years, the cast and storylines of reality programmingchange from season to season. Regardless, a majority of the women I inter-viewed had been viewing The Real World since middle or high school andlikewise referenced past storylines in addition to Key West narratives. Mythematic analysis kept leading back to these troubled girl narratives that tieddirectly to the body via discussion of sexuality and eating disorders. Thenext section elaborates on the first subtheme of what I identify as the frac-tured female—the troubled body.

CONSTRUCTING THE TROUBLED BODY

The first individual interview question I asked regarding Real World room-mates, “How would you describe the women you have seen on theshow?” was met with two major types of responses by participants. Thewomen discussed the constructed nature of Real World’s female room-mates’ 1) appearance, such as body type or dress, and 2) emotions. More-over, a few women acknowledged at various points in their interviewsthat not only are the main stories in The Real World built around thefemale roommates but especially around female insecurities that nega-tively portray women’s emotional nature. Real World: Key West’s heavyfocus on Paula’s drinking problem and eating disorder only fueled theviewers’ concerns. According to the women of this study, an exaggeratedrealness of the female body, represented by various stereotypes, is offeredup by The Real World.2

NATASHA: They actually take on a certain role. It’s not necessarily theirrole, like their actual personality . . . There’s always the bitchy girl, theslutty girl, the drama-causing. girl . . . They’re always good looking—usually good looking.

TONYA: I feel like the women are a lot more focused on than the menare. Sometimes they take women who have mistakes and characteristics.Like they’ll be very open with their sexuality or they’ll be very open abouttheir heritage or their ethnicity, and they’ll kind of bring that to everyconfrontation.

MARIE: I feel like everybody’s typecast. Except this season I think Paula’sa little crazy. She seems very weak.


60 D. M. Stern

LAURA: Like I understand she has problems and stuff but it’s kind ofannoying to me almost how she came on the show knowing she hadproblems. But it’s almost like she’s giving this burden to the other room-mates to take care of her constantly.

CARLA: I think she is one of those people who would try to get people tonotice her.

Marie’s reference to typecasting came up over and over, with women dis-cussing cast members as stereotypes that The Real World has come to relyon, such as the bitch, slut, ditz, or nice girl. Laura’s statement about Paulanot being considerate of her other roommates demonstrates that not only isPaula not concerned with her own well being, but she has also ignored theinterests of her roommates, which was a clear violation of the living situa-tion to my viewers. Carla looks down on Paula for using an eating disorderas an attention-seeking tool.

Later in her interview, Marie cuts deeper:

But like what is she? She obviously has an eating disorder. But she haslike homosexual tendencies too and she has bipolar? She’s like four timesof crazy. She’s a very mixed up girl.

Marie is referencing narratives in episodes eight and nine, which call Paula’ssexuality into question when she kisses a girl at the bar and also invitesanother girl to come back to the house for a sleepover. Marie’s statementreinforces the constructed nature of the body—in real life and in The RealWorld. After clarifying that homosexuality is not in itself an act of devianceor mental disorder, Marie explained that Paula’s “scamming on a girl” and“flipping out” were done out of the cast member’s need for attention. Thecharacterization of Paula’s bi-sexual leanings as a form of emotional instabil-ity is revealing in that it trivializes women’s sexuality in the same way TheReal World has done over the years. While The Real World claims to beabout bringing people of different backgrounds and lifestyles together, thewomen of this study were quick to point out those outside the status quo.

Other women I interviewed were more forgiving and hopeful:

HANNAH: Even though everyone looks at Paula like she is really messedup, well, she’s at the beginning of what’s going on. She’s trying to work itout, going to counseling or whatever.

HEATHER: I definitely feel for her.

I do not want to impress upon the reader that these two comments were theonly ones of support for Paula, but they were in the minority. Some viewers



pointed to the publicity afforded by The Real World as a good outlet tomake teens and young women aware of the severity of eating disorders.However, other women were more skeptical and pointed to the exploitivevalue of Paula’s eating disorder. According to Tonya, “Paula’s on it becauseshe has an eating disorder, and that’s marketable.” As real as they see theissue portrayed on The Real World, the women did not seem ready to see itat the center of such a popular staple of young adult pop culture. The KeyWest season’s primary focus on Paula’s eating disorder and psychologicalissues, while representative of the viewers’ lives or the lives of their friends,may have been too close for comfort.

Upon discussing Paula’s situation, all participants, in one way or another,shared some connection to bulimia, anorexia, or both. While only one of the20 sisters referenced her own struggle with anorexia in junior high school, therest shared their experiences of having seen a friend or an acquaintance battlean eating disorder. Within Elizabeth’s circle of friends, one had an eating dis-order that she was aware of, while four of her acquaintances did. Hannah’sroommate was recovering from bulimia-anorexia and a recent co-workerdenied it, but Hannah said she felt strongly that the girl was battling an eatingdisorder based on what she had seen other people go through. None ofAmanda’s friends had “actually been anorexic” in her words but they allstruggled with their weight, Amanda included. Marie personalized the weightworries: “I’ve never had an eating disorder, but I’ve looked at myself piggingout with a candy bar and been like, ‘You should not have eaten that.’”

Similarly, Victoria said her roommate obsesses over fat content and“always watches what she eats,” which has led Victoria to think that the girlis on the path to anorexia. Carla spoke of a good friend from elementaryschool with whom she remains close who never wanted to discuss thefriend’s eating disorder. Nicole experienced a similar situation from a non-disclosing high school friend:

She was obviously anorexic, but she never would let people know. Wewould hang out on the weekends. She was a very private person and wouldnever flaunt any of her problems. She got really thin. I’m not sure if she wasanorexic or not, but there was obviously something wrong with her.

The sister of Andrea’s best friend suffered from anorexia until she got help.One of Rebecca’s high school friends dropped down to an alarming 70pounds at one point. Part of the disconnect in the women’s discussion ofthe portrayal of anorexia on The Real World stems from the centrality ofPaula’s issues, which the women find discomforting and sad for a youngwoman to face on national television, despite their connection to and con-cern for women with eating disorders. The viewers’ discussion of sex andsexuality on The Real World also brought elements of discomfort to the sur-face, which I elaborate on in the next section.


62 D. M. Stern

NEGOTIATING THE HETERONORMATIVE BODY

As explained earlier in the essay, the women of my study described anexaggerated female body regarding appearances on The Real World. In thissection, this rhetoric of hyperbole is extended from bodily appearance andemotional state to the behaviors of women on the program and turns thefocus to the lived experiences of the women of my study. Analysis of thewomen’s responses is again interwoven at times with responses of RealWorld creative directors, this time through three major themes: the relation-ship between alcohol consumption and sexual behavior, the effect of celeb-rity and the cameras on women’s bodies, and finally, how bodies on TheReal World are normalized as heterosexual. The bodily constructions main-tained in the text, while acknowledged by Real World viewers for mostother aspects of roommates’ lives and personalities, barely registered forthat of nonheterosexual behaviors with the viewers. Additionally, for theseviewers the construction of sexuality is linked to a need for attention—maleattention.

As Michelle put it, Real World roommates cannot “party all of the time.”They also cannot “hook up” all of the time, but it appears to these femaleviewers that much of The Real World revolves around the roommates hook-ing up with each other or people they meet at the bars. In fact, the notionof female roommates needing male sexual companionship or approval—asin the case of bi-sexual, make-out sessions like that described in the previ-ous section—especially under the social lubricant of alcohol, was a com-mon theme throughout the interviews:

KATIE: It’s always more dramatic when they’re drinking. That makesgood drama.

LAURA: I don’t think girls would make out with girls if they weren’tdrinking. I don’t think girls would go home with some of the guys if theyhadn’t been drinking.

Again, a major point the women acknowledged concerned the fabricatednature of women’s personas on the program. In this case they point to theneed for drama and the presence of alcohol as the main variable in this dra-matic formula. Drawing from previous seasons, which the women were allfamiliar with, this formula is dependent at least somewhat on the presenceof women’s drunken bi-sexual behavior. This behavior is merely a rein-forcement of female roommates’ heterosexuality. In addition to the womenadmitting being drawn to the “drama” that comes with drinking, the ratingsof the Las Vegas and San Diego seasons demonstrate the attention the partylifestyle brings to The Real World. Both seasons, described by the womenhere and by critics as having a higher party quotient than most other seasons,



brought record ratings for The Real World (Feiwell, 2003; Dempsey, 2004).“I think they really like to watch the drunken shenanigans,” co-executiveproducer Joyce Corrington admitted (personal communication, June 13,2006).

The women of my study saw similarities between the drinking behaviorof women of The Real World and college women in real life. The viewers areintelligent about the effect alcohol has on their actions and inhibitions. Forexample, the relationship between sex and alcohol is prominent for collegewomen today. The need to drink large quantities of beer or liquor to have agood time is also established in peer groups. Some sample responses:

LISA: I have really good friends—I watch them. They go out every singlenight and drink as much as they possibly can. [But] I know they have agood head on their shoulders.

ELIZABETH: I know girls who haven’t had sex sober in a year.

LAURA: I think that they [Real World roommates] drink as much as anycollege student. But they only show when they are drinking, so it makes itseem like they drink all the time . . . From my friends and personal expe-riences, stuff you’re going to do when you’re drunk is not what you’regoing to do when you’re sober.

While some of the comments, such as Elizabeth’s about women not havinghad sexual intimacy without the presence of alcohol for a long period oftime, do not represent the statements of all the women I interviewed; theyare nonetheless relevant to college students today.

According to Carla, “There are a lot of girls who love attention.” Thephrase “looking for attention,” which was repeated over and over—in myinterviews and onscreen—is a multi-faceted expression that characterizesyoung women today as seeking approval via their bodily actions and appear-ances. College-age women are always “on” according to my interviewees.

VICTORIA: Maybe you just have to watch your actions even if you’re noton camera.

JENNIFER: I think more on The Real World it’s more on their own. I feellike they’re doing it. Maybe it’s the pressure of being on TV, so it’s a differ-ent type of pressure. The pressure here [in college] is the guys want you todo it and you’re drunk and stuff.

These statements suggest how the reality television camera may influencean already established desire for attention. Victoria has attributed anincrease of self-monitoring to heightened levels of other-monitoring. As


64 D. M. Stern

Jennifer explained, the comparison between real life and The Real Worldrests in who is doing the watching. Today’s young men have learned fromthe success of the cameras and men behind the scenes of the Girls GoneWild franchise. As such, pressures by men in real life are compounded by thepresence of the cameras on The Real World. In the production analysis Iconducted, the Real World creative directors pointed to women being moredramatic. However, the viewers pointed to the presence of the camera asinviting and encouraging this drama. The women of this study saw RealWorld women, while often caricatures of their own devices and manipulatedvia the editing process—whether related to alcohol or not—representative ofreal women in that playing to the camera is in some ways equivalent toimpressing men in real life.

Participants all spoke of feeling the pinch to look good and project theright image. They shared that young women today face enormous pressureto have the perfect hairstyle, perfect smile, perfect skin, perfect body. Thispressure is exacerbated by the emphasis on drinking and partying—incollege and in The Real World. Speaking of female roommates on The RealWorld who get drunk and overly emotional or flirtatious, Hannah shared,“That makes you think to yourself, ‘Do not do that ever. Don’t do what theyjust did.’” Carla compared Real World bar behavior to her expectations ofyoung women today:

Like this season so far they go out to the bars and Svetlana is dancing ontop of bars. I would never dance on top of bars. My friends haven’t reallyeither. We’ll be in a bar and see girls dancing up there and be like, “Thatgirl—she definitely wants attention.”

Female bar behavior, random hook-ups, and girl-on-girl heteroflexibilityoffered up by The Real World, at least to the women interviewed here,serves as a reminder to stay sober, or at least limit consumption to a fewbeers, so as not to lose control and be “one of those girls.”

The Real World, once a show that brought people of varied back-grounds together as a learning experience, now capitalizes on the partyscene made famous by Girls Gone Wild. Female viewers may still learn fromonscreen interactions, but more often than not in recent years, especially onthe Key West season, women are consuming a heteronormative, alcohol-induced hyperfemininity that leads to extra attention—and not the goodkind they say. Still, the women I spoke with saw these behaviors in real life,not just on their television screens. According to Sloop (2004), ideologicallyconstrained portrayals of gender and sexuality demand cultural criticism inorder to, at the least, call attention to these limitations, but especially to“encourage a de-literalizatiion and de-naturalization of gender and sexualcategories” (p. 13). My work has been, on one level, to begin unpackingassumptions in the loaded bodies of reality TV as conduits of sexualized



norms because, as I will elaborate on next, viewers can and do look pastthe constructed nature of reality television to see the genre as a very “real”form of mediated communication.

CONSUMING REAL BODIES ON THE REAL WORLD

The women of this study, although entertained by the drama The RealWorld provides, participated in an ongoing process of filtering out the exag-gerated notions of young adulthood, femininity, and bodies to make senseof the narratives onscreen. Pullen (2004) identified this constant push-pullpractice of reality TV consumption as part of a larger “reflexive reality envi-ronment” (p. 227). For the most part, the women found comfort in seeingnot only the relational drama but also some of the more frivolous, partyaction offered up by The Real World often played out similarly in their ownlives. However, they recognized that Real World roommates have less over-all responsibility and can therefore afford, emotionally and financially, toplay harder than most young adults.

ELIZABETH: I think it’s a true representation . . . I think it needs to berealized that not all people that age are doing these things. But I’ve defi-nitely seen it here and on vacations.

MARIE: It just seems to me like it’s college life without having to study.You don’t have very many responsibilities . . . They want a break fromlife, so they go on The Real World.

HEATHER: There’s just so much more to life than going out and havingfun. There’s this whole other part of my life, like school, getting a goodjob. When I was younger watching the show because they didn’t showthem in school, I was like, “Life’s a party when you’re 20.” It can be.

Here it is important to note that longtime viewers, while sensitive to thestylized production and commercial construction of reality programming,were not always so aware. Those viewers who began watching in middleschool and early high school, before the presence of media literacy compo-nents appear in most curricula, began linking young adult life with exces-sive drinking and sparse responsibilities. On the one hand, this is nothingnew, considering the ubiquity of the teen and college film genres. However,when fictional comic narratives are coupled with visual and textual ele-ments of the real, prepubescent viewers come to know a limited medias-cape of college age life. My emphasis here is not on Real World’s influenceon drinking behavior, for that requires large-scale survey data and isolationof a number of outside factors. Rather, the women’s discussion of their early


66 D. M. Stern

perceptions of young adulthood based on their viewings of The Real Worldpoint to the importance young people place on their media experiences innegotiating reality. When these media texts are part of a nonscripted, “real,”genre, the idea of reality perception becomes even more complex.

Though the producers and creative directors consistently namedconflict as the major ingredient of drama on The Real World, stories beginwith protagonists that young women, as the largest audience, can identifywith and root for throughout the season. In past seasons, the most relatablefemale roommates may have had personal baggage that they brought fromhome, but they managed to not let this interfere with their romantic possi-bilities in the house. Real World: Key West had no single female roommates,a condition that translates to less relationship drama and therefore lowerratings sometimes, according to co-executive producer Joyce Corrington(personal communication, June 13, 2006). As the roommate with the mostscreen time, including four episodes devoted specifically to her and 17 addi-tional storylines throughout the season,3 Paula was unlike any of her RealWorld predecessors. Not only was she trying to overcome an eating disor-der and alcohol issues, she was often on the telephone trying to rebuild herrelationship with her boyfriend Keith, who had been abusive in the past.

A comment from Zach in the season’s first episode summarizes thechange Paula and Key West brought to the expectations viewers have cometo have of The Real World. Upon realizing the severity of Paula’s problems,he tells the confessional, “I’m really concerned about Paula. I’m thinkingwe’re going to have this wonderful family of a house and we’re dealingwith an issue.” Like his fellow roommates and former fellow viewers, Zachhas hoped Key West would be an escape from the pressures of collegewhile also providing new relationships. Instead, Zach, like the women ofmy study, has pointed out that Key West will be unlike most Real World sea-sons. A brief analysis of the last episode of the Key West season and subse-quent conclusion of Paula’s narrative illustrates the potential that The RealWorld—despite its reputation as an extended spring break—still has toshare arcs of personal growth with its millions of young female viewers.

The roommates go to a final dinner together and share how much theycare about each other. “I will love you guys for the rest of my life,” Paulatells them. To the confessional, John says, “I’m going to miss all six of thesepeople. I guess all good things gotta’ come to an end.” Back at the house,they have gathered their blankets and pillows to fall asleep together in theliving room. Paula wakes up and talks to Keith on the phone. She tells theconfessional that the two of them plan on living together and going to cou-ple’s counseling. Hanging up the phone, she looks out over her roommates,who are sound asleep, but she cannot and decides to begin packing. Whiledoing so, Paula finds a poem she wrote a month after arriving in Key West.In the poem, Paula expresses feeling broken but being lifted up by her“strangers”—her roommates. She types it up and titles it, “My Strangers” and



prints up copies for all her roommates, which she decorates with markersand lays next to each of them as they sleep. As her voiceover reads thepoem, we are treated to a montage of clips from the season featuring one-on-one discussions between Paula and each of her roommates, representingPaula’s transformation throughout the season, including developing adultrelationships with the roommates. The next morning, the cameras capturePaula being the last person to leave the house: A taxi picks her up and wehear her voiceover: “I fell in love with seven people—six roommates andmyself . . . I owe the world to them. I don’t think they’ll ever know that theysaved my life.”

Despite the lower ratings that came with the heavy focus on Paula, theproducers told her story as they have with any previous major storyline—with a beginning, middle, and end (Jon Murray, personal communication,June 12, 2006). It is fitting, then, that the final episode would include amontage of scenes with Paula discussing her problems with each roommateseparately and being the last person to leave the Key West house. For all ofthe focus on Paula in season 17, ultimately the thematic narrative of theseason was not that much unlike previous Real World seasons. The finalepisode featured the roommates discussing their brief time together andhow they have grown and changed because of the experience. In Paula’scase, at the urging of her roommates, she began seeing a counselor andscaled back her alcohol consumption and food obsession. Although RealWorld roommates essentially “grow up” in 4 months, their struggles and tri-umphs are no less meaningful to the viewers who take 4 years to achievethe same types of relationships and self-knowledge, elements that for morethan 15 years have made Real World essentially real to its millions of view-ers. Moreover, the success of this established formula that blends realismand dramatic narrative makes The Real World an implicit learning tool.Specifically, the program provides a platform from which viewers can learnabout and perhaps resist the very fractured female narrative The Real Worldhas contributed to in popular culture.

REAL WORLD REALISM

In her taxonomy of media realism, Alice Hall (2003) found six categories ofaudience perceptions of media realism, which she defined as “the way inwhich a media representation is seen to relate to real-world experience”(p. 624), through focus group interviews with 47 young adults. The concep-tualizations include plausibility (something that could actually happen), typ-icality (representativeness beyond happening to a single person), factuality(based on real events), emotional involvement (potential for audience torelate to characters), narrative consistency (internal coherence), and percep-tual persuasiveness (“compelling visual illusion” (p. 637)). Hall’s subjects


68 D. M. Stern

viewed and discussed both scripted and nonscripted fare, which is helpfulin explaining the overlapping perception of realism across media texts,where notions of the real are determined by the relationship between amedia representation and a viewer’s experience.

Each of the six components previously defined were all articulated bythe women of my study. Though either exaggerated, in the viewers’ words,or distilled, in the producers’, the events of The Real World are ostensiblyreal. Roommates are likely to have too much to drink and get in a fight(plausibility). The women’s explanations of the parallels of Real Worlddrinking narratives and drinking behavior of college-aged women, as wellas the “looking for attention” are examples of this negotiation process.Twentysomethings are going to struggle with their place in their familiesand the world (typicality), demonstrated by the viewers’ discussions ofempathizing with roommates by comparing leaving family to attend collegeto Real World displacement. Despite, or maybe because of, minimal pro-ducer involvement, the events of Key West actually happened (factuality).The women spoke of recognizing what they perceived to be producerinvolvement in casting beautiful, thin women with emotional problems, butthat those roommates dressed themselves and had emotional outburstswithout the coaxing of producers. Although many of the women spoke ofbeing upset at Paula’s televised struggle, they were no less concerned forher physical and emotional health, which leads to the next criteria in Hall’staxonomy. Viewers connected, sometimes painfully, to Paula’s trauma andSvetlana’s growing pains (emotional involvement). Voiceovers allowedimages to flow seamlessly from the confessional video room to the bar for acomplete story (narrative consistency), which points more to the absencecriteria in critical rhetoric. None of the women spoke of being distracted bythe incorporation of the different footage to tell the story arcs. However,one exception occurred when some women spoke of suspecting that pro-ducers included a reaction shot to build dramatic tension in a sequence thatmay not have actually garnered that shot. The purpose, however, of build-ing conflict to achieve narrative flow was achieved. Finally, the intimacy ofThe Real World cameras puts the viewer at the scene (perceptual persua-siveness). That the women I interviewed consistently spoke of identifyingwith many of The Real World’s roommates points to the immediacy of thereality genre. Again, viewers may not have mentioned that the positioningof the camera brought them closer to the subjects, but such is the purposeof proper camera placement and editing in the reality genre.

Sometimes, as Hall (2003) admitted, viewers are aware of the productionprocess of creating media texts, which more often than not shifts their per-ceptions of realism. Real World viewers are no exception. They are part of atechnology-savvy generation of heavy media users who have been raised onreality television and the Internet. Not only do they understand the languageof constructed bodies and narratives, they helped create it—maybe not the



viewers of this study specifically—but young women who constitute morethan 60% of The Real World’s audience have seen and participated in thecomplicated relationship between cameras and bodies. From Girls GoneWild to MySpace or the countless other reality programs on televisiontoday, the desire to be the focus of attention transcends the line betweenthe virtual and the real. Furthermore, in our surveillance society, the workof being watched (Andrejevic, 2004) and doing the watching have becomeinterchangeable. Like contestants on American Idol, the current generationof Real World cast members knows its conventions and has learned what ittakes to get onscreen and command the camera. Although viewers at homeare aware of this interplay, they see themselves represented on The RealWorld and identify it as real and helpful in their daily lives. A reflexiveauthenticity of Real World bodies is established. I want to move on to whatthis obscured, but tangible, interrelationship of produced and consumedbodies can teach us about hybrid television and hybrid audiences.

FINDING MEANING IN THE FRACTURED FEMALE

The Real World, for all its criticism about celebrating and fueling gender ste-reotypes and the college party lifestyle, cannot be blamed for creating thefractured female archetype. Rather, these bodies abound in popular culture.With their stories of the pressures that drive Hollywood starlets such asLindsey Lohan and Mary-Beth Olsen to anorexia or bulimia, magazines,entertainment news, and the Internet have saturated young women aboutthe dangers of eating disorders. As such, the women are uncomfortablewith any “real” critique offered by the cameras of reality television. At thesame time, the women also recognized that younger girls, who have notendured as many years of media representation of the disease, are primecandidates for learning about anorexia on programs like The Real World. Inher study of feminism and the body in Western culture, Unbearable Weight,Susan Bordo (1993) explained that images of the body are never justimages. Images of thinness and beauty serve a normalizing function, butthey can also serve as a lesson to young women. However, Bordo arguedthat young women are tired of being preached to, whether by the media,their teachers, their families, or their peers, about the problems of eatingdisorders.

The women of my study viewed women in their late teens and earlytwenties as insecure beings inundated by media images of digitally alteredcelebrity perfection. The corporeal today is a self-monitored body but alsoan other-monitored body. The functions of Bentham’s panopticon, the all-seeing, ever-present eye are shared by the self, the camera, and society toassist in shaping young women’s bodies and their relations to bodies ontelevision and other media forms. They watch themselves and are being


70 D. M. Stern

watched constantly. The women may have attested to the reality of eatingdisorders but would rather these narratives escape close scrutiny on TheReal World, which they turn to for entertainment and a release from thepressures of school and work. Meehan (2007) has reminded communicationscholars of the importance of studying popular culture, despite audiences’and some academics’ understanding of it as “only entertainment.” A satura-tion of the fractured female discourse in The Real World and other popularculture outlets, from celebrity gossip to news of mothers who have lost con-trol and killed their children, indicates a problem in society that must bereconciled. Moreover, the body’s status as fractured—in crisis, unstable—if awoman is not balanced, nor overtly heterosexual, is problematic for thebody politic.

While young women, as the primary audience of the longest runningreality program ever, have been trained in the “language of reality TV”(Ouellette & Murray, 2004) they have actually participated in what Burke(1965) has termed a “trained incapacity” in culture and communicative life.Viewing reality TV has become second nature and therefore normalized.Viewers know how to identify the “crazy” one, the “slut,” and so on, butoften do little to look deeper at what it means to have these types of bodiespresented over and over again. “Oh that’s just the way it is. It sucks, butwhat can we do?” I heard in one form or another from multiple women.Despite the women’s juxtaposition of the real with the female cast mem-bers, the implication is still, “Why question what is onscreen when we arejust viewing to escape our daily lives?”

Bordo’s (1999) argument that young women today have been trainedto see dysfunction, and defective bodies especially, offers one explanation.As a viewing audience, fans of programs like The Real World have come toexpect and eventually enjoy the exploitation of female bodies, whether ascrazy, hypersexual, or confused. The Real World appears to have appealedto female viewers mostly through these elements of escapism and the dailydrama of potential romantic or sexual relationships. But while those seem-ingly mundane, escapist narratives unfolded, larger issues of bodies in crisiswere going mostly under the radar until recently. Evidenced by the womenof my study, including responses from The Real World’s longtime castingdirector, Sasha Alpert, young women are perhaps more insecure than everbefore. The camera only heightens the already established pressures andinsecurities on young women today.

I do not mean to imply that audiences of reality TV of The Real Worldsort are passive, manipulated viewers ignorant to the gendered and racedbiases inherent in the genre.4 They are just the opposite—intelligent, obser-vant, and participatory. The genre of hybrid television in fact demandsactive viewers to engage in the visual discourse of this new media form.The women of this study have essentially been raised on reality program-ming. They know the roles the cast members take on and recognize the



conventions of constructing narratives from thousands of hours of footage.They get it. However, while hybrid viewers do question the context of andmotives behind the production process, my fear is that the real problem is thatthey do not question their own roles in the continuation of the stereotypes ofyoung women they spoke of to me, especially regarding the sexual body.

This is where the macrostructures of hybrid television production are atplay. The fractured female has become a marketable commodity, packaged,repackaged, and sold to audiences in various media outlets. However,viewers, fueled by a desire to escape into television narratives—reality orotherwise—rarely take the initiative to hold television executives to task.This study provides just one example of how young female audiences moreoften than not do not take it upon themselves to question the capitalist,exploitive motives of the reality genre. The proliferation of beautiful,troubled women who make out with each other for the benefit of men andthe camera on reality TV and Girls Gone Wild has contributed to a normal-ization of certain sexual identities and behaviors—namely, the heterosexed,damaged body. The corporate entities that produce these programs arebalancing a fine line between the real and the fabricated.

Sometimes narratives of femininity and young adulthood on reality TVcan become too “real,” as in the case of Paula’s eating disorder, and causediscomfort in their viewers. When this happens, viewers now have moreoptions than ever before to escape into fantasy worlds of celebrity gossipand virtual identities. In an ironic twist, the viewers who chose not to dealwith The Real World: Key West’s offering of an honest, though admittedlyglossed over, portrayal of the body, were treated to the celebrity media’smenu of women in crisis—featuring Britney Spears and Lindsey Lohan asthe main damsels in distress and Anna Nicole Smith as its fatal victim. As Iwrite this, the paparazzi have engorged themselves on Spears’ and Lohan’smost recent public crises. On the home page for Gallery of the Absurd, asite devoted to “artistic” interpretations of public figures and stars, the headof a bald Spears is imposed on the body of the cleaning product marketingcharacter of Mr. Clean above the following words: “Ms. Crazy. She’ll do any-thing for attention” (Gallery of the Absurd, 2007). It appears that it is easierto participate in viewing the public pain of celebrities rather than witnessthe implosion of people “just like us.” Scholars such as Hermes (1999) andLittler (2004) have examined the pleasure women receive from readingabout the poor choices made by or problems of celebrities in gossipmagazines. In the new millennium, however, reality TV has made theaverage citizen famous, complicating audiences’ relationship to consumingothers’ pain.

Holmes and Redmond (2006) have argued that celebrity bodies func-tion in two major ways. The first is a hegemonic role of reproducing the“dominant culture’s patriarchal, racial and heterosexual gaze,” while the sec-ond is a role of transgression and opposition (p. 4). Reality television, with


72 D. M. Stern

its promise of the democratization of fame and celebrity (Holmes &Redmond, 2006; Jenkins, 2006), functions in similar ways regarding bodies.Here The Real World and celebrity news have turned the camera onso-called crazy and attention-seeking behaviors of young women in Americatoday. Discourse of women in crisis across media genres has brought us ascholarly crisis across multiple disciplines. As much as the current genera-tion is aware of the touched-up nature of celebrity and the producedelements of the reality TV star, the most important question scholars shouldbe asking is not, “How do audiences distinguish between the real and thefabricated?” but rather, “Does the real even matter anymore?” The imagesare there. The stories are there. What can we do about them?

I hope I have demonstrated here that the first step is to continue to linkthe cultural with the capital. We must also educate audiences—especiallyyoung women—about their own contribution to popular culture’s fascina-tion with the fractured female. Although media outlets bring us the images,or representations, of bodies, how we speak about bodies as fractured pro-vides the substance of the body politic described by Grosz (1995). The factthat the young women of this study spoke time and again of emotionalwomen or women experimenting with their sexuality as “crazy” or “lookingfor attention” must remind scholars that we have much more work to do. AsMcGee (1990) argued, culture exists in fragments, and it is the criticalrhetor’s job to make sense of these fragments, which include not only ana-lyzing culture but also the critical process. More studies grounded in decen-tralizing established norms can lead us down the long road toward thetransgression of the heteronormative, perfectionist double-bind.

Most importantly, however, I hope that media and feminist scholarsalike can look to the work here as evidence for the need for more projectsthat link the two camps and to move beyond defining the real toward theo-retical issues implicated by material bodies. The commodity construction ofbodies in hybrid media forms, from the Internet to reality TV, demand criti-cal engagement across disciplines. Looking to bodies instead of gender,race, and sexuality as separate categories is but one way of working towardthis project. The next step is to weave these layers of the body into culturalnarratives beyond the classroom and the ivory tower of academia.

NOTES

1. The second phase of the study consisted of individual interviews over the course of a 3-dayvisit in June 2006 with four top executives at Bunim/Murray Productions, the company that producesThe Real World, including co-creator and executive producer, Jon Murray, and the vice presidents ofcasting, stories, and editing. See Appendix C for the flexible interview guide. Responses were tran-scribed, read through four times, and grouped by themes per Glaser’s constant comparative method,which I then analyzed using the rhetorical methods of corporeal feminism. The third phase was thecompletion of a textual analysis of the 25 episodes of the Key West season, which aired from February



to August 2006. Like the interview portion of the study, I utilized Glaser’s constant comparative methodto tease out themes through multiple viewings.

2. Although responses were collected in individual face-to-face interviews, responses are groupedthematically to build a conversation about themes specific to the body and to contribute to my argument.

3. Paula was the only roommate to have her own episodes. Svetlana came in second with 12narratives.

4. The larger study examined race in addition to gender, but this essay has been limited to thesexed, gendered body for space limitations.

REFERENCES

Andrejevic, M. (2002). The kinder, gentler gaze of Big Brother. New Media & Society,4, 251–270.

Andrejevic, M. (2004). Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched. New York: Rowmanand Littlefield.

Aurthur, K. (2005). MTV’s Real World goes on and on. The New York Times, p. 2.Bagley, G. (2001, summer/fall). A mixed bag: Negotiating claims in MTV’s The Real

World. Journal of Film and Video, 53, 61–76.Bignell, J. (2005). Big Brother: Reality TV in the Twenty-First Century. New York:

Palgrave Macmillan.Biressi, A., & Nunn, H. (2005). Reality TV: Realism and Revelation. London:

Wallflower.Bordo, S. (1993). Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body.

Berkeley: University of California Press.Bordo, S. (1999). Twilight Zones: The Hidden Life of Cultural Images from Plato to

O.J. Berkeley: University of California Press.Burke, K. (1965). Permanence and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose. Indianapolis,

IN: Bobbs-Merrill.Byrne, B. (2003). Reciting the self: Narrative representations of the self in qualitative

interviews. Feminist Theory, 4, 29–49.Dempsey, J. (2004). Starry “BET Awards” brings record ratings. Daily Variety, p. 11.Feiwell, J. (2003, May 14). MTV gets “Real” for two more seasons. Daily Variety, p. 4.Foss, S. K. (1989). Rhetorical Criticism. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland.Foss, S. K., & Griffin, C. L. (1992, fall). A feminist perspective on rhetorical theory:

Toward a clarification of boundaries. Western Journal of Communication, 56,330–349.

Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage.Gallery of the Absurd (2007). Bald Britney. http://galleryoftheabsurd.typepad.com/

14/. Retrieved February 18, 2007.Glaser, B. G. (1965, spring). The constant comparative method of qualitative analy-

sis. Social Problems, 12, 436–445.Grosz, E. (1994). Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Bloomington, IN:

Indiana University Press.Grosz, E. (1995). Space, Time, and Perversion. New York: Routledge.Hall, A. (2003). Reading realism: Audiences’ evaluations of the reality of media

texts. Journal of Communication, 53, 624–641.


74 D. M. Stern

Hermes, J. (1999). Media figures in identity construction. In P. Alasuutari (Ed.),Rethinking the Media Audience: The New Agenda. London: Sage.

Hill, A. (2005). Reality TV: Audiences and Popular Factual Television. London: Routledge.Hobson, D. (2004). Everyday people, everyday life: British teenagers, soap opera

and reality TV. In C. von Feilitzen, (Ed.), Yearbook 2004: Young People, SoapOperas and Reality TV. Sweden: The International Clearinghouse on Children,Youth and Media/Nordicom, Goteborg University, Sweden: Goteborg.

Holmes, S., & Jermyn, D. (2004). Understanding Reality Television. London: Routledge.Holmes, S., & Redmond, S. (Eds.). (2006). Framing Celebrity: New Directions in

Celebrity Culture. London: Routledge.Japp., P. M. (2005). Representation as ethical discourse: Communicating with and

about mediated popular culture. In P. M. Japp, M. Meister, & D. K. Japp,(Eds.), Communication Ethics, Media, & Popular Culture (pp. 41–63).New York: Lang.

Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence Culture: Where old and new media collide. NewYork: New York University Press.

Juarez, V. (2002, July 25). “Real” life. Newsweek web exclusive. Retrieved February14, 2007.

Kick off your shoes and put your toes in the sand: MTV heads to Key West forSeason 17 of The Real World. (2005). Viacom press release. Retrieved fromhttp://www.viacom.com/view_release.jhtml?inID=4&inReleaseID=26513. RetrievedJanuary 3, 2006.

Kilborn, R. (1994) .“How real can you get?”: Recent developments in “reality” televi-sion. European Journal of Communication, 9, 421–439.

Kilborn, R. (2003). Staging the Real: Factual TV Programming in the Age of BigBrother. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.

Kraszewski, J. (2004). Country hicks and urban cliques: Mediating race, reality, and liber-alism on MTV’s The Real World. In S. Murray & L. Ouellette (Eds.), Reality TV:Remaking Television Culture (pp. 179–196). New York: New York University Press.

LeBesco, K. (2004). Got to be real: Mediating gayness on Survivor. In S. Murray &L. Ouellette (Eds.), Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture (pp. 271–287).New York: New York University Press.

Lewis, J. (2004). The meaning of real life. In L. Ouellette & S. Murray (Eds.), Reality TV:Remaking Television Culture (pp. 288–302). New York: New York University Press.

Littler, J. (2004). Making fame ordinary. Intimacy, reflexivity and “Keeping it real.”Mediactive, 2, 8–25.

McGee, M. C. (1990, summer). Text, content, and the fragmentation of contemporaryculture. Western Journal of Speech Communication, 54, 274–289.

McKerrow, R. E. (1998). Corporeality and cultural rhetoric: A site for rhetoric’sfuture. Southern Journal of Communication, 63, 315–328.

Meehan, E. R. (2007). Understanding how the popular becomes popular: The roleof political economy in the study of popular culture. Popular Communication,5, 161–710.

Murray, S., & Ouellette, L. (Eds.). (2004). Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture.New York: New York University Press.

O’Connor, J. J. (1992, July 9). The Real World, according to MTV. The New YorkTimes, p. C15.



Ouellette, L., & Murray, S. (2004). Introduction. In S. Murray & L. Ouellette (Eds.),Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture (pp. 1–15). New York: New YorkUniversity Press.

Pullen, C. (2004). The household, the basement and The Real World: Gay identity inthe constructed reality environment. In S. Holmes & D. Jermyn (Eds.), Under-standing Reality Television (pp. 211–232). London: Routledge.

Radway, J. (1984). Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy and Popular Litera-ture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Riordan, E. (2004). Feminist theory and the political economy of communication. InA. Calabrese & C. Sparks (Eds.), Toward a Political Economy of Culture:Capitalism and Communication in the Twenty-First Century (pp. 342–355).New York: Rowman & Littlefield.

Rockler, N. (1999). From magic bullets to shooting blanks: Reality, criticism, andBeverly Hills, 90210. Western Journal of Communication, 63, 72–94.

Sloop, J. M. (2004). Disciplining Gender: Rhetorics of Sex Identity in ContemporaryU.S. Culture. Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press.

Stern, D. M. (2005, spring). MTV, reality television, and the commodification offemale sexuality in The Real World. Media Report to Women, 33, 13–21.

von Feilitzen, C. (Ed.). (2004). Yearbook 2004: Young People, Soap Operas andReality TV. Sweden: The International Clearinghouse on Children, Youth andMedia/Nordicom, Goteborg University, Sweden: Goteborg.

Weeks, J. (1996). The body and sexuality. In S. Hall, D. Held, D. Hubert, &K. Thompson (Eds.), Modernity: An Introduction to Modern Societies (pp.364–394). Oxford: Blackwell.

Weinraub, B. (2001, February 21). Getting real before anyone else: MTV’s “World”rolls on with voyeurs on its coattails. The New York Times, p. E1.

Zizek, S. (2002). Big Brother, or, triumph of the gaze over the eye. In T. Levin,U. Frohne, & P. Weibel (Eds.) CNTRL [SPACE]: Rhetorics of Surveillance fromBentham to Big Brother (pp. 224–227). Karlsruhe, Germany: ZKM/MIT.

APPENDIX A: INTERVIEW GUIDE FOR VIEWERS

How long have you been viewing Real World?Describe for me what it is like to watch The Real World?How would you describe the women you have seen on the show?And the men?How does Real World compare to your life?What seasons stand out more than others?What, if any, changes have you noticed throughout the time you’ve been

watching?What do you like about the show?What do you dislike about it?What factors influenced you to watch?Which happenings seemed most real and why?


76 D. M. Stern

Which ones seemed outrageous?Elaborate on anything you think you have learned from the show?What influence, if any, do you think The Real World has had on your

life?Who do you usually watch with?Is there anything else you would like to add?

APPENDIX B: DESCRIPTIONS OF MALE ROOMMATES

Jose, 20, from TallahasseeJose calls himself a “welfare baby” who had a tough life being raised by asingle mom. He is of Puerto Rican descent and grew up in Brooklyn butmoved to Florida around the start of college. He declares he has turned hislife around and recently purchased a new home and his first investmentproperty. We see him standing in front of his new house next to his newCamaro, which is next to his investment property—another house. He sayshe has no girlfriend and that he is an “ass man” and enters his boxer intodog show tournaments.

John, 22, from CaliforniaJohn says he is into sports. We see him speaking in front of a black andwhite poster of a half-naked woman. Her back faces the camera. One handis on her waist. The other is pulling her jeans down to expose the top of herbuttocks. A football sits on the desk beside John. Next he is dressed in aScooby-Doo costume on his college campus catching a frisbee. He says heis a “player” and has been in love once. About women he says, “Guys losea lot of respect of them if they give it up on the first night.” He says he’slooking for time to unwind and relax after 18 years of schooling.

Zach, 22, from SeattleZach identifies his parents as his best friends. He is Jewish. We see him playtennis then acknowledge that he struggles with his weight. He somewhatbrags about being a virgin until recently, when he had sex with four girls inthe past 4 months—one time with each girl. He says he does not likedrinking or smoking but that he stays energized when going out by drinkingRed Bull.

Tyler, 23, from MinneapolisTyler tells the camera, “I’m good looking. I have a great body. I’m veryintelligent.” He says he loves gossip and dancing. We see him practice hishigh-kicking, which he entered a competition for at one time. He is gay andsays, “I am obsessed with Michelle Kwan.” He tells us his friends have iden-tified his personality flaws as “malicious, cold-hearted and manipulative.”



APPENDIX C: INTERVIEW GUIDES FOR CREATIVE DIRECTORS (MODIFIED BASED ON POSITION)

Can you describe, if any, different institutional constraints that exist in real-ity television compared to other formats you have worked in?

What specifically do you look for in casting (editing, story development)?What ground rules do you have for casting (personality quirks, behaviors,

lifestyles)?How has the casting (editing, story development) process changed over the

years?How many applicants do you have?A large portion of the audience seems to be younger than the actual ages of

the roommates. Do you take this into account when making casting(story, production, editing) decisions?

What were your expectations in casting Paula?A major focus this season has been on Paula’s struggle with an eating disor-

der. Other seasons featured eating disorders. Why do you it became sucha focus this time?

How do you gauge viewers’ tastes, what they are willing to invest their time in?What makes a story appealing on The Real World?Please guide me through the process of creating a story from thousands of

hours of footage?What age group do you have in mind when putting stories together?Has there been a time when you had certain stories lined up but saw the

audience was not responding as well as you thought? If so, how did youmake changes?

What about stories you hoped would develop but did not?Have there been stories that developed that you deemed off limits for MTV

viewers?How do you respond to viewers’ descriptions of similar character types over

the years?What’s next for The Real World?Do you have anything else to add? Questions for me?


consuming the fractured female: lessons from mtv's "the real world"

Documents