Chicks, man (gender and race)

History of the Soup
On January 7, 1991, Talk Soup premiered on E! Channel and continued to air until August 2002. In the 11 seasons of the show, the show has gone through four hosts: Greg Kinnear, John Henson, Hal Sparks, and Aisha Taylor. Two years later in July, a spin-off of the show called, The What The…? Awards premiered on the same channel and then changed its name to The Soup, to pay homage to Talk Soup. The show features comedian Joel Mchale as the host, and stands in front of a green screen (a nice looking studio appears on the screen) and for 30 minutes he pokes fun at celebrities and the bad TV shows (including reality TV shows, talk shows, telenovelas, etc.) that everyone loves.

BAD TV SHOWS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM9MF7WGrfY (uploaded by mikek1974)
In the show Cheaters, it would usually show women talking about how their boyfriends have cheated on them. Almost always, it’s the men that have cheated on the women. What does this say about relationships? Men have more freedom than women, and that they could be more sexually active than the women? Women are vulnerable? This show’s message seems to be that women are passive and they are the victims of the relationship and that the men are more active and have a lot more freedom.
But TV shows like the Hills, shows dumb, young, rich, Hollywood type girls, where the show goes nowhere. There is definitely an influence of gendered behavior, where girls and guys are expected to act in a certain way and look a certain way. Among all women of races and classes, there seems to be a pressure this pressure of being thin and attractive. All the girls on the Hills, America’s Next Top Model, Paris Hilton’s My New BFF, Dr. 90210, etc. Polished girls like the ones that appear on TV, gives off negative effects to the everyday girl and problems in their lives arises because of it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqriBZBl5Lw (uploaded by JDG6385)
Dumb dating shows like Next, on MTV, the girls on the show are only valued on their looks, or one specific part of the body, and not valuing any intelligence. They appeal themselves only for sex. These types of shows give off negative effects to women of all races and classes. There’s a bunch of dumb people out there. Take this for example…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqW_xdD7cIs (uploaded by Mccraken74)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqW_xdD7cIs (uploaded by Mccraken74)
It’s like, the first conclusion she assumed was that the girl was ghetto, even though she was being perfectly normal. But a lot of reality show contestants overact their roles of color and portrays an unfair or unrealistic representation of race in reality TV shows. This is problematic because this is where stereotypes of certain races happen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDGj_CDLOz0&feature=related (uploaded by WatchTheSoup)

Celebrity gossip news such as TMZ, Inside Edition, EXTRA, etc.; they document their show in a paparazzi format and invade celebrities’ privacy as much as possible. In each of the shows, there is a segment where they find the most unflattering photo of an celeb that was pictured by an paparazzi and exploit it to the public. Like celebs not wearing makeup, or celebs with cellulite, or bad tans. They basically make fun of girls for not looking pretty. What’s not included in this segment? The men. The women have high standards on appearance and then men don’t really have that much, so there is an unfair gender expectation in our culture.

For those who has not seen the show, i highly recommend it. It never fails to bring the LOLs.

-Naoki Izumo