This weekend Coco and I went to Portland to gorge on good drinks and bad TV at my dad's house. I personally don't own a television and for whatever reason people have very strong responses to this...as if I am some elite anti-television guru who goes around shaming people for their guilty pleasure. Just to be clear my not having a TV is not some political statement or because I'm cheap or even because I loath and despise TV. Actually there is no real reason for it, I just don't. But I do watch TV, either online or at other people's houses, so don't worry my brain is just as rotten as the next person's.
And so it was on one of these TV watching binges, after Dad had gone to bed, that Coco and I came across "For the Love of Ray Jay". There is something both awful and addictive about reality TV. The awful part is self-evident. This show, starring "Ray Jay" who is at best a B grade celebrity whose major claim to fame is being Brandi's brother and having sung some mediocre r&b songs that make R Kelly's "Feeling on your booty" seem deep and meaningful. Coco and I came in on the season finale, where there were only 2 competitors left in the intense battle for "the love of Ray Jay". These two women, Unique and Cocktail....so named by Ray Jay himself, who at no time referred to them by their actual names, each took a different tact on wooing their prize. Unique was the classier of the two. She apparently took Ray Jay home to meet the fam...and then there was Cocktail who, after dinner, put on some special lingerie and actually did a pole dance on national television. I'm not sure if I was more disturbed by the fact that Ray Jay conveniently had a stripper pole located in the shower room of his bathroom or if I was just floored by the appalling objectifying premise of the show.
While I didn't have a real reason not to have a television before, I feel like watching even the small portion of this show (which is about as much as we could do before turning to Animal Planet)was more than enough reason to burn TVs in effigy. Yet still,like watching a car accident in slow motion...and knowing in advance the destruction about to ensue, I couldn't quite peel my eyes away so quickly. I became enthralled, both repulsed and morbidly curious to know what could possibly come next. While it didn't have quite the insane comic value of "Flavor of Love" (Public Enemy's Flavor Flav's bizarre reality show), there was something compelling about the tears welling up in both women's eyes as they waited for the verditct. Who would Ray Jay choose and why?
And that's when I had this scary thought that maybe there was something to this. I mean the power dynamics alone were kind of fascinating. Why did these women choose to enter this competition? For money? For fame? For the chance to be with someone they'd seen on TV? What makes someone willingly choose to compete? Though the show seemed totally cartoonishly fake and staged I had to wonder about its real world implications.In real life none of my girlfriends would ever degrade themselves so publicly for a man...or would they? Would I? It got me thinking about competition and the dating pool and the things we women put up with to get and keep a man.
It is a familiar situation to like someone and to want them to like you back, but at what cost? Ideally love is string free. You meet someone, you get a mutually good vibe and that perfect mix of fireworks and friendship build itself naturally into a relationship. But in the beginning there is always that precarious balance of wanting to maintain a good image in your new partner's eyes and wanting to be honest about who you really are. And this becomes even more complicated if one or both of you are also seeing other people. Then it becomes a competetion. How can you get that person to choose you and only you? Who do you have to be? What do you have to do? And how far are you willing to go without compromising your principals.Add to that the scarcity issue. In this beautiful emerald city there are theoretically 94 single men to every 100 single women...by my totally scientific calculation, you can knock off at least 30 single men from that figure on the basis of sexual orientation, whether or not they're in jail or if they are crazy, reclusive or totally socially awkward, so of those 64, if you are looking for a man of color in a specific age range...the numbers have just more than halved again.
So when I'm out and about and I see a good looking black man in my age group, who appears heterosexual, available and not scary, chances are there are about 50 other women in my immediate vicinity who would wrestle me to the ground if it meant dude would ask them out.
In the end Ray Jay chose Cocktail and in a bizarrely poignant speech, he let Unique know that while she was "all that" and he deeply cared for her, he was looking for someone who could meet him where he was at....someone who wouldn't ask him to change and could really fall for him and not just his potential. While clearly my first instinct was to make fun of his little speech, I couldn't because I was totally triggered, having heard that same speech first hand before. "I dig you, but you expect too much from me." "I could never be good enough to give you what you need"...but then here is this other girl who may or may not be as pretty, intelligent, or soulful, but who for better or worse just came and took your spot. Brutal. Maybe I shouldn't be watching TV. Or maybe I shouldn't think about it so hard...it is just reality after all.
No comments:
Post a Comment