Real World Commodities 

Sexual chemistry quickly arises as both John and Zach are immediately drawn to Svetlana. Although she has a boyfriend, she’s definitely susceptible to temptation. Paula also makes it clear to the girls that she thinks all of the guys are beautiful.
—Episode summary from season 17, The Real World: Key West
(MTV, Tuesdays, 10 p.m. ET/PT)

With the premiere of MTV’s The Real World in 1992, the pop culture landscape changed forever. Sex has always sold, but in the world of twenty-four-hour documentary, sexual images of women are now defined as “real.” Now in its seventeenth season, The Real World is an unscripted, half-hour look into the lives of seven young people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four. The show is set in a different location each year. Cameras follow the non-actors twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, including into the bedroom. The Real World averages more than 2.2 million viewers and ranks consistently in the top ten cable programs according to Nielsen Media Research.

Despite the prevalence of sexual reality shows like The Real World, Elimidate, and The Bachelor, research is lacking on how people are represented on these programs and how viewers interpret the content. The Real World’s popularity, coupled with the program’s reliance on sex, calls for an understanding of the implications of this sexual visual imagery. Further, the overt sexuality of The Real World represents a larger problem of television producers using sex and the exploitation of the female body to attract a young audience.

Reality television executives, like television executives of other genres, are faced with economic pressures to produce programs suited to pleasing advertisers. In turn, this leads to exploitative reality programming that serves commercial interests above all. In the new millennium the largest commodity of all still appears to be sex, especially female sexuality.

In her book Gender Politics and MTV, Lisa Lewis argued that from its inception, MTV, driven by the economic need to attract a large audience and establish itself as a credible cable network, developed the “preferred address” of the white, heterosexual, young adult, male viewer. While her study came at a time when MTV was still airing mostly music videos as opposed to original programming, Lewis’s contribution is crucial to understand the commercial motivations and ideological underpinnings of MTV.

In 1975 Laura Mulvey identified the male gaze in film as one of active participation of males projecting their fantasies on the passive female. Women, Mulvey argued, are presented strictly for men’s pleasure. Their objectification is articulated as beautiful and stylistic, leaving little room for women to resist. As such, women partake in their own degradation, learning to make the male gaze their own. But how do female viewers of the show respond to these broad theories?

Real Women Discuss The Real World

This is one question I am examining in my dissertation. For my field research, I recruited, from a midsize public university in the Midwest, women who had viewed The Real World previously to discuss the series. In all, a total of seven women participated, aged nineteen to thirty-four years. The majority of the women in the discussion group identified The Real World as one of their favorite television programs. When asked if they were offended by TRW’s portrayal of women, participants agreed that roommates play to type; each one knows certain roles are expected and each fills those roles. None of the women said they were offended by the exceptional beauty and sexuality of the female cast members, but many thought about how true the portrayals were:

Julia: A lot of the time it is. That’s what we do.

Casey: I know, but not like to the extent. I think that just comes with viewers’ ignorance. That comes with anything. When they stereotype this age group, eighteen to twenty-five or whatever, as just…well most of them are like out of control. But they have to realize a lot of it is played up for the camera.

Kelly: But they don’t also show them the consequences. Like calling in to say, “I’m too hung over to come into work, and oh I got fired.” If a parent’s like, “Oh my gosh. All you do is drink and hook up with everybody.” But it’s like, “Yeah and I go to class, I fill out my forms and I go to this lecture.” You can’t do that 24/7, and that’s how it looks on the show. Because they focus on the most exciting things. They never show people all sitting around.

Julia: Exactly. Who wants to see the real world, like real life?

Julia’s comments point to the shared belief of the group that The Real World’s appeal is its surreal quality, its hilarious exploits of young people. The women knew they were being manipulated, but that appeared to intrigue them.

Participants turned to discussion of MTV viewers not wanting to watch everyday, mundane occurrences unless beautiful, scantily clad women were present. Kelly made a statement about Trishelle, the “slut” of the Las Vegas season, which was brought up again later by Lisa when I asked what the group thought was most outrageous or unbelievable about the show.

Lisa: One big [thing] I know is Trishelle sleeps with everyone and their brother. Every episode—when she was on Las Vegas it was her and Stephen and she would use this other guy to make him jealous. And then on like, the challenges and stuff, she was with Mike.

But the rest of the group was quick to defend MTV’s role in perpetuating the myth of the slut.

Zoe: I think it’s just society. I don’t think it’s MTV’s editing. I think it’s the way society views women in general. Trishelle, she sleeps around. But Mike does, too. Nobody talks about him.

Kelly: People will be like, “She’s a slut.” And that’s something that’s in society that’s never gonna change.

Zoe: I don’t think people should blame MTV.

Nicole: They’re just perpetuating the stereotypes.

Kelly: They’re magnifying and reflecting it as much as they’re creating it.

Hence, all of the women named stereotypes and shock value as evidence of the nonreality of the program. Specifically, the women pointed to the cast members as evolving from truly original people to potential stars playing for the camera.

Julia: And like, it’s called The Real World, but it’s a complete suspension of reality.

Casey: Everyone is so concerned with getting face time that you’ll have three girls making out in a hot tub, completely acting like asses, and they know it.

Julia: [Casey] always says that when people go on these shows that they’re just doing it to get famous. You see them whenever they move on, after The Real World. They’re doing like these challenge shows and they’re all wearing their website on their tee shirt, like promoting themselves.

Kelly: Yeah, a lot of them want to be actors or actresses afterwards. They didn’t necessarily have any aspiration in that direction or even any particular talent. But the fame, they want to continue.

Casey: They’re very self-promoting. Julia: I think it really is a choice, too. Like, I can play it off as a party girl. I can play it off as the bitch. You can play it off as the alternative one. You can do whatever you want.

Julia, the most vocal of the group, perpetuates the notion of autonomy, but other group members realized the artifice of The Real World, evidenced by Casey. “I just think they do a good job of editing.” However, Casey later agreed with Julia.

Julia: I don’t really think it’s how they’re portrayed. I think that’s how they’re putting themselves off. I think that’s what they’re doing. They can’t just make this stuff up.

Casey: Like when they have the hot tub scene and like two girls would be making out with each other. You can’t edit them to do that. You can edit it out, but regardless of the fact that they’re doing it.

Nicole and Lisa disagreed with these sentiments.

Nicole: But if you think about it. They’re there for like five or six months or something like that. And they might make out with people one time. I mean it makes it look like you’re watching ten episodes of something when they made out with a girl one time and show it four times in an episode.

Lisa: When they like put clips together to make it seem like they do it all the time, when in fact it could have happened over the whole span of the whole time they were there.

Whereas the women had said earlier that they were not offended by the women of The Real World, I phrased the question differently toward the latter part of the discussion: If you could make your own description or definition of the reality of young women on MTV, on The Real World, what would it be? I was surprised by some of their answers.

Julia: I think it’s pretty real. The people that I hang out with and being in college and the situations that I’m in, we’re doing the same things they are. Maybe they have it a little easier than we do. They don’t have the whole school thing or anything important really to do with their lives, but I think it’s pretty accurate.

Casey: I agree with her. I don’t think it’s that far off base to say that it would be inaccurate. I guess some things don’t hit the level, but that’s just because we actually have a real life. Who’s to say that if we were put in that situation, well take the cameras away, but that situation that we would spend all of our time doing what they’re doing?

Lisa: I would say that a part of them is like how I am, but it’s just that part. It’s not like that’s what I revolve my life around is drinking and having a good time. While that very well may be a part of my life, it’s not all. I have family problems. I have school problems or friend problems. And I have a job here, too. So it’s not like all I do is sit around and drink or go out. I do, but it’s not every thing I do.

Alice: I think though when I first saw it…I would have been in fifth grade, so I don’t know which season that would have been, but it was like, “So that’s what you do when you get into your twenties. You drink and you kiss boys and you wear cool clothes.” It was all very superficial. I guess maybe it has to do now with every person gets younger and younger, it seems like they don’t really have that much…Like you were saying. It is more like college, but maybe that’s because the age is now more college age rather than twenty-four, twenty-five.

So despite earlier claims of the fractured reality and camera play by the TRW cast members, half of the group still pointed to the series as representative of young women’s lives. The two women beyond undergraduate school—Alice and Kelly—were the most critical of the show, which isn’t that telling considering they have lived through and beyond the partying college years. As such, Kelly and Alice have also had more time removed from their viewing experience of the series.

The majority of responses to why women are the way they are on television, especially The Real World, evoked barely a concern. Most troubling to me, though, is they generally accepted the notion that women can do very little to change things:

Julia: I just think that it’s been like beat into your head so many times. You’re kind of like numb to it. You don’t even notice it anymore.

Casey: Exactly, that’s a great word. Numb.

Kelly: Yeah. You don’t even realize what you’re seeing anymore.

Lisa: Yeah, and every rap video looks the same. It’s not like I get offended every time I see a half-naked woman dancing around a camera. But it’s like, well maybe there is something wrong with it.

Julia: Yeah, it’s almost like we’re almost getting bored with it now. But still, it’s how it’s always been.

Lisa: Since we’ve been around.

Casey: Well it’s not like if you turn on, especially MTV, to a video that has these beautiful naked women on it, and you’re not…It’s not the first time you’ve ever seen that. You always have seen that. You’ve grown up with that.

According to participants in this discussion group, young women today are voyeurs who love to play for the camera and revel in its images. They know that sex sells and some of them even mentioned they considered applying to be a cast member. Reality television is no doubt here to stay. The women of this study recognized The Real World’s constructed-ness, but still saw it as a relatively “real” vehicle. Why? On the surface reality television, like film, relies on women’s subjugation of their own image. Film demands a male gaze. It has been argued that television was envisioned as a female medium, particularly with soap operas and relationship driven dramas. But reality television has turned this on its head. We view reality through the faux lens of documentary film. Inasmuch, the gaze of sex driven reality vehicles is also male. The male gaze identified by Laura Mulvey, though not overtly identified by these regular viewers of The Real World, appears to have been naturalized into a myth of entertainment.

On the other hand, the women of this study noted multiple times that TRW’s cast members play to the camera. These viewers revealed they are keen to the fake reality of the program and feel a sense of control over their viewing experience. But still, women of this generation, in their twenties and thirties, appear to be numb—as the group framed it—to stereotypical images of beautiful, sex fueled bimbos. Even Alice, the most critical of the group contends: “I guess I agree that the formula of the show would be a lot better [if it used so-called normal people with real problems], but maybe now that we’re all used to it being a beautiful, hook-up time, that’s just what we’re gonna get.” While the economic structures and practices of television no doubt rob women of agency at times, there should also be no doubt we, as a generation of young, college educated women, can think for ourselves and interpret televisual images and stories in different ways.

* Danielle M. Stern, M.S., is a doctoral candidate in the School of Telecommunications at Ohio University. She received her master’s degree in mass communications at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Danielle plans to defend her dissertation on issues of body and representation in MTV’s The Real World in early 2007. Danielle has taught courses in news writing and cultural studies, including media globalization and mediated gender and sexuality.