Resource Guide
Additional resources, including independent TV and radio programs and social justice advocacy organizations, are available at Women In Media & News (
www.wimonline.org).
BOOKS
Adproofing Your Kids: Raising critical thinkers in a media saturated world, Tania Andrusiak and Daniel Donahoo
Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, Susan Faludi
Beyond the Echo Chamber: How a Networked Progressive Media Can Reshape American Politics, Jessica Clark and Tracy Van Slyke
Bitchfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine, Lisa Jervis and Andi Zeisler
Can’t Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel, Jean Kilbourne
Conscious Women Rock the Page, Marcella Runell Hall, Black Artemis, E-Fierce, and J-Love
Critical Studies in Media Commercialism and Consumer Culture and TV Programming, Robin Andersen
Don’t Believe the Hype: Fighting Cultural Misinformation About African Americans, Farai Chideya
Enlightened Racism: The Cosby Show, Audiences, and the Myth of the American Dream, Sut Jhally and Justin M. Lewis
Feminism and Pop Culture: Seal Studies, Andi Zeisler
From Black Power to Hip Hop: Racism, Nationalism and Feminism, Patricia Hill Collins
Girl Director: A How-to Guide for the First-Time, Flat-Broke Film and Video Maker, Andrea Richard
Hey Kidz! Buy This Book: A Radical Primer on Corporate and Governmental Propaganda and Artistic Activism for Short People, Anne Elizabeth Moore
Lessons from the Fat-o-Sphere: Quit Dieting and Declare a Truce with Your Body, Kate Harding and Marianne Kirby
Media Literacy: A Reader, Donaldo Macedo and Shirley Steinberg
Real Majority, Media Minority: The Costs of Sidelining Women in Reporting, Laura Flanders
Selling Anxiety: How the News Media Scare Women, Caryl Rivers
Share This!: How You Will Change the World with Social Networking, Deanna Zandt
So Sexy, So Soon, Jean Kilbourne and Diane Levin
Style and Status: Selling Beauty to African American Women, 1920-1975, Susannah Walker
Teaching Youth Media, Steven Goodman
The Media Monopoly, Ben Bagdikian
Toxic Sludge Is Good for You: Lies, Damn Lies, and the Public Relations Industry, John Stauber
Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing and the Erosion of Integrity, A nne Elizabeth Moore
Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity, Julia Serano
White Weddings: Romancing Heterosexuality in Popular Culture, Chrys Ingraham
Women and Media: A Critical Introduction, Carolyn Byerly, PhD, and Karen Ross
PRINT AND ONLINE MAGAZINES
WEBSITES & BLOGS WITH A FOCUS ON GENDER, RACE, AND MEDIA
INDEPENDENT TV, RADIO, AND FILM
WINGS: Women’s International News Gathering Service:
www.wings.org
FILMS ABOUT MEDIA ISSUES
A Girl Like Me, Directed by Kiri Davis
America the Beautiful, Directed by Darryl Roberts
Class Dismissed, Directed by Pepi Leistyna
Ethnic Notions, Directed by Marlon Riggs
Generation of Consolidation, Directed by Sami Muilenburg
Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, Directed by Byron Hurt
Killing Us Softly, Directed by Jean Kilbourne
Slip of the Tongue, Directed by Karen Lum
The Souls of Black Girls, Directed by Daphne Valerius
Tough Guise, Directed by Jackson Katz
MEDIA LITERACY AND MEDIA ADVOCACY ORGANIZATIONS
List of Journalism Associations, Coalitions, Ethnic Media, and other organizations for media makers:
Women & Girls Collective Action Network and FUFA (Females United For Action) Youth:
Notes
INTRODUCTION
1 Enlightened Racism: The Cosby Show, Audiences, and the Myth of the American Dream, Westview Press. June 10, 1992. Jhally, Sut and Lewis, Justin M.
2 “On Fox, Making Reality a Reality; How Network Exec Mike Darnell Took a Programming Concept All the Way to the Bank,”
The Washington Post, Feb. 10, 2003. Farhi, Paul.
3 “Reality Kings,”
Vanity Fair, July 2003. Seal, Mark.
6 “Fox’s Point Man for Perversity; ‘World’s Scariest Programmer,’ Starring Mike Darnell as Himself,”
The New York Times, Feb. 26, 2000. Kuczynski, Alex and Cater, Bill.
7 Vanity Fair, July 2003. Seal, Mark.
8 “Fox Idols,”
LA Weekly, Mar. 7, 2003. Finke, Nikki.
9 “On the Air: The latest news from the TV beat,”
Entertainment Weekly, Mar. 28, 2003. Rice, Lynette and Keck, William. “When Reality Attacks; Who are the victims now that unscripted shows rule TV land? Producers of sitcoms and dramas. Six of the best strike back. Look out, Joe Millionaire,”
Entertainment Weekly, Mar. 14, 2003. Rice, Lynette, interviewing Wilmore, Larry; Herskovitz, Marshall; Robbins, Brian; Bowser, Yvette Lee; Helford, Bruce; and Keyser, Christopher.
10 “Reality Chief Mike Darnell Let Fox Stew, But Renewed,”
The Washington Post, Aug. 7, 2007. de Moraes, Lisa.
11 “Top 10 most-watched shows of the decade,” Reuters, Dec. 2, 2009. Hibbard, James.
13 Vanity Fair, July 2003. Seal, Mark.
14 The New York Times, Feb. 26, 2000. Kuczynski, Alex and Cater, Bill; “Joe Mastermind; Brilliant programmer or evil genius bent on destroying American culture? Either way, Fox’s reality guru Mike Darnell (the brains behind ‘Joe Millionaire’) is changing TV,”
Entertainment Weekly, Mar. 28, 2003. Snierson, Dan.
15 “Blood, Sweat, and Ratings,”
Business Week, May 15, 2006. Lowry, Tom.
16 Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women. Faludi, Susan. p. xxii.
17 “Jackass Nation: No shame, no fame is the new mantra of reality tv. But when will too much reality be too much?”
Entertainment Weekly, July 13, 2001. Rice, Lynette; “Is Trash TV Bad for Women? a Producer’s Defense of Celebreality,”
Jezebel.com, Jan 15, 2010. Carmon, Irin.
18 “Anatomy of a Disaster; The strange tale of how
Commander in Chief went from a smash to the brink of cancellation in just one season,”
Entertainment Weekly, May 19, 2006. Shaw; Jessica.
Entertainment Weekly, Mar. 14, 2003. Rice, Lynette. Also see
Firefly entry on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefly_%28TV_series%29.9.
19 Vanity Fair, July 2003. Seal, Mark. “Nielsens: Big bucks, big start for ‘10’,”
USA Today, Aug. 14, 2007. Levin, Gary; “Final Renewals & Cancellations For The 2008-9 Season,” TVByTheNumbers. com, May 27, 2009. Gorman, Bill.
20 “Unreal World; The fear factor sets in as reality-TV ratings head south,”
Entertainment Weekly, Nov. 2, 2001. Brown, Scott; “Are You SELLING to Me?: Stealth Advertising in the Entertainment Industry,” Writers Guild of America, Nov. 14, 2005; “NBC’s new head honcho says ‘more product placement, please,’” WIMN’s Voices, June 4, 2007. Pozner, Jennifer L; “You’re . . . Rehired?”
Entertainment Weekly, July 20, 2007. Armstrong, Jennifer.
21 The New York Times, Feb. 26, 2000. Kuczynski, Alex and Carter, Bill;
The Washington Post, Feb. 10, 2003. Farhi, Paul.
22 Variety, Jan. 16, 2007. Adalian, Josef. “Women Rule New Fox Show.”
23 “Humiliation sells on the road to fame,”
CBS Evening News, Jan. 24, 2007. Reported by Schlesinger, Richard; “The case for reality TV: what the snobs don’t understand,”
The Atlantic Monthly, May 1, 2007. Hirschorn, Michael.
24 Fix Me Up: Essays on Television Dating and Makeover Shows, McFarland Publishing, 2010. Edited by Lancioni, Judith.
25 “Reception analysis,” according to The Museum of Broadcast Communications, uses “qualitative (and often ethnographic) methods of research” and “explor[es] the active choices, uses and interpretations made of media materials, by their consumers.” See David Morley, “Audience Research: Reception Analysis,” part of the Encyclopedia of TV on
www.museum.tv.
26 Enlightened Racism, Jhally and Lewis, p. 35.
29 “Reporting on writers’ strike reinforces myth of ‘unscripted’ reality TV genre,” WIMN’s Voices blog, Nov. 5, 2007. Pozner, Jennifer L.
30 “Are You SELLING to Me?” 2005,
WGA.org “Product Integration” site.
31 Vanity Fair, July 2003. Seal, Mark.
32 “The Bachelor and Other Delights,” NPR’s MonitorMix blog, Apr. 28, 2008. Brownstein, Carrie.
33 “It Wasn’t the Editing,”
Television Without Pity, July 5, 2007. Sars, “How Reality TV Fakes It,”
Time, Jan. 29, 2006. Poniewozik, James.
34 “How Reality TV Fakes It.” Poniewozik.
36 Variety, Jan. 16, 2007. Adalian, Josef.
37 “Reality Check: The revolution in ‘unscripted’ fare has Hollywood asking, Just what exactly is a writer?”
Broadcasting & Cable, July 16, 2005. Higgins, John M. and Benson, Jim. “How Reality TV Fakes It.” Poniewozik; “It Wasn’t the Editing.” Sars.
38 “Reality Check,” Jan. 29, 2006. Higgins and Benson. “Fast Track,”
Broadcasting & Cable, Aug. 29, 2005. Staff. “WGA showcasing reality TV workers; Guild is holding news conference on Tuesday,”
Variety, Apr. 7, 2008. McNary, Dave. Also see
www.wga.org/content/default.aspx?id=2630.
39 “A Portrait of ‘Generation Next’: How Young People View Their Lives, Futures and Politics,” Pew Research Center For The People & The Press in association with The Generation Next Initiative and Documentary produced by MacNeil/Lehrer Productions. Jan. 9, 2007.
CHAPTER ONE
1 “Reality: ‘Joe Millionaire’ Was a Faker From the Start,”
Daily Press, Feb. 1, 2004. Jicha, Tom. “Is Mr. Smith Going to Washington? Not Yet,”
The Wichita Eagle, June 17, 2003; “Evan Marriott suggests ‘Joe Millionaire’ producers ‘fixed’ Zora Andrich as the winner,”
RealityTVWorld.com, June 19, 2003. Rogers, Steve.
www.realitytvworld.com/news/evan-marriott-suggests-joe-millionaire-producers-fixedzora-andrich-as-winner-1321.php.
2 True Hollywood Story: America’s Next Top Model, Mar. 26, 2006.
4 “What Were They Thinking?” as told to Dan Snierson,
Entertainment Weekly, Aug. 8, 2008.
6 “Again, what’s love got to do with it?; ‘The Bachelor’ is back for Season 10, with a Navy doctor as bait, and so is all the guile a girl could muster,”
Los Angeles Times, Apr. 15, 2007. Caramanica, Jon.
7 “What Were They Thinking?” as told to Jennifer Armstrong,
Entertainment Weekly, Aug. 8, 2008.
9 “Joe Mastermind; Brilliant programmer or evil genius bent on destroying American culture? Either way, Fox’s reality guru Mike Darnell (the brains behind ‘Joe Millionaire’) is changing TV,”
Entertainment Weekly, Mar. 28, 2003. Snierson, Dan.
10 “The Gay Deceivers, Again,”
PopMatters.com, Mar. 22, 2004. Abernethy, Michael.
11 “Playing It Straight: Reality dating shows and the construction of heterosexuality,”
Journal of Popular Film & Television, June 22, 2009. Tropiano, Stephen.
13 “What Were They Thinking?” as told to Dan Snierson,
Entertainment Weekly, Aug. 8, 2008.
14 In nearly every lecture I’ve given on reality TV since 2002, I’ve drawn connections between the fight for lesbian and gay marriage rights and the trivial depiction of marriage in reality TV dating shows. I was pleasantly surprised in December 2009 when New York Senator Diane Savino made a similar argument on the Senate floor, in favor of same-sex marriage. “Turn on the television. We have a wedding channel on cable TV devoted to the behavior of people on the way to the altar. They spend billions of dollars, behave in the most appalling way, all in an effort to be princess for a day. You don’t have cable television? Put on network TV. We’re giving away husbands on a game show. You can watch
The Bachelor, where thirty desperate women will compete to marry a 40-year-old man who has never been able to maintain a decent relationship in his life,” Savino said. “That’s what we’ve done to marriage in America, where young women are socialized from the time they’re five years old to think of being nothing but a bride. . . . So if there’s anything wrong with the sanctity of marriage in America, it comes from those of us who have the privilege and the right and have abused it for decades.” For video of Savino’s speech, see “Heroine Alert: Diane Savino, N Y State Senator,”
Jezebel, Dec. 3, 2009. Robertson, Lindsay.
http://jezebel.com/5417973/heroine-alert-diane-savino-ny-state-senator.
CHAPTER TWO
1 “Low ratings another Miss America Pageant problem,”
The Ledger (Lakefield, FL), Sept. 13, 1984. Lin, Jennifer.
2 TLC GIVES MISS AMERICA A MAKEOVER IN ORIGINAL REALITY PROGRAM MISS AMERICA: REALITY CHECK, Dec. 5, 2007. TLC Press Release.
3 “Miss America reality: Can reality television save a cultural relic?”
Ottawa Citizen, Jan. 26, 2008. Srikanthan, Thulasi.
4 “Breast Implant Questions and Answers,”
FDA.gov; “Government Studies Link Breast Implants to Cancer, Lung Diseases, and Suicide.” Zuckerman, PhD, Diana and Flynn, Rachael. MPHBreast-ImplantInfo. org, citing Brinton, L. A., Lubin, J. H., Burich, M. C., Colton, T., Brown, S. L., and Hoover, R. N.; “Cancer Risk at Sites Other Than the Breast Following Augmentation Mammoplasty.”
Annals of Epidemiolog y 11: 248-256. (2001).
5 “The Ageing Dilemma,”
Women & Hollywood blog, Apr. 4, 2009. Silverstein, Melissa.
6 “Fast Food Chains Say Sexy Ads ‘Generate Positive Consumer Sales,’”
Jezebel, July 8, 2009. Egan Morrissey, Tracie; “Sex, Lies, and Advertising,”
Ms. Magazine, July/Aug. 1990. Steinem, Gloria.
7 Report of the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls, Executive Summary, 2007.
8 Can’t Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel (New York: Free Press, 2000). p. 135. Kilbourne, Jean. Also see: “The Effect of Experimental Presentation of Thin Media Images on Body Satisfaction: A Meta-Analytic Review,”
International Journal of Eating Disorders 31 no. 1: 1-16 ( Jan. 2002). Groesz, Lisa M., Levine, Michael P. and Murnen, Sarah K.
9 “Sexist/Racist Ad Watch: Skin Whitening Edition,”
Feministing, Mar. 4, 2009. Valenti, Jessica. “Asian-Americans Criticize Eyelid Surgery Craze,”
WomensENews, Aug. 15, 2004. Kobrin, Sandy.
Style and Status: Selling Beauty to African American Women, 1920-1975 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2007), p.9. Walker, Susannah.
10 “Study: Tanning beds as deadly as arsenic,”
The Associated Press, July 28, 2009. Cheng, Maria.
11 “Q& A: Darnell and Fleiss talk ‘More to Love’”
THRFeed, Hollywood Reporter blog, Mar. 29, 2009. Hibberd, James.
13 “On ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Health Can Take Back Seat,”
New York Times, Nov. 25, 2009. Wyatt, Edward.
14 “National Eating Disorders Association/Next Door Neighbors Puppet Guide Book” and “Statistics: Eating Disorders and their Precursors,” a NEDA online fact sheet.
15 “Fashion’s invisible woman,”
Los Angeles Times, Mar. 1, 2009. Vesilind, Emili; “Advance Data from Vital and Health Statistics, Number 347, October 27, 2004,” Division of Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys, Center for Disease Control. Ogden, Cynthia L., PhD, Fryar, Cheryl D., MSPH, Carroll, Margaret D., MSPH, and Flegal, Katherine M., PhD.
16 “Tyra Banks Wants Plus-Sized Teens for New Modeling Competition,”
UsMagazine.com, Jan. 26, 2010.
18 “Images continue to entice kids to smoke; Research shows depictions in movies are rising,”
Ventura County Star, May 16, 007. Parker-Pope, Tara.
19 “Weight a Minute: Dickinson scorns efforts to rehabilitate modeling,”
New York Post, Feb. 4, 2007. Starr Seibel, Deborah.
21 Team WWK (Watch With Kristin), “ANTM’s London Levi Discusses Eating Disorders,”
E! News Online, Apr. 16, 2009. “ANTM Interview: London Levi,”
TopModelGossip.com, Apr. 18, 2009. Balser, Erin.
22 “ANTM’s London Levi,”
E! News Online. 23 “Statistics: Eating Disorders and their Precursors,” NEDA online. NEDA cites the source of these statistics, respectively, as:
I’m, Like, SO Fat! (New York: The Guilford Press, 2005). Neumark-Sztainer, D. p. 5; “Weight-related behaviors and concerns of fourth-grade children,”
Journal of American Dietetic Association (1992). Gustafson-Larson, A. M. and Terry, R. D. pp. 818-822; “A longitudinal study of the dietary practices of black and white girls 9 and 10 years old at enrollment: The NHLBI growth and health study,”
Journal of Adolescent Health (1991). Mellin, L., McNutt, S., Hu, Y., Schreiber, G. B., Crawford, P., and Obarzanek, E. pp. 27-37.
24 “Small Wonders; TV WINNERS & LOSERS—Men with superpowers, women with super power, and networks with super—make that modest—hits. A report on the fall season,”
Entertainment Weekly, Nov. 25, 2005. Armstrong, Jennifer; “Who Is A merica’s Next Top Model, Really?”
The New York Times, Nov. 6, 2005. Trebay, Guy; CW Press Release, Sept. 10, 2009, via TV
ByTheNumbers.com. Seidman, Robert.
25 Anonymous comment posted on the “Beat Bulimia” bulletin board of the Healthy Place Support Network,
Healthyplace.com.
26 Can’t Buy My Love. Kilbourne, pp. 132-133.
27 “The elastic body image: The effect of television advertising and programming on body image distortions in young women,”
Journal of Communication (1992). Myers, P. and Biocca, F. A. pp. 109-130; “Women ‘suffer poor self-esteem due to airbrushing in advertising,’”
Telegraph, Nov. 27, 2009.
28 “So you think you can sing,”
SFGate.com., Jan. 25, 2007. Wiegand, David.
29 “American Idol or big fatty? Ask the diet-obsessed talking head!” WIMN’s Voices blog, May 25, 2007. Zeisler, Andi.
31 “Cosmetic Plastic Surgery Research: Statistics and Trends for 2001-2008,”
www.cosmeticplasticsurgerystatistics.com/statistics.html. . “Model’s death highlights plastic surgery risks,” CNN, Jan. 7, 2010. Tutton, Mark. “Early Mortality Among Medicare Beneficiaries Undergoing Bariatric Surgical Procedures,”
JAMA 294: 1903-1908 (2005). Flum, David R., MD, MPH; Salem, Leon, MD; Broeckel Elrod, Jo Ann, PhD; Patchen Dellinger, E., MD; Cheadle, Allen, PhD; Chan, Leighton, MD, MPH.
CHAPTER THREE
1 “In Rape Debate, Controversy Trumps Credibility: ‘Natural’ sexual assault theory ‘irresistible’ to profit-driven media,”
Extra!, May/June 2000. Pozner, Jennifer L.
2 “The Bachelor and Other Delights,” NPR’s MonitorMix, Apr. 28, 2008. Brownstein, Carrie.
3 “Mean Girls: Tamra Barney explains why she thinks she was the ‘mean girl’ this season!”
Bravo.com blog, Feb. 17, 2009. Barney, Tamra; “WTF, Atlanta! Did NeNe Really Choke Kim?” E! Online, Jul. 31, 2009. “DeShawn Snow No Longer a “‘Real’ Housewife: ‘I Didn’t See It Coming,’”
Essence online, Jan. 14, 2009. Byrd, Kenya N.
4 “On Reality TV, Tired, Tipsy and Pushed to Brink,”
New York Times, Aug. 2, 2009. Wyatt, Edward.
5 “The Real Housewives of Atlanta; Cast Members Put the Real in Reality,”
Jet, Sept. 7-14, 2009. Hoffman, Melody K.
6 “Interview: Kortnie Coles talks about ‘America’s Next Top Model,’”
Reality TV World, Mar. 31, 2009. Bracchitta, John.
8 “The Big Lie: False Feminist Death Syndrome, Profit, and the Media,” in
Catching a Wave: Reclaiming Feminism for the 21st Century (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2003). Pozner, Jennifer L. Eds. Dicker, Rory and Piepmeier, Alison.
9 Today in New York, NBC. May 7, 2006; “My Bosses From Hell—And They Were All Women,”
London Daily Mail, Aug. 23, 2004. Platell, Amanda; “Do All Women Make Bad Bosses?” posted on the news blog of the British edition of
Marie Claire magazine, Dec. 8, 2009.
10 “Mommy vs. Mommy,”
Newsweek, June 4, 1990. Darnton, Nina; “Scar y rise of the ‘sanctimommy, ’”
Washington Times, June 8, 2008. Miller, Cheryl; “The Mommy War,”
Texas Monthly, July 1989. Russell, Jan Jarboe. “LOVE & MONEY; Is My Mom Better Than Yours?”
The New York Times, July 1, 2001. Spragins, Ellyn; “The Opt-Out Revolution,”
The New York Times, Oct. 26, 2003. Belkin, Lisa.
11 “The Mommy War Machine,”
The Washington Post, Apr. 29, 2007. Graff, E. J.
12 Getting Even: Why Women Don’t Get Paid Like Men and What to Do About It, Touchstone, Sept. 27, 2005. Murphy, Evelyn and Graff, E. J. Also see the National Organization for Women’s “WalMart: Merchant of Shame” campaign:
www.now.org/issues/wfw/wal-mart.html.
13 A Place on the Team: the Triumph and Tragedy of Title IX, Princeton University Press, Jan. 31, 2005. Suggs, Welch. p. 2-3. “Education and Title IX,” fact sheet of the National Organization for Women,
www.now.org/issues/title_ix/index.html; “Rally ’Round the Boys: PBS’s National Desk enlists in the ‘Gender Wars,’”
Extra! Sept./Oct. 1999. Pozner, Jennifer L.
14 “WELL; What Are Friends For? A Longer Life,”
The New York Times, Apr. 21, 2009. Parker-Pope, Tara.
16 “The Simpsons; Making of superstar sisters Jessica and Ashlee Simpson,”
Dateline, NBC News. May 8, 2005. Kotb, Hoda; “She’s having a blonde moment,”
USA Today, Oct. 28, 2003. Thomas, Karen; “‘Dumb blonde’ as an art form,”
Arizona Daily Star, Nov. 7, 2003. Bailey, Rob.
17 “Is Tyra Banks Racist: The peculiar politics of
America’s Next Top Model,”
Slate.com, May 18, 2006. Dahl, J. E.
18 Understanding Inequality: the Intersection of Race/Ethnicity, Class, and Gender, (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007). Arrighi, Barbara A. p. 230.
19 “Larry Summers Is Not the Change I Was Expecting,” Women’s Media Center, Nov. 7, 2008. Arreola, Veronica.
20 “Ready for its closeups? Tyler, TX going national in Fox’s Anchorwoman,” on the TV Press Tour, July ’07 website of former
Dallas Morning News veteran TV critic Ed Bark. July 7, 2007.
21 Feminist Law Professors blog, Jan. 14, 2010 and Jan. 17, 2010.
22 “New Blouse, New House, I Need a New Spouse: The Politics of Transformation and Identity in Television Makeover and Swap Shows,” in
Fix Me Up: Essays on Television Dating and Makeover Shows (Jefferson, NC: McFarland Publishing, 2009). Tarrant, Shira, PhD. Ed. Lancioni, Judith. p. 181.
23 “The Ta x on Being Female: .23 Cents per Hour and Counting,” and “Media Discrimination Begets Biased Content,”
Women’s Review of Books, May/June 2006. Pozner, Jennifer L.
24 “Mad Men’s Secret Product Placements,”
Brandweek, Aug. 17, 2009. Wasserman, Todd.
25 “TV Guide Proves Summer Is Here,” Media Bistro’s Fishbowl LA blog, June 16, 2008.
26 “How to marry your own millionaire,”
USAToday.com, Feb. 10, 2003. Maxwell, Alison. (Found on
Zap2it.com, Dec. 2, 2002.)
27 “Top 10 most-watched shows of the decade,” Reuters, Dec. 2, 2009. Hibbard, James.
28 “According to U.S. Government estimates, 600,000 to 800,000 victims are trafficked globally each year and 14,500 to 17,500 are trafficked into the United States. Women and children comprise the largest group of victims [and] are often physically and emotionally abused.” From “Distinctions Between Human Smuggling and Human Trafficking,” U.S. Department of State, Apr. 1, 2006. See GEMS: Girls Education & Mentoring Services, publications and film,
Very Young Girls. Also see: “Sex Slaves: Estimating the Numbers” on PBS’s website for the 2006
Frontline film,
Sex Slaves. 29 “Who’re You Calling a Whore?: A Conversation with Three Sex Workers on Sexuality, Empowerment, and the Industry,” by Susan Lopez, Mariko Passion, and Saundra in
Yes Means Yes! (Berkeley, CA: Seal Press, 2008).
30 “Waiting for Mr. REALLY Right,”
Sirens, Aug. 10, 2008. Goode, Erich.
31 Fix Me Up: Essays on Television Dating and Makeover Shows. Tarrant. p. 173.
32 A2/M2 Three Screen Report, Volume 6, 3rd Quarter 2009. Updated Dec. 18, 2009. The Nielsen Company.
How Teens Use Media: A Nielsen report on the myths and realities of teen media trends, June 2009. The Nielsen Company.
CHAPTER FOUR
1 “America to Watch Family Pick Mate for Glendale Dad,”
The Cincinnati Enquirer, July 1, 2003. Kiesewetter, John.
2 “Dear Suitor: A House Isn’t Always a Home,”
Television Week, August 4, 2003. Gates, Anita; “Looking for a Date, and Some Public Humiliation,”
The New York Times, July 22, 2002. Gates, Anita.
4 “True Love on TV: A Gendered Analysis of Reality-Romance Television,” Poroi: An Interdisciplinary Journal of
Rhetorical Analysis and Invention 4.2 (2005): 17-51. Brophy-Baermann, Michelle.
5 “Employment Situation Summary,” Jan 8, 2010. Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Wealth, Income, and Power,” Sept. 2005, updated Oct. 2009. Domhoff, G. William. “Let America be American Again: Racial Wealth Equity,”
Huffington Post, Dec. 18, 2007.
www.huffingtonpost.com/amaad-rivera/let-america-be-american-a_b_77417.html. Rivera, Amaad. For extensive data, see
Foreclosed: State of the Dream 2008, a report by the Racial Wealth Divide Program at United for a Fair Economy.
6 Lui also notes that “Single women of each race have less than half the wealth as men of their own race, but due to the racial wealth gap, women of color are at the bottom.” Meizhu Lui, “Feminomics: A Woman’s Place—Still in the (Poor) House,”
NewDeal20.org, The Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute, citing
Shortchanged: Why Women Have Less Wealth and What Can Be Done about It, (London: Oxford University Press, Aug. 2010). Chang, Mariko. “Improving Pay Equity Would Mean Great Gains for Women,” Institute for Women’s Policy Research news release, July 10, 2008. For detailed breakdowns of poverty, earnings, education, and healthcare differences between women of color and other population groups, see “Data Tables on the Economic Status of Women of Color in the United States: Key Data Points,” the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, May 20, 2008,
www.iwpr.org/femstats/wocdata.htm.
7 Flavor of Love Girls: Charm School.
VH1.com.
9 “New Blouse, New House, I Need a New Spouse. Tarrant.
10 “Triumph of the Shill, Part 2: Reality TV Lets Marketers Write the Script,”
Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture 24 (2004). Pozner, Jennifer.
11 “This New House,”
Mother Jones, Mar./Apr. Illustration by Fox, Nathan. 2005.
13 “Americans spend every cent—and more,” CNN Money, Dec. 21, 2006. Isidore, Chris; “U.S. savings rate hits lowest level since 1933,” Associated Press wire story published at
MSNBC.com, Jan. 30, 2006.
14 “Fighting Off Depression,”
The New York Times, Jan. 4, 2009. Krugman, Paul.
15 An “All News” search of the Nexis news database turns up 2,394 references to the word
staycation in 2008, the year
First Class All the Way premiered.
16 “Study Ties Bankruptcy to Medical Bills,”
The New York Times, Feb. 2, 2005. Abelson, Reed. “Record Number Receive Food Stamps,” National Public Radio, Aug. 10, 2009. “Now Casting Women Living Extravagant Lifestyles!” Reality
Wanted.com, Dec. 16, 2009.
17 “Given a Shovel, Americans Dig Deeper Into Debt,”
The New York Times, July 20, 2008. Morgenson, Gretchen.
19 Bravo.com websites for
Million Dollar Listing Season 2 and
First Class All the Way; “Over One Million People Lost Their Home in 2008,”
Business Week Hot Property blog, Jan. 14, 2009. Palmeri, Chris; United for a Fair Economy report:
Foreclosed: State of the Dream 2008. Additionally, for a wealth of information on the vanishing middle class, rising poverty rates, and the growing gap between the nation’s rich and poor, see: Economic Policy Institute, Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein, and Heidi Shierholz.
The State of Working America 2008/2009 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, Jan. 2009). Economic Policy Institute, Mishel, Lawrence, Bernstein, Jared and Shierholz, Heidi, excerpts available on EPI’s website at
www.stateofworkingamerica.org. Also see “By the Numbers” at
Demos.org.
20 “Is Greed Ever Good?: No, Say Ethicists; and It’s Not Even Good for Capitalism, Some Argue,”
ABC News, Aug. 22, 2002. James, Michael S.
21 “ABC Drops Controversial ‘Neighborhood’ Reality Show,”
CivilRights.org, July 6, 2005.
23 Taking On the Big Boys: Or Why Feminism Is Good for Families, Business, and the Nation, The Feminist Press at CUNY. Apr. 1, 2007. Bravo, Ellen.
25 “The dark underside of Oprah’s Big Give; Generous? No doubt. But the mogul’s approach only underscores a shameful story on social infrastructure,” Toronto Star, Apr. 19, 2008. Diebel, Linda.
26 “The dark underside of Oprah’s Big Give.” Diebel;
Fix Me Up. Tarrant.
27 “Undercover Boss: Advertainment’s Fourth Wave,”
Gawker.com’s Defamer blog, Feb. 8, 2010. Nolan, Hamilton.
28 “With “Extreme Makeover” Homes, Some Get Foreclosure Instead of Happy Ending,” FindingDulcinea. com, June 5, 2009. Lovett, Haley A.
29 All You Can Eat: How Hungry Is America, (New York: Seven Stories Press. 2008) Berg, Joel. p. 191.
30 Organizations such as the National Housing Law Project, Housing Works, the Insight Center for Community Economic Development, and the Women’s Institute for Policy Research propose a variety of public policy approaches to the institutional problems of poverty, homelessness, and gender and racial disparities in these areas.
31 TMZ.com, “Adrianne Curry on ‘Top Model’: They ‘F***ed’ Me,” Feb. 6, 2007. TMZ Staff.
32 “The ‘Idol’ Advantage,”
The Philadelphia Inquirer, Sept. 1, 2002. Hiltbrand, David.
33 “Reinventing Reality; He made millions with American Idol and other watch-’em-squirm shows. But TV viewers are fickle—so SIMON FULLER will parody what he has built,”
Time, Jan. 1, 2003. James, Jennie.
34 VH1 News Presents: Reality TV Secrets 2; “Star struck; Elementary students are rapt audience for ‘Idol’ contestant,”
Grand Rapid Press, Apr. 30, 2004.
CHAPTER FIVE
1 “An Island Divided,”
St. Petersburg Times, Sept. 21, 2006. Deggans, Eric.
2 Indeed, Kabir was attractive enough to be cast on an Indian wedding episode of the short-lived Alicia Silverstone vehicle
Miss Match. (Like so many other reality show participants, Kabir was revealed post-
Joe to be an actor.) The letter of complaint, addressed to NBC’s president and
Average Joe’s producers, appeared on October 30, 2003 on the websites Reality TV World and Fans of Reality TV.
3 “Have Fook Yu and Fook Mi hit the big time?”
SF Gate, Sept. 29, 2005. Yang, Jeff.
4 “Performing Race in
Flavor of Love and
The Bachelor,”
Critical Studies in Media Communication 25, No. 4, Oct. 2008. Dubrofsky, Rachel E. and Hardy, Antoine. pp. 373 -392.
5 Navigating Interracial Borders: Black-White Couples and Their Social Worlds, (Piscataway, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2005). Childs, E. C.
6 “Deranged Marriage,”
ColorLines RaceWire. May, 2003. Sen, Rinku. “The Millennials: A Portrait of Generation Next,” Pew Research Center, Dec. 11, 2009. Keeter, Scott and Taylor, Paul.
7 “Bachelor Winner Arrested for Assaulting Fiancé,”
People online, Nov. 24, 2007. Helling, Steve.
9 “T V Guide Top Ten Reality TV Villains,”
PopCrunch.com, June 16, 2008. Castina;
TVGuide.com photo gallery:
www.tvguide.com/PhotoGallery/Evil-Reality-TV-1001885/12.aspx; “Natural Born Villain,”
Mahogany, Winter 2006-2007. “‘The Donald’ Plays Trump Card on NBC,”
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Apr. 11, 2004. Owen, Rob. “Commentary,”
Newhouse News Service, May 26, 2006. Cornog, Evan. “You can’t keep it real on TV without race,”
Fort Worth Star Telegram, Apr. 23, 2004. Parish Perkins, Ken.
10 “Star Democrats steal the show: In Boston, celebrities go to work at their real job: politics,”
National Post, July 29, 2004.
11 Alberts, Sheldon. “If We Ran Reality T V; Black is beautiful . . . so is Asian,”
Entertainment Weekly, May 21, 2004.
12 “False accusation of racism stings as much as real slur,” Chicago Sun-Times, Mar. 25, 2004. Roeper, Richard.
13 “Omarosa played too many cards and got Trumped,”
Chicago Sun-Times, Mar. 21, 2004. Mitchell, Mary.
14 The Bitch Switch: Knowing How to Turn It On and Off, (Beverly Hills, CA: Phoenix Books, 2008). Manigault-Stallworth, Omarosa; “Donald J. Trump Partners with TV One on a Groundbreaking New Reality Series Entitled, ‘Omarosa’s Ultimate Merger,’”
PR Newswire, Nov. 10, 2009.
15 “How Reality TV Fakes It,”
Time, Jan. 29, 2006. Poniewozik, James; Jim Crow Museum.
17 The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America, (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007). Faludi, Susan. pp. 3-4.
18 “Demographic Profile of Service Members Ever Deployed: Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom,” Jan. 31, 2009. Fact sheet from Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, citing Contingency Tracking System. The racial backgrounds of an additional 20.5 percent of service members were listed as “unknown.”
19 The Terror Dream. Faludi, Susan. pp. 165-195. “A Double Standard for Heroes,” AlterNet, Nov. 14, 2003. Chideya, Farai. “The Private War of Women Soldiers,” Salon, Mar. 7, 2007. Benedict, Helen.
20 Slave in a Box: The Strange Career of Aunt Jemima, (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1998). Manring, M. M.
21 Museum of Broadcast Communications online Encyclopedia of TV. Entry written by Bodroghkozy, Aniko.
22 “Nell Carter Is Dead at 54; Star of ‘Ain’t Misbehavin’,”
The New York Times, Jan. 24, 2003. Holden, Stephen.
23 “More Than Skin Deep: FX’s ‘Black. White.,’”
The Washington Post, Mar. 8, 2006. Crews, Chip; “Six-part FX documentary tries to bring racism out into the open,”
Oakland Tribune, Mar. 7, 2006. Young, Susan; “Reality show challenges racial perceptions Black and white television,”
Contra Costa Times, Mar. 7, 2006. Barney, Chuck; “FX puts a new face on its upcoming six-part documentary ‘Black. White.,’”
Call and Post (Cleveland), Dec. 21, 2005.
24 “Fox Plays the Race Card,”
TruthDig.com, Mar. 9, 2006. Avni, Sheerly.
25 “Commodifying Africa on U.S. Network Reality Television,”
Communication, Culture & Critique 1 no. 4, Dec. 2008. Steeves, H. Leslie pp. 416-446.
Culture and the Ad: Exploring Otherness in the World of Advertising (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994). O’Barr, William.
26 “Why I’m Starting to Love
The Amazing Race,”
BobHarris.com, Dec. 4, 2009.
27 “Cosmetic Surgery and the Televisual Makeover: A Foucauldian feminist reading,”
Feminist Media Studies 7 no. 1, Mar. 2007. Heyes, Cressida J. p. 23.
28 Style and Status: Selling Beauty to African American Women, 1920-1975 ( Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2007). Walker, Susannah. p. 2.
29 “Butch Voices Conference Closing Keynote,” Aug. 23, 2009. Transcript on
OaklandLocal.com.
30 “Addicted to ‘Love,’ Fans savor Flavor with a side of guilt,”
Contra Costa Times, Oct. 14, 2006. Barney, Chuck.
31 “A Ladies’ Man Everyone Fights Over,”
The New York Times, Oct. 1, 2006. Ogunnaike, Lola; “Flavor Flav: Totally Cuckoo? The real story behind what makes the rapper-turned-reality star tick,”
Entertainment Weekly, Aug. 11, 2006. Watson, Margeaux.
32 “The Immortals—The Greatest Artists of All Time,”
Rolling Stone, Apr. 15, 2004. Yauch, Adam.
33 PR Newswire, October 17, 2006; “A Ladies Man.” Ogunnaike, “Reality TV Loving It Hating It Living It,”
Entertainment Weekly, June 12, 2009.
34 Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). Lotte, Eric.
35 Internet Movie Database biography for Stepin Fetchit, accessed Feb. 9, 2010;
Stepin Fetchit: The Life and Times of Lincoln Perry (New York: Pantheon, 2005). Watkins, Mal.
36 “Slaves to the Clock,”
Essence, Nov. 2006. Dickerson, Debra.
38 “Love Him, Or Leave Him?; Flavor Flav’s Popular Show Sets Off Passionate Debate on Comedy and Race,”
The Washington Post, Nov. 2, 2006. Wiltz, Teresa;
Tavis Smiley, PBS, Aug. 15, 2007; Lynn Elber, “Producing duo spices up VH1 with ‘Flavor of Love,’ more; only sin for channel ‘to be boring,’” The Associated Press, Oct. 3, 2007.
39 “The Real World—Just Your Regular, Reality Show Racism,”
Racialicious.com, May 8, 2008. Peterson, Latoya.
40 “The Fake Maui,”
AngryAsianMan.com blog, Jan. 26, 2007; “Locals Object to New MTV Reality Show ‘Maui Fever, ’”
The Insider, Jan. 23, 2007.
41 “I Love New York: Does New York Love Me?”
Journal of International Women’s Studies 10 no. 2. Nov. 2008. Campbell, Shannon B., Giannino, Steven S., China, Chrystal R. and Harris, Christopher S. Also see the Jim Crow Museum’s extensive “Jezebel Stereotype” photo gallery and essay, at
www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/jezebel.
42 “I Love New York: Does New York Love Me?” Campbell et al.
43 “‘I Love New York’ premiere draws VH1’s best series debut ratings ever,”
RealityTVWorld.com, Dec. 1, 2007.
44 Spectrum PR,
Biography for Tariq Nasheed, Internet Movie Database,
IMDB.com.
45 “Producing duo spices up VH1.” Elber.
46 “Love Him, or Leave Him.” Wiltz.
47 “Anything but Racism: Media make excuses for ‘whitewashed’ TV lineup,”
Extra!Jan./Feb. 2000. Jackson, Janine;
Out of Focus, Out of Sync Take 4: A Report on the Television Industry, Dec. 2008. NAACP Hollywood Bureau; “TV’s Great Black Hope,”
Entertainment Weekly, June 20, 2008. Armstrong, Jennifer and Watson, Margeaux.
49 “Producing duo spices up VH1.” Elber.
50 From Mammy to Miss America and Beyond: Cultural Images and the Shaping of U.S. Social Policy (London: Routledge, 1993). Jewell, K. Sue.
CHAPTER SIX
1 “Tyra Banks Apologizes Over Bi-Racial Episode of ‘ANTM,’”
StyleList.com, Nov. 18, 2009. Oliver, Dana.
2 The Asian Mystique: Dragon Ladies, Geisha Girls, & Our Fantasies of the Exotic Orient, (New York: PublicAffairs, 2006). Prasso, Sheridan. p. 87.
3 “Ethnic Magazine Editors Discuss Health, Hollywood Buzz,” Sept. 12, 2007. National Public Radio. “Can she stay on
Top?”
Time Out Chicago, no. 163 : Apr. 10-16, 2008. Aeh, Kevin; “Hidden potential; Reaching consumers,”
International Cosmetic News, Mar. 1, 2008. Guilbault, Laure.
4 Black Beauty: Aesthetics, Stylization, Politics (Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2009). Tate, Shirley Anne.
5 “Bitch poured beer on my weave,”
Vanity Fair contributing editor James Wolcott’s blog, Sept. 23, 2004.
6 Extra!, the magazine published by media watch organization Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, produced some of the most well-documented debunking of 1980s and 1990s news coverage scapegoating “welfare queens” and criminalizing youth of color. See: “Five Media Myths About Welfare,”
Extra! May/June, 1995; “Public Enemy Number One? Media’s Welfare Debate Is a War on Poor Women,”
Extra! May/June, 1995. Jackson, Janine and Flanders, Laura; “Wild in Deceit: Why ‘Teen Violence’ Is Poverty Violence in Disguise,”
Extra! Mar./Apr., 1996. Males, Mike; “Superscapegoating: Teen ‘superpredators’ hype set stage for draconian legislation,”
Extra! Jan./ Feb, 1998. Templeton, Robin; “The Smell of Success: After 10 years of ‘welfare reform,’ ignoring the human impact,”
Extra! Nov./Dec. 2006. deMause, Neil.
7 “Eartha Quake,” the avatar of a member of the
TelevisionWithoutPity.com fan community, left this comment in the discussion forum devoted to Tiffany during
ANTM’s fourth season. Apr. 14, 2005.
8 “‘Ugly Betty’ recast: ‘Top Model’ is Willi’s daughter!”
EW.com, Aug. 11, 2009. Ausiello, Michael.
9 “The Resisting Monkey: ‘Curious George,’ Slave Captivity Narratives, and the Postcolonial Condition,”
Ariel: A Review of International English Literature 28, no. 1 (Jan. 1997): 69-83. Cummins, June.
10 See:
Ethnic Notions, 1987, directed by Marlon Riggs; and the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University.
12 “Obama as witch doctor: Racist or satirical?”
CNN.com, Sept. 18, 2009. Fantz, Ashley.
13 “Naomi Campbell in Yet Another ‘Out of Africa’ Spread,”
Black Voices’ BV On Style blog, Aug. 13, 2009.
16 “Is Tyra Banks Racist? The peculiar politics of America’s Next Top Model,”
Slate.com, May 18, 2006. Dahl, J. E.
17 “Prime-Time’s Top-Earning Women,”
Forbes.com, Oct. 12, 2009. Rose, Lacey; “Who’s the Next Oprah?” E! Online, Nov. 27, 2009. Gornstein, Leslie; “Tyra Banks On It,”
Forbes.com, July 3, 2006. Blakeley, Kiri.
18 “Tyra Banks to leave talk show,”
Variety.com, Dec. 28, 2009; “Tyra Banks Says Goodbye to Talk Show,”
People.com, Dec. 28, 2009.
CHAPTER SEVEN
1 “2003 Ventura Rape Victim Awarded $20 Million in Suit,”
Los Angeles Times (California Local section; no author byline) Aug. 31, 2006. Early details reported by MSNBC’s
Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Nov. 4, 2004.
3 “And the Hot Tub Goes to . . . Austin,”
The New York Times. June 19, 2005. Nielsen research referenced in Patosky, Joe Nick.
5 “The Bachelor Stewardess Says ‘Buh-Bye,’” TV Guide Online. Oct. 28, 2002. Coleridge, Daniel.
7 “Did Megan Want a Killer Millionaire?”
Huffington Post, Aug. 27, 2009. Sax, Robin; “Reality TV: When Casting Goes Wrong,”
Entertainment Weekly, Sept. 4, 2009. Schwartz, Missy.
8 “Global Big Bother; Violence, orgies, riots—it’s not just our Big Brother that causes outrage,”
The Express, Jan 20, 2007. Ridley, Mike; “What Your Reality Show Isn’t Telling You,” AOL Smart-Money. com. Willis, Kedon. (not dated.)
9 “Flavor Flav: Totally Cuckoo? The real story behind what makes the rapper-turned-reality star tick,”
Entertainment Weekly, Aug. 11, 2006. Watson, Margeaux; And, “Hip-Hop, you don’t stop: Public Enemy were the Sex Pistols of rap—but they’re still seeking the respect they deserve. Johnny Davis talks fighting the power and milking cows on TV with Flavor Flav and Chuck D,”
Guardian online, June 18, 2006. David, Johnny.
www.guardian.co.uk/music/2006/jun/18/urban. Accessed Nov. 24, 2009.
10 “Mark Consuelos Talks of Love (and His Kelly Girl),”
TVGuide.com, June 18, 2007. Mitovich, Matt Webb.
13 “Reality TV.” Schwartz.
14 From the “HollaFAQ” at
http://hollabacknyc.blogspot.com/, a group blog that allows women who experience street harassment to post cell phone pictures of the people who verbally or physically assault them as they go about their day, along with narrative descriptions of exactly what transpired. The site, dedicated to creating communities in which public spaces are safe for all people, offers women a place to share their experiences, vent, get catharsis, and find support, while also sending a message to perpetrators that they may not be guaranteed the anonymity they assume when catcalling, yelling at, rubbing up against, pinching, grabbing, groping, following, or otherwise assaulting women—in fact, they may be photographed and caught online doing just that. The Street Harassment Project, an organization in New York that holds public actions against what they consider gender-based violence, offers the following as the first of its founding principles: “That street harassment, rape and assault are connected issues; that all stem from attitudes of dehumanization of women that are part of a bigger social picture: the system of male supremacy and sexism under which we still live.” More information is available at
www.streetharassmentproject.org/.
15 “If We Ran Reality TV; Paris, you’re in. Trista, you’re out. We’ve got an extreme makeover for television’s most popular—and polarizing—genre.”
Entertainment Weekly, May 21, 2004. Side-water, Nancy.
17 “MTV Pulls Punch Clip from Next Episode of
Jersey Shore,”
TVGuide.com, Dec. 11, 2009. Stanhope, Kate.
19 You can find such images on offer in virtually any issue of most glossy fashion mags, and even in the style sections of major news outlets such as
The New York Times Sunday Magazine. For a small sample of these sorts of visuals, and for critiques of advertising content, see “Killing Us Softly 3,” an excerpt of Jean Kilbourne’s video-clip-filled lecture,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufHrVyVgwRg&feature=related (Kilbourne’s discussion of violent ads begins at minute 3:23). Several young women have taken Kilbourne’s lead and are using new media tools to create their own slideshows shining a spotlight on this problem, such as “Sexism and Violence in Advertising” by Canadian feminist writer Jenna Owsianik,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ft67TI9Wstc, and “Exploitation of women in ads” by a communications student whose YouTube handle is hertrippyness,
www.youtube.com/watch. ?v=WgGiB-084sk&feature=related.
Ms. Magazine’s “No Comment” section offers a rich archive of such images over several decades in the magazine itself, while a few print and video ads per issue from Spring 2006 to the present are available on their website at
www.msmagazine.com/nocommentarchive.asp. ; several of the ads mentioned in this paragraph can be found in the archive, including a Foot Petals ad featuring a woman’s stilleto-clad, disembodied legs hanging from a noose, a Marc Jacobs ad centered on the lower half of an apparently abandoned woman’s dead body lying on the ground, and a somewhat infamous Jimmy Choo ad in which singer Quincy Jones is shown digging a grave to get rid of model Molly Simms, dead in the trunk of his car.
20 “America’s Next Top Model Obsessed” on Oxygen Struts to Double and Triple Digit Increases among Key Demos,” Oxygen press release, Jan. 22, 2009, on
TheFutonCritic.com.
21 “Next Top Model Champ CariDee Shares Her Blonde Ambitions,”
TVGuide.com, Dec. 12, 2006. Katner, Ben.
22 One notable exception is
Fix Me Up: Essays on Television Dating and Makeover Shows, an anthology of scholarly essays edited by Judith Lancioni, published by McFarland & Company, Nov. 13, 2009.
23 “Top Model’s beautiful corpses: the nexus of reality TV misogyny and ad industry ideology,” WIMN’s Voices: The Group Blog on Women, Media, and . . . , Mar. 22, 2007. Pozner, Jennifer L.
www.wimnonline.org/WIMNsVoicesBlog/?p=462.
24 Can’t Buy My Love. Kilbourne. p. 64.
CHAPTER EIGHT
1 Enlightened Racism. Jhally and Lewis. p. 133.
2 Backlash. Faludi. pp. xx-xxii.
4 “Wedding Porn Doesn’t Turn Us On: Age at 1st Marriage Has Never Been Higher,”
Psychology Today blog,
Living Single. Jan. 17, 2010. DePaulo, Bella, PhD.
5 “Employment Situation Summary,” Bureau of Labor Statistics, Mar. 5, 2010.
6 Clip excerpted on
Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees, CNN, July 30, 2009.
7 White Weddings: Romancing Heterosexuality in Popular Culture, 2nd edition, 2008. Ingraham, Chrys. pp. 38- 43.
8 Backlash. Faludi. pp.100-101; “Newsweek: Sorry for the spinster scaremongering 20 years ago,”
Shakesville, May 26, 2006. McEwan, Melissa.
10 “New Blouse, New House, I Need a New Spouse.” Tarrant.
11 “The Mommy War Machine,”
The Washington Post, Apr. 29, 2007. Graff, E. J.;
The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined All Women (New York: Free Press, 2004). Douglas, Susan and Michaels, Meredith.
12 “Is Our Sexed-up Society Creating Prosti-Tots?”
AlterNet.org, Mar. 11, 2010. Harris, Lynn;
The Lolita Effect: The Media Sexualization of Young Girls and What We Can Do About It (New York: Overlook, 2008). Durham, Meenakshi Gigi.
13 The National Resource Center on Child Sexual Abuse, “Fact Sheet on Child Sexual Abuse,” Huntsville: NRCCSA, 1994.
14 “New Blouse, New House, I Need a New Spouse.” Tarrant.
15 “Queer Women on Reality TV Are Making a Difference,”
AfterEllen.com, Oct. 16, 2006. Lo, Malinda.
17 Transgender: What Does It Mean? and
Bad Questions to Ask a Transsexual appeared on VideoJug and YouTube, respectively, and are available at
Calpernia.com.
18 “Women rule new Fox show: Rocket Science producing reality project,”
Variety, Jan. 16, 2007. Adalian, Josef.
20 “Boxed In: Employment of Behind-the-Scenes Women in the 2008-09 Prime-Time Television Season,” Center for Study of Women in TV and Film, San Diego State University, 2009. Lauzen, Martha M., PhD.
21 “The Glass Ceiling Persists,” Annenberg Public Policy Center, Dec. 22, 2003.
22 “Progress or No Room at the Top?: The Role of Women in Telecommunications, Broadcast, Cable and E-Companies,” Annenberg Public Policy Center, Mar. 2001.
24 “Women in Film celebrates female achievements,”
The Hollywood Reporter online, June 16, 2008. Bowen, Shannon L.
25 Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message That Feminism’s Work is Done (New York: Times Books, 2010). Douglas, Susan. p.14.
26 Enlightened Sexism. Douglas.
CHAPTER NINE
1 “America’s Next Top Model Struts Into Walmart: First Branded Line Based on Hit Reality Series in Select Stores Now,” CBS Press Release posted at The Futon
Critic.com, Dec. 3, 2008.
2 Why the Comcast/NBC Merger Poses a Major Threat to Video Competition That AntiTrust Authorities Cannot Ignore, a report from Consumer Federation of America and Free Press. Cooper, Mark and Wright, Corie. Referenced in “New Report: Comcast/NBC Merger Is Bad News for the Public,”
StopBigMedia.com, Dec. 2, 2009. Stearns, Josh.
3 Can’t Buy Me Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel (New York: The Free Press, 2000). Kilbourne, Jean. p. 33.
4 For extensive documentation of this phenomena, see the “Advertiser Influence” section of Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting at
FAIR.org. For a discussion specific to media content related to women and women’s issues, see “Sex, Lies & Advertising,”
Ms. Magazine, July/Aug. 1990. Steinem, Gloria.
5 “Anything but Racism; Media make excuses for ‘whitewashed’ TV lineup,”
Extra! Jan./Feb. 2000. Jackson, Janine.
6 “Ad buyers back off reality programs,”
USA Today, May 12, 2003. McCarthy, Michael; “A-list Advertisers Reconsider Reality; Less concern over content as ratings deliver key demos,”
ADWEEK, Feb. 3, 2003. Consoli, John.
7 “Brian Stelter, Product Placements, Deftly Woven into the Story Line,”
The New York Times, Mar. 2, 2009.
8 “Are You SELLING to Me?: Stealth Advertising in the Entertainment Industry.” Nov. 14, 2005. Writers Guild of America.
9 Research assistant Anita Sarkeesian found forty lines of dialog, twenty-two visual integrations and on-air presence for a CoverGirl corporate spokesperson on
America’s Next Top Model cycle 11, episode 9. Every
ANTM episode includes product placement, but their CoverGirl commercial shoots are the most intensive examples.
10 “The Donald Drives a Deal; Chrysler the sole auto sponsor of NBC’s Trump reality vehicle
The Apprentice; Network TV,”
Mediaweek, Jan. 5, 2004. Greenberg, Karl; “Marketers dive into ‘Apprentice 3’; Sony, Visa, Verizon sign up for $2.5M deals, despite ratings slide and worries about clutter,”
Advertising Age, Nov. 29, 2004. Atkinson, Claire; “Idol Signs Three Major Sponsors; Ford, Coke, AT&T Wireless pay record $20M each,”
Broadcasting & Cable, Jan. 13, 2003. McClellan, Steve.
Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy (New York: Doubleday, 2008). Lindstrom, Martin. pp. 40, 41, 49.
11 “Seventeen Magazine and MTV Join for a Reality Show,”
The New York Times, Oct. 10, 2005. Bosman, Julie.
12 Madison and Vine: Why the Entertainment and Advertising Industries Must Converge to Survive (New York: McGraw Hill, 2004). Donaton, Scott. p. 64.
13 “The Nielsen Company Issues Top Ten U.S. Lists for 2008,” Press release, Dec. 12, 2008. Nielsen.
14 Steven J. Heyer, quoted in
Madison and Vine. Donaton.
15 2008 and 2009 programming percentages provided to author via email from Fox Corporate Communications, Jan. 20, 2010; CBS, Jan. 25, 2010; The CW, Jan. 22, 2010; and phone communication from NBC, Jan. 26, 2010. Information about NBC’s full 2009 broadcast year was unavailable at press time due to the upheaval caused by the
Jay Leno Show being added to, then removed, from the prime-time lineup. ABC would not supply data, but a significant portion of their 2009 and 2010 roster were unscripted shows including
The Bachelor, Dancing with the Stars, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Find My Family, Supernanny, and
Wife Swap, and stunts like
Conveyor Belt of Love.
16 “Series Let Advertisers ‘Boldly Go’ Where Few Have Gone Before,”
Advertising Age, May 7, 2009. Steinberg, Brian. “‘Survivor’: Mark Burnett,”
Advertising Age, Oct. 8, 2001. Pendleton, Jennifer.
17 “Superstar Joe Abruzzese: ‘Survivor’s’ win-win mentality scores big; Abruzzese throws the bag of tricks wide open for tie-in partners, and all benefit from incredible buzz,”
Advertising Age, Mar. 26, 2001. Fitzgerald, Kate.
18 “Sponsors on ‘Restaurant’ menu; Product placement gets NBC reality series on the air,”
The Hollywood Reporter, July 18, 2003. Hiestand, Jesse.
19 “A Serving Of Reality ‘Drama’ You Can Eat Up,”
The Boston Globe, July 20, 2003. Graves, Amy; “Making it real: ‘The Restaurant’; TV cameras are there through it all for Rocco’s on 22nd in New York,”
The Baltimore Sun, July 16, 2003. Lu-Lien Tan, Cheryl.
20 “NBC Recasts Its Office; New entertainment bosses plan to climb out of fourth place,” May 31, 2007. Battaglio, Stephen; “Jay Leno Is #1,”
Tuned In blog,
Time, Dec. 11, 2009.
21 “The Commercial Tidal Wave,”
Monthly Review 54, no. 10 (2003). McChesney, Robert W. and Bellamy Foster, John.
22 “Mitsubishis on the Menu; Product Placement Takes a Leap Forward with NBC’s “‘The Restaurant, ’”
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Aug. 3, 2003. Pennington, Gail.
23 “10 Things Your Reality Show Won’t Tell You,” AOL Money & Finance, Money,
Aol.com (undated). Willis, Kedon.
24 “MAGNA Global Entertainment Announces Sponsors of NBC’s “The Restaurant,’” July 2, 2003. Business Wire; “NBC Cooks Up a Meal Ticket,”
Daily Variety, Jan. 17, 2003. Adalian, Josef.
25 “When Reality Attacks; Who are the victims now that unscripted shows rule TV land? Producers of sitcoms and dramas. Six of the best strike back. Look out, Joe Millionaire,”
Entertainment Weekly, Mar. 14, 2003. Rice, Lynette.
26 Quoted in
Philadelphia Daily News and “Triumph of the Shill, Part 2: Reality TV Lets Marketers Write the Script,”
Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture 24, Spring 2004. Pozner, Jennifer L.
27 “Marketers dive into ‘Apprentice 3.’” Atkinson. “Product Placement Pacts Cut for ‘Stewart,’”
MediaWeek. com, Aug. 26, 2005. McClellan, Steve; “‘Apprentice’ viewers tell Pontiac: You’re hired,”
Automotive News, May 2, 2005. LaReau, Jamie.
28 “‘The Shaken Self’: Product Choices as a Means of Restoring Self-View Confidence,”
Journal of Consumer Research 36, no. 1 (2009). Gao, Leilei, Wheeler, S. Christian and Shiv, Baba. p. 29.
29 “America’s Next Top Model Struts into Wal-Mart: First Branded Line Based on Hit Reality Series in Select Stores Now,” press release at
TheFutonCritic.com, Dec. 3, 2008. The film
Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price provides information on Wal-Mart’s hiring and environmental practices.
30 “Wounded Disney Co. Vows to Bounce Back,”
Orlando Sentinel (Florida), Sept. 22, 2001. Johnson, Robert and Verrier, Richard. “The ‘Big Lie’: False Feminist Death Syndrome, Profit, and the Media,” in
Catching a Wave: Reclaiming Feminism for the 21st Century, ed. Dicker, Rory and Piepmeier, Alison. (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2003). Pozner, Jennifer L.
32 “Superstar Joe Abruzzese.” Fitzgerald.
33 “An Eye-Land Paradise: CBS sets summer record with socko ‘Survivor’,”
Daily Variety, Aug. 25, 2000. Kissell, Rick.
34 “Is this any way to make music?”
St. Petersburg Times, Apr. 13, 2001. Deggans, Eric; “Television; New Faces of Synergy 2001; AOL Time Warner’s TV, Music and Web Units Are Taking Cross-Promotion to a New Level with ‘Popstars,’”
Los Angeles Times, Mar. 11, 2001. Lowry, Brian.
35 “Pussycat Dolls: Pussy Galore!”
Blender.com, June 19, 2006. Raftery, Brian.
36 Writers Guild of America, Nov. 14, 2005.
37 “Product Placement Is on the Menu of This ‘Restaurant’ a New Twist in Marketing,”
The Boston Globe, July 20, 2003. Wallenstein, Andrew.
38 “Soap Opera: How Ponds infiltrated The Starter Wife writers’ room,”
Slate, May 30, 2007. Stevenson, Seth. “Excruciatingly bad dialogue, insufferably elitist characters, and glaring product placement: ‘Starter Wife’ makes me gag.” WIMN’s Voices, June 7, 2007. Pozner, Jennifer L.
39 “Writers Guild Strikes Back; Guerilla Protests Only Start of Action on Reality, Product Placements,”
Television Week, Nov. 28, 2005. Hibberd, James.
41 Email correspondence from Nancy Marsden, Jan. 25, 2009. Marsden organizes FIT Media, a bipartisan consortium of health, media, and child advocacy organizations and professionals seeking regulation of embedded advertising.
42 Unmarketable (New York: New Press, 2007). Moore, Anne Elizabeth.
44 For information on advertising and children, see the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood,
www.commercialexploitation.org/, the Media Education Foundation documentary
Captive Audience, and Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting’s archives on Channel One,
www.fair.org/index.php. ?page=19&media_outlet_id=22.
45 “Joe Mastermind; Brilliant programmer or evil genius bent on destroying American culture? Either way, Fox’s reality guru Mike Darnell (the brains behind ‘Joe Millionaire’) is changing TV,”
Entertainment Weekly, Mar. 28, 2003. Snierson, Dan.
46 “What Do Prisoners Make for Victoria’s Secret? From Starbucks to Microsoft: a sampling of what US inmates make, and for whom,”
Mother Jones, July/Aug. 2008. Winter, Caroline.
CHAPTER TEN
2 (New York: Perigee Trade, 2009). Harding, Kate and Kirby, Marianne.
3 Anita Sarkeesian was a research assistant for several chapters of this book. Her website, Feminist Frequency: Conversations with Pop Culture, can be found at
www.feministfrequency.com/.
4 I first became interested in writing
Reality Bites Back after publishing “The Unreal World: Why women on ‘reality TV’ have to be hot, desperate and dumb” in the Fall 2004 issue of
Ms. Magazine. So I was pleasantly surprised when I read in the description of
The Bachelor: Tool Edition parody that “Character-types are based on concepts from ‘The Unreal World’ by Jennifer Pozner.” You can watch the video on YouTube:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZG-sDcInThY. My hope is that if you are reading this book, and especially this chapter, you will find some way to put your interest in this subject into creative action, whether by producing your own media literacy projects or by engaging in any of the media activism strategies detailed in chapter 11.
5 “Girl Talk: A new book posits zines as the founding documents of third-wave feminist political culture,”
The American Prospect web feature. Nov. 12, 2009. Clark, Jessica. Review of
Girl Zines: Making Media, Doing Feminism, NYU Press, Nov. 18, 2009. Piepmeier, Alison.
6 Hey Kidz! Buy This Book: A Radical Primer on Corporate and Governmental Propaganda and Artistic Activism for Short People (Berkeley, CA: Soft Skull Press, 2004). Moore, Anne Elizabeth. p. 152.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
1 Applicability of Sponsorship Identification Rules, Public Notice, 40 F.C.C. 141 (1963).
3 Citizens and consumer groups calling for disclosure of embedded ads have suffered defeats at the FTC in 1992 and 2005. In 1992, the FTC ruled that embedded ads are not deceptive and do not inflict substantial harm any more than conventional advertising. In 2005, the FTC reiterated that opinion, adding that because product placements generally do not make claims about a product’s efficacy or attributes, they cannot be misleading.
5 Beyond the Echo Chamber: How a Networked Progressive Media Can Reshape American Politics, New Press, Feb. 9, 2010. Clark, Jessica and Van Slyke, Tracy.
7 Women and Media: A Critical Introduction (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006). Byerly, C. M. & Ross, K. (2006).
8 Women, the Economy and News: Analysis of the 2008 U.S. Primary Coverage,”
St. John’s Journal of Legal Commentary 24 no. 2 (Fall 2009). Byerly, C. M. pp. 387-402.
9 “Media Ownership Matters. Localism, the ethnic minority news audience, and community participation,” in
Does bigger media equal better media? (Report) Social Science Research Council and Benton Foundation, 2006. Byerly, C. M., Langmia, K. and Cupid, J. A.
www.ssrc.org/programs/media.
10 Girl Director: A How-to Guide for the First-Time, Flat-Broke Film and Video Maker (Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 2005). Richard, Andrea.