Recently television has been crazy for pretty wealthy girls who seem to have nothing more to do but party and date. One particularly blonde, tiara toting beauty queen, Alicia Guastoferro, has decided to sue ABC and Disney for villinizing her on the show "Wife Swap." Alicia was 15 when the show came out, and now, as an 18 year old she has considered herself victimized by the companies and suing them for 100 million dollars. A video of her on youtube is called: the "most spoiled brat in the world" as she gets a new car and has Christmas everyday.
I tend to think that this idea of bratty children has nothing to do with their nature, but the way their parents coddle them. Reality TV shows like Laguna Beach, Bravo's NYC Prep or My Super Sweet 16 have created examples of teens as bratty, irresponsible, utterly gorgeous young people who have never had less than everything they want. The teens are placed in a world without parents, without school and without responsibility.
The danger of these reality shows is not the people who they portray, or even the fact that these are "fictitious circumstances," (obviously) but the implication that it is normal to be like this. People watch these shows to laugh at teens making complete idiots out of themselves. However, there is something much more sentimental to experience the vulnerability of these kids and that is our romanticizing of youth. Unlike the Real Housewives shows, where the women are older, these kids are everything anyone could ever want to be: beautiful, rich and careless. I think this is something that our beautiful Alicia may not understand. Underneath the ridiculous videos is a fascination, like watching a giraffe eating in Africa, it is an othering that makes her so fragile. What would one try to achieve after they have signed their life away already to a television network? But who asked this girl to be like this? Television creates the people that we want to see, at the expense of those people, taking away all kinds of dimensions that life involves. It is simply easier to exploit teens than the wealthy men whose companies have created these shows.
The danger of these reality shows is not the people who they portray, or even the fact that these are "fictitious circumstances," (obviously) but the implication that it is normal to be like this. People watch these shows to laugh at teens making complete idiots out of themselves. However, there is something much more sentimental to experience the vulnerability of these kids and that is our romanticizing of youth. Unlike the Real Housewives shows, where the women are older, these kids are everything anyone could ever want to be: beautiful, rich and careless. I think this is something that our beautiful Alicia may not understand. Underneath the ridiculous videos is a fascination, like watching a giraffe eating in Africa, it is an othering that makes her so fragile. What would one try to achieve after they have signed their life away already to a television network? But who asked this girl to be like this? Television creates the people that we want to see, at the expense of those people, taking away all kinds of dimensions that life involves. It is simply easier to exploit teens than the wealthy men whose companies have created these shows.
"It's because they love me." Alicia, with her flattened blonde hair and her dimpled cheeks says, to her swapped mother. The issue does not seem to be with the children but with their parents, the parents choose what the child does. Alicia is suing because of the amount of harassment she has received after the show. There is an interesting link on the wgrz site that has a copy of the lawsuit. True, she may be completely out of touch and feel bad for ugly people and all of us hate her for it, but, honestly, give her parents a talking to as well!
Tortured sentences:
ReplyDelete"However, there is something much more sentimental to experience the vulnerability of these kids and that is our romanticizing of youth."
Switching tenses mid-way through:
"Alicia was 15 when the show came out, and now, as an 18 year old she has considered herself victimized by the companies and suing them for 100 million dollars."
Unclear and awkward:
"Television creates the people that we want to see, at the expense of those people, taking away all kinds of dimensions that life involves."
With wgrz link - shuold just be directly to the law suit - that's what you tell the reader they're going to. instead they're taken to another article with another link.
Another really interesting subject and handled very thoughtfully, but watch your writing! your tenses get mixed up and sometimes your sentences are tangled to the point that they don't make sense