Breeze Perspectives: The Reality of love
Reality TV only loosely associated with ‘real world’
By Kate Griendling, contributing writer
Posted on October 2, 2006

TV’s reality love is nothing like real love.

Here I am watching “Next,” yet living in a dorm with 72 girls and 12 boys. Nowhere on campus have I even seen five boys in the same place at the same time. So in what alternate reality are girls “nexting” boys? Well, after attending my first frat party, I discovered there is, indeed, a place where boys next half-naked girls. 

As a how-to guide, reality TV teaches life lessons. On “Extreme Makeover” we are “Made” into the perfect “Bridezilla.”

Fox’s “Anything For Love” examines the extreme measures people will endure to find true love, but once they do, it’s time to tune into ABC’s “Wife Swap.” The new romantic reality series “How to Get the Guy” follows four females in search of Mr. Right. However, according to the 25 females on the new season of the “Bachelor,” Mr. Right is Prince Lorenzo Borghese.

The depiction of these beautiful, successful, promiscuous and ever-so-desperate women as lonely is anything but real. As scholar bell hooks’s “Mock Feminism” asserts, “In the real world, these are the women who have men standing in line.”

All these reality shows describe what love should look like physically. Women are supposed to look like “8th and Ocean” models, but men can be “Average Joes,” and “Beauty and the Geek” will still end up together. The subliminal messaging is clear: ideal beauty is youth and thinness, and to find love you must be beautiful. Perhaps this explains why the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders estimates that 7 million women in the United States suffer from an eating disorder.

While we focus all of our attention on “The Real World” and “Surreal Life,” we miss out on our own reality. Cheesy reality shows succeed because we need hopeless romantics and “Meet the Barkers,” or we couldn’t adequately obsess over, much less recover from, the Brad and Jen breakup. The media is condescending to its audience by feeding our obsession with love and Hollywood. Who wants to read about a possible Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty when you can watch Adrienne plan her wedding in “My Fair Brady?”

Each time I thought I had it figured out, someone else was breaking up. First, it was Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie, then Carmen and Dave. Then I learned there was such a thing as “Parental Control.” Where was that show when Woody Allen married his daughter?

I thought reality shows gave advice on love, but really, they are designed to make us feel better about our love life. No matter how bad things get, you can always catch reruns of “Laguna Beach” and remind yourself you don’t have it half as bad as the pathetic L.C.

To me, love is temporary insanity. And all the nut jobs monopolize reality television.

The Seth Cohen and Summer Roberts fanatics and recently brokenhearted Nick and Jessica fans challenged my cynicism.  One classmate, gaga for her new perfect boyfriend, suggested that love was an intense emotion of selflessness and caring. Of course, this definition justifies Quad PDA and nauseating puppy love. One sorority friend, a veteran girlfriend who appreciates humor and Tiffany’s, quoted “Wedding Crashers” to describe love as “the souls’ recognition of its counterpoint in another.”

I suppose defining love eliminates the fun and silliness of being in love and even breaking up, for as my mom says, “If your heart didn’t break once in a while, you wouldn’t know you were alive.”

Besides, none of us need lose hope. If Flava Flav can find love, can’t we all?

Kate Griendling is a junior communications major.