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Up until this point, it was a point of pride that I’d never seen a whole episode of any network reality show (not including talk shows, of course). Survivor? Fuck you. American Idol? I’ve heard of it. I made an exception for those seemingly more benign cable niche shows; an ex’s mother loved Trading Spaces, and I have an embarrassing addiction to What Not to Wear. But on the whole, I’ve found America’s obsession with reality television beneath my notice. It’s no skin off my nose if the unwashed masses are clamouring for the laziest, most profitable crap the producers can cram down their maws. There’s a hundred and one reasons why a network would have no motivation to come up with anything better if people are happy watching yet another variation of group-of-people-eliminate-each-other-for-drama-and-prizes and until now I’ve simply exercised my right to not watch.

However, FOX may have broken through my crusty, elitist exterior; I may have to watch every episode of this train wreck:

Women’s default wear when they’re not “dressing to impress.” Almost makes me want to apologize to the Pussycat Dolls for that time I made fun of their feminist cred.

Thank God FOX found 10 conventionally telegenic women with “personal axes to grind” to once and for all answer the question, “can women effectively rule society?” After all, everyone knows that the most effective rulers of any society are the ones who bring their deep-seated personal issues to the table.

The 12 male contestants of When Women Rule the World will learn what it’s really like to be a woman in a mans world – if I had a dime for every time I was ever eliminated from competition for not fetching a sandwich, I’d have so many dimes!

Previously, people lined up to be exploited by the reality TV industry on an individual basis. This season, these 10 self-selected issue-riddled harpies (I haven’t seen the show, but I have watched FOX and think I am making a fair assessment of their casting model) are trying to take the reputation of all women as a group down the tubes with them. Who fucking gave them the right? It might be time to bring a feminist discussion about reality TV into the main conversation. Perusing the last few years of reality shows, I have a few questions.

1. What is this obsession with Survivor-like environments? OK, for a show called “Survivor” it makes sense to drop them in the middle of nowhere. But Kid Nation is being held in an abandoned ghost town, rather than say, a closed set designed to look someplace more familiar or at least modern. Meanwhile, this Amazonian clusterfuck is being set at “remote, primitive location.” Why not lock them in a highrise? Give them a mock company and make the women CEOs and the men administrative assistants?
2. Are Americans sufficiently media literate to enjoy these shows as harmless entertainment? That is to say, reality shows are getting less fun-and-games and more edgy and mean-spirited. When TV producers do things like play races and genders against each other for ratings, they’re really making a statement – are we the audience in a place to properly process that statement? If yes, then that’s fucking fantastic. If no, then the producers of these shows aren’t just exploiting the contestants, they’re exploiting all of us.
3. If this is the way TV is going to be from now on, is there any way to make it not suck besides being shameless unethical unimaginative hacks?

And finally, a smattering of the issues we’ll need to discuss if we’re going to talk about reality TV, filed under “those crying people on TV aren’t actors. They’re real people.”

Niche show star accused of fraud: “Flip this House” host lied about selling homes, did shoddy work, had his realtor’s license revoked before show ever aired.

Now authorities and legal filings claim that Leccima’s true passion was a series of scams that included faking the home renovations shown on the cable TV show and claiming to have sold houses he never owned…

The Better Business Bureau gives Leccima’s company, Leccima Capital Partners, an “unsatisfactory” rating, saying four complaints have been filed against it in three years.

One of the complaint was from McGee, who said she considered Leccima a friend — even vacationing in Brazil with him and his wife. She said the Leccimas stopped returning her calls once she started asking for her money back.

Dan Ward, an Atlanta-area youth minister, said he told state investigators that Leccima took about $100,000 from him to invest in real estate, but, as far as he knows, Leccima never developed anything with it. He hasn’t received his money back.

McGee said appearing on the TV show made it easier for Leccima to find such investors: “As soon as that first episode aired, he got phone calls from people saying, ‘I love you. Where can I send you some money?”‘

Question for discussion: People assume that if it’s on TV it must be true. Those people are, granted, stupid. Even so, it was Leccima’s exposure on the show that helped him scam people. How responsible is A&E for presenting a scam artist -who at best had a poor BBB rating and revoked real estate license- as a trustworthy individual? If he did crap work, why did the show make it seem otherwise?

Three years ago, a canceled appearance on “Extreme Makeover” leads to a woman’s suicide: This one really gets me. Woman goes on Extreme Makeover, is promised a new chin. Woman’s unstable, drug-using sister is encouraged to say terrible things about woman’s appearance while woman secretly listens. Surgery is canceled at last second when someone finally figures out that her recovery time doesn’t fit the filming schedule, guilt over the coerced statements causes sister to kill herself. Contestant gets no new chin, loses her sister, and gets to raise sister’s kids. Extreme Makeover stays on schedule.

Deleese Williams of Conroe, Texas, claims in her suit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, that the show’s producers promised to “transform her life and destiny” by changing her appearance through a number of cosmetic procedures, including a chin implant, eye lift and breast implants. The suit also charges that the show encouraged Williams’ sister, Kellie McGee, and other family members to disparage Williams’ looks on camera.

…Following the cancelled makeover, “[McGee] could not live with the fact that she had said horrible things that hurt her sister. She fell to pieces,” Wesley Cordova, a lawyer for Williams, tells New York’s Daily News. McGee died from a drug overdose on May 25, 2004.

The show arguably has no responsibility to make sure that contestant’s friends and relatives are not unstable depressives who have no business near a TV studio. However, was prodding family to say hurtful things about the contestant really necessary? And did they not have a responsibility to make sure the promised treatments would fit into the filming schedule before flying the contestant out and prepping her for surgery?

One of the reasons that reality TV shows are so cheap to produce is that they use ordinary people who do not need to be treated (or paid) according to SAG rules because they are technically ‘contestants’ not ‘actors.’ One of the things that ‘actors’ understand that ordinary ‘contestants’ don’t is exactly how harsh media production is. First rule of being a model, actor, musician or writer is learn to handle the rejection, rejection and more rejection. You will be dicked around. Does the fact that producers get their contestants cheaper than actors obligate them to treat the poor schmucks who just wanted to be on TV a little more humanely? I think so.

And these are the cut-and-dry questions, people. If we can’t get mainstream USA to think about shit like this, we’ll never be able to turn shows like When Women Rule the World into a useful discussion about gender in America, and the show will be worse than useless, doing more damage than it helps solve.