True Story: What Reality TV Says about Us

by Danielle J. Lindemann

These shows aren’t just telling us how we’ve felt about sex, gender, and dating in the past. They’re showing us—in over-the-top ways that involve gesturing to body parts—how we feel about those things right now. Sure, post–sexual liberation, post–Sex and the City, post–Miley Cyrus straddling a wrecking ball, and post–J. Lo pole dancing at the Super Bowl, overt female sexuality is more culturally acceptable than it was in the mid-twentieth century—even if all of these examples have also stirred controversy. But we haven’t completely moved past rigid ideas about women, men, and sex. The 1950s notion of women as the “controllers of sex,” with the responsibility to “enforce sexual limits,” for instance, is still sharply reflected in the way that we respond to sexual assault.15 I’m far from the first to point out the proliferation of educational programs, with their groin kicks and their rape whistles, devoted to teaching women how to prevent assault and the relative sparsity of those that seek to curb potential male assailants.