Reality TV: Home Sweet Home For Dysfunctional Black Women

Used to be difficult for anyone who displayed any type of dysfunction at all to be successful. Not anymore in the age of buffoonery, self-centeredness and reality television. And if you are a black woman who is dysfunctional, no doubt this is the place for you.

I must be candid and admit I have not seen too much of this, but where else can one be a wife when she is divorced, was never married and has no husband. Where else can a former stripper be called a house wife and parlay it into to working for the Donald? Nowhere in the real world, but for certain on reality television. Yes, reality television, a never never land of contrived events that would never manifest in the general public. Like an amusement park, twenty women under the ages of twenty five can vie to obtain the pretend love of fifty year old hip hop hype men with gold teeth. Or chase after some famous professional athlete displaying groupie qualities while maintain they are the epitome of womanhood.

From Celebrity Apprentice contestants Star Jones and NeNe Leakes to Oxygen’s Bad Girls andVH1’s Basketball Wives, there is not one presentation of what it means to be lady-like. In all cases, regardless if one is an ex-wives or baby mamas of a wealthy professional athlete, they parade around as if they cannot go anywhere without their weave and acting as if the only word in their vocabulary is bitch. Even worse is the appearance that civil discord is impractical and that the only way to deal with a problem or conflict others is to scream, curse, and speak down upon others with the might of all of their anger; giving the locution that violence is the only way to solve ones problems. Even shows like Keyshia Cole promote dysfunction as if it is common place among African American women.

These show are an abomination and it is evident that more destructive is the increase in viewership they gather among young African American women. I used to think hip hop videos were bad, now I’m torn between the two. I just wonder will we ever see African America women portrayed as they really are in our community, or used to be? This thought has me afraid that this may be what our women have actually become.