True Life: I Have a Hot Mom

Reality television has been around for quite some time now. The show True Life on MTV is known for taking on young people and letting them tell their stories concerning various subjects. The episode of True Life: I Have a Hot Mom is about two teenage girls, Tori and Victory, whose mother’s care more about their physical appearance than anything else. Their priorities only run skin deep. This episode is a prime example of the fact that it is not only young girls that get sucked into the media’s idea of the ideal image, but older woman are being affected as well.

The first young girl that appears on the show is Tori. She’s 15 and her mother is particularly infatuated with being the center of attention. The way she earns this attention is through her looks and her extremely large breast implants give her this attention. Her mother also has tan skin, long bleach blonde hair and has clearly gone through some Botox. “The commodity-image system thus provides a particular vision of the world-a particular mode of self-validation that is integrally connected with what one has rather than what one is” (Jhally p. 201). Lacey is able to be achieve her idea of happiness because of the things she has been able to buy such as her breast implants. There are always advertisements on how to enhance one’s body to make themselves more content with whom they are. At one point during the show, there is a scene where Tori is out with her mother and she is walking around in a tiny bikini and men are whistling at her and asking her how big her boobs are. She even goes as far as to take a picture with one man. Tori’s mom, Lacey is contributing to the gendered gaze. Many young women are brought up thinking that if you don’t have big breasts then you won’t get male attention. This is a racialized hierarchy of thinking. Her focus is on pleasing men with her looks. She wears provocative clothing and even tries getting the attention of her daughters much younger male friends. During the episode, Tori even say’s at one point, “You’re more interested in putting on a show.” The media puts so much emphasis on pleasing the gendered gaze. From ads to commercials to movies, women are always displayed as sexual objects. Lacey is a perfect example of this and she is reflecting these values on her daughter. She cares solely about her looks. During a conversation about death, Lacey says, “At least I’ll die looking good.” Lacey is extremely concerned with her representations in society. In the article, Women, Representation and Culture, “Representation, then, is both a form of socialization and a form of utopia, representation can contribute to enforcing patriarchal stereotypes, but it can also envisage other possibilities, other ways of being” (Mayne p.163).

The second girl, Victoria that appears on the show is 19. Her mother, Gina insists on getting dolled up every day while her daughter is more of a tom-boy. During one point in the episode, Gina is going out with her girlfriends and they are all dolled up with their hair and make-up done. When Victoria tells her mother and her friends that she doesn’t like to dress up, they call her a nerd. This is typical of society today. It’s as if her mother and her friends are portraying the “Queen B” at school and Victoria is a nerd simply because she isn’t feminized. Victoria claims, “I’m not like my mom, my appearance isn’t the most important thing in my life.” Victoria’s mom continuously puts pressure on her to put more effort into her looks and wants her to join beauty pageants. At another point, Victoria is making cookies and her mom tells her that she is looking pudgy and shouldn’t eat them. This is an example of how even reality shows focus on ideas surrounding thinness. The ironic thing is that Victoria is actually very thin and so for her mother to call her pudgy just seems naïve. Gina also contributes to the gendered gaze in this episode. While telling Victoria that she should put on some make-up and dress better, she says “It’s like you’re trying to repel boys.” This statement clearly implies that the only reason Victoria should put more effort into her appearance is so that she will get male attention. Both of the mothers also reflect upon the idea of the internalized gaze. In both stories, we hear that the mothers had just recently gone through a divorce. In particular, Victoria says that her mother always cared about her looks but she cared even more after the divorce occurred. A coping mechanism for these women may have been to deal with their issues with men by trying to please them even more because of their internal issues with what has happened.

The texts characterization of “reality” impact the way that audiences perceive how they should look in society, women in particular. There was a downside and an upside to this episode though. For instance, although both mothers were obsessed with how they looked, their daughters were able to look past this and see that their appearance wasn’t everything. This makes me feel like there is hope after all. On the downside, it still shows that women are still being greatly influenced by the media, no matter their age and that appearances are vital in society.

                                                                 Works Cited

Jhally, Sut. "Image Based Culture." Gender, Race And Class in Media (2011): 199-205. 

          Print.

Mayne, Judith. "Women, Representation and Culture." Reading Women's Lives: 161-65.  

            Print.