The E! reality show, The Girls Next Door, shows the lives of Hugh Hefner’s girlfriends, probably the dumbest girls I’ve ever seen, and chronicles their adventures and crazy antics. Though I’ve only seen one episode (and that was a painful experience), from what I gather the basic formula of the show is that the girls get to do something cool, scuba diving in this case, and a camera crew follows them around while their doing it. Meanwhile, there’s all the usual fake drama and pointless subplots that we’ve come to expect from any good reality show. The question being posed about this show and shows like it is simple: Do they in any way effect the socialization of girls? Personally, I think that the impact is minimal. If these shows were the only influence in a girl’s life, then obviously it would have a negative effect. Who wouldn’t want to do all the cool things the Girls Next Door do without having to work for a living? However, there are plenty more factors that go into a girl’s socialization besides television. The kind of person a girl turns out to be is affected much more by environment than by anything else. Influences from family and friends far outweigh anything a television could do. Even as kids are growing up, they realize that things they see on TV are not how life really is. It’s the same reason that kids who grew up watching Loony Tunes didn’t make a habit of dropping heavy objects on each other.
That being said, as long as parents do a satisfactory job of explaining to their kids that these shows are not as “real” as they are made out to be (or better yet not letting them watch at all), any minimal influence that programs like this may have can be negated. Furthermore, some of these organizations like the Parents Television Council that seem to think that it’s the network’s responsibility to keep shows like The Girls Next Door off the air are completely out of their minds. E! is a privately owned network with no obligation to do anything for anyone, and if they think they can make more profit off of stupid reality shows than anything else then so be it.
Finally, I just want to say that if I go my entire life without seeing another episode of the Girls Next Door then I can probably die happy. Man, how do people watch this garbage?!
That being said, as long as parents do a satisfactory job of explaining to their kids that these shows are not as “real” as they are made out to be (or better yet not letting them watch at all), any minimal influence that programs like this may have can be negated. Furthermore, some of these organizations like the Parents Television Council that seem to think that it’s the network’s responsibility to keep shows like The Girls Next Door off the air are completely out of their minds. E! is a privately owned network with no obligation to do anything for anyone, and if they think they can make more profit off of stupid reality shows than anything else then so be it.
Finally, I just want to say that if I go my entire life without seeing another episode of the Girls Next Door then I can probably die happy. Man, how do people watch this garbage?!
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