Feeling a Little Guilty

Today we were talking about reality TV in class. I feel a little guilty. I am not one to watch a ton of reality TV but I am in the group that is doing the twitter reality show as a project. My comment in class about men not feeling guilty making women on reality shows into stereotypes knowing that women will watch is partly rooted in my experience playing a stereotypical character.

I play the good-girl. I am supposed to be the girl who is peppy and almost too nice. Simply put I am the character that makes being good seem undesirable and I feel a little bad about it. We also have the other female stereotypes and the male ones too, like Adrian the "flaming gay guy" or as some call him "the human torch." One of the first things we did as a group was come up with our character stereotypes, even before we came up with names. We knew that all of us needed a group to connect with but we also needed to be, on some level, hated.

Now that I think about it more, the reason we did all this was to create something people want to talk about and the only way we knew people would talk about it is if they could totally judge us. So we set it up so it would be easy for them to judge us. Not that there is anything wrong with the goody two shoes or the flaming gay guy, but it is sort of understood that we are supposed to do play these characters to the point that it leaves a bad taste in your mouth (the kind of bad taste people have to talk about to make it go away). We take the stereotype and explode it, just like the people in Jersey Shore. This is what has me feeling a little guilty. I do not want to reenforce a stereotype that is obviously not true or give anyone a bad name. At the same time though, it seems to be what people think is worth watching or, in our case, reading.

It is kind of a moral dilemma. Being purposefully annoying and a little too good to give my character and that stereotype a bad name does not seem to really help society, but at the same time playing a normal girl who appreciates doing good things for people without being annoying does not get me many followers, or a good grade.
One thing is for sure, I did not expect to feel guilty when I started this project.