Quote of the day:
“All Scalia is saying is women aren’t persons.” [Especially on The Bachelor.]
Who said it?
Find out via my latest blog post at the website for my book, Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty Pleasure TV.
Hint: This late night comedy host is a stalwart supporter of truthieness. If you enjoy […]

By Guest Blogger Joanna Brooks
The following is reprinted with permission from Religion Dispatches. You can sign up for their free daily newsletter here.
After watching the series premiere of Sister Wives, TLC’s new reality series about fundamentalist Mormon polygamist Kody Brown and his three—wait, now, four?!!—wives and thirteen—wait, now, sixteen?!!—children, what I find most remarkable is […]

Thank you to the fantastic students, faculty and staff of Kansas State, who turned out in droves for my talk Tuesday night, “Project Brainwash: Why Reality TV is Bad for Women (…and men, people of color, the economy, love, sex, and sheer common sense).”
As noted in this lovely article in the Kansas State Collegian, the […]

I’m honored to be participating in “Ladies of the Left: White Women Talk White Privilege, Progressive Media, Anti-Racism,” moderated and organized by WBAI’s Esther Armah (Host, Wake Up Call and Off the Page, and guest host, GRITtv).
WHEN: Monday, Sept. 27, 2010, 6:30 - 8:30 pm
WHERE: The Brecht Forum, 451 West Street bet Bank & Bethune; […]

KANSAS EVENT: Tonight is my first talk on reality TV for the fall semester, and I’m happy to bring WIMN’s multimedia lecture tour to Kansas State.
WHAT: Project Brainwash!: Why Reality TV Is Bad for Women (…and men, people of color, the economy, love, sex, and sheer damn common sense!)
WHERE: Kansas State University, Forum Hall
WHEN: Tonight, […]

In November, just in time for those all-important Nielsen sweeps (and in the same month as my book, Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty Pleasure TV will be published), E! will debut Bridalplasty, a headline-baiting reality show combining the desperation and body dysmorphia of Fox’s cosmetic surgery competition The Swan with the unbridled […]

There’s a reason so many media critics — and so many feminists — have intellectual crushes on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. Mixing genial bemusement with a never-back-down fervor for asking questions no one else in corporate news will, The Rachel Maddow Show regularly covers topics unaddressed anywhere outside of indy media, and does so from a […]

Every year on 9/11, corporate media push the PTSD buttons they installed in us on that first day, and those first few weeks, with 24-7 looped coverage of the Twin Towers getting struck by the planes, bursting into flames, and falling down, set to the backdrop of mass screaming, sobbing, confusion, panic.
Amid my own […]

OK, it’s official: my summer reality TV fast (a needed respite after sending the manuscript for Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty Pleasure TV off to my publisher) is over. To mark the occasion, I livetweeted analysis of the season premiere of America’s next Top Model, Cycle 15 — yes, 15.
Long-time WIMN’s Voices […]

Yesterday, I blogged about new network market research claiming that women want to see bloody, gory violence perpetrated by their small-screen counterparts — and why that interpretation of the research reflects a crisis of vision on the part of programming decision-makers.
Today, I discussed this issue with The Today Show’s Amy Robach, explaining that it’s not […]