people labels-intelligence versus beauty



Beauty and the Geek is a popular reality television programmed in which contestants-the ‘geeks’ and ‘beauties’ are paired up together to compete in challenges, all for a chance not to be eliminated at the end of each episode and be sent home. Although I quite like this programme for its entertainment value, I think that it has a lot to answer for. Firstly, its portrayal of ‘beauties’ and ‘geeks’ is very much stereotyped. Whilst the beauties are pretty, pretty stupid and girly, the geeks are socially awkward, not very attractive (by our current standards of beauty) and ridiculously clever. Whilst this stereotyping is bad enough, in that it encourages the fixing of people into judgmental, restrictive boxes, it does little  to support intelligence. Whilst the beauties are often laughed at for their lack of intelligence, it is the geeks who are given makeovers during the series. This is because they do not seem to fit the mould for what is attractive in our current society. I think that this is completely degrading for people because, by doing so, all sense of character is lost from them and they become boring, generic people. All sense of individuality is taken away from them, all sense of personality, so that they can become, in our society’s view, ‘attractive’. What I find particularly annoying is that, whilst the show seems to support both the Beauties and the Geeks, it clearly favors the Beauties-they never have intelligence makeovers. This just shows how beauty is more favored in our society-after all, the geeks could be improved but it was not thought of as important enough to improve the Beauties. What I also find annoying is that the Geeks on the show are generally males and the Beauties generally females (in one season, however, there was a male beauty and a female geek). This just reinforces the stereotype that men are more dominant and intelligent than women and that all women are good for is being pretty.  It is especially disturbing that children no doubt watch this show, too-it doesn’t have any age restrictions-. They are no doubt being told by it that they should only aspire to be pretty and dumb, because that is what television wants them to be. Is this really what we want or children to be exposed to? I think that this is shocking and, whilst I like the programme, do not like how it portrays the average person of today.