PHOTO GALLERY: BLACK REALITY STARS
What is the reality for black women these days? If you’re watching TV, you may be a little confused. No less than eight reality TV shows are directly focused around a black woman.
LisaRaye McCoy stars in TV One’s “The Real McCoy;” Tameka “Tiny” Cottle and Toya Carter star together on the BET reality show “Tiny and Toya;” Former TLC star Rozonda “Chili” Thomas is the frontwoman for “What Chili Wants;” Shaq’s ex-wife Shaunie O’Neal holds court with the rest of the “Basketball Wives,” and Sandy “Pepa” Denton, Fantasia and Monica all have been featured on their own reality shows.
Aside from asking “When does it end?” the question that could also be posed is just how realistic these widespread television snapshots of black women really are.
Mainstream America has recently taken quite an interest in the lives of black women. Is it the impact of having a black couple in the White House or just savvy programming on the part of TV executives? Apparently, they’ve figured out that there is an audience that will slavishly follow the doings of rap stars’ baby mommas and ex-wives, NBA players’ baby momma and ex-fiancées as well as the challenging searches for true love undergone by performers who’ve become less celebrated for their music than for their messy family and relationship dynamics.
And of course, if anyone watched the second ABC “Nightline” special that aired recently on the plight of single black women, you’d recognize that this interest has moved outside of reality TV scenarios and onto a lurid curiosity about the lives of black women off-screen.
Reality TV can be a guilty pleasure in the same way that soap operas and scandalous daytime talk shows used to be – Maury Povich or Jerry Springer anyone? But is it real? Well, that’s questionable. For one, most of the women on these shows have resources the average woman can’t even imagine. Some of their bags and shoes alone are out of reach of a regular working wife or mother. O’Neal told “Essence” magazine that after Shaq filed for divorce, she came to the realization that she hadn’t paid a bill in eleven years.
Toya had her daughter, Reginae, with L’il Wayne as a young teenager and apparently has never worked a regular job. Tiny had a career as part of the group Xscape that predated her relationship with fiancée T.I., but since they’ve been together, it’s unlikely that money has been an issue.
Monica and Fantasia have been their family breadwinners for some time, as has reality queen Keyshia Cole. Chili’s son’s father is multimillionaire producer Dallas Austin, so it’s unlikely that she’s chasing down a child support check.
It’s certainly not to say that money and celebrity don’t come with their own share of issues. If these shows do anything positive, they’ve lifted the veil of these women’s lives to show the real problems that come with it. They’ve shown that celebrity don’t make you immune from real world problems. Tiny and her family are coping with her father’s Alzheimer’s disease and Toya is watching her mother struggle with drugs. Those are the kinds of things many families and black women can relate to.
But reality TV sees black women through a narrow lens– as either dealing with family dysfunction or in desperate need for love as though it’s an issue for black women alone. Finding love can seem unattainable for many men and women regardless of race; but in the world of reality TV it seems particularly discouraging for black women. If romance is found, it’s soon lost or in the case of those who …..
