Tuesday, December 18, 2007

(A Shot of Love Makes Me) Want My MTV?

I am waiting with baited breath to see who wins a shot of love with Tila Tequila. This is embarrassing on many levels. Like any other piece of reality TV whose premise is that someone will find true love, A Shot of Love is a crappy show. I got hooked while visiting folks who have MTV. I’d watch on the sly, flipping channels to CNN to avoid detection whenever footsteps came remotely near my door. So please don’t tell anyone my dirty secret. On second thought, do tell. Spread the word. No one will believe you anyway. This vice is way out of character.

Or maybe it’s not. The force behind my obsession with the reality soap-opera is Dani, a firefighter from Florida. Dani is easy on the eye, and, compared to other lesbians on TV, oh so butch. I am captivated by how her “futchness” plays out in popular entertainment. As we approach the finale, I wonder whether a non-feminine woman can succeed “win” in mainstream media, especially at the expense of her 16 strapping male competitors.

Following A Shot of Love reminds me of my teenage habit of reading Annie on My Mind or Two Teenagers in Twenty to assure myself other queers existed. Even in the age of the L Word ‘mos (homos) on TV are as invisible to me as they were in the halls of high school, so their presence is intriguing. Apparently this still applies when the show features a silly plot and perpetually tipsy lesbians who I don’t for the most part find attractive. Go figure.

1 comment:

Rebecca said...

Ha! I saw that show at the gym the other day. The finale was pretty heartbreaking, no? I have to say, though, for entertainment value I preferred VH1's top 40 reality tv moments.