Competitive Success

“Individual actions and choices are frequently evaluated according to a schema of investment and return…and while everyone is presumed to be malleable and self-maximizing, success is inherently competitive” (Ouellette 91).

As I read this piece by Laurie Ouellette, I thought about all of the reality shows that I have watched. When I read this quote, I thought about one of my favorite reality tv shows Bad Girls Club. Though the show is not technically a competition-based show, that is what each season ends up being. The show consists of seven women living in a mansion together for a few months, typically in popular cities such as Miami or Los Angeles. Most of the time, the girls come into the house saying that they are not there there to pick fights or start trouble, but that they will fight and defend themselves if they have to because that is what “bad girls” do. They typically say that they are just there to enjoy the mansion, events, alcohol, etc. that they are provided with. However, as this alone would not be enough to make the show interesting, there always ends up being many fights, arguments, altercations, and drama, which is what the show is famous for. The girls inevitably have to compete with each other to prove they are the “baddest girl,” or else they risk getting bullied by the other women in the house or sabotaged by the producers and kicked off the show. Though they come to the house to “focus on themselves,” their need to be successful on the show inherently breeds violent, dramatic competition.

For the image, I chose the promotion picture from my favorite season of Bad Girls Club, which is season 3. For the audio, I chose to use a clip from one of the reunion episodes from Season 9. In the clip, one of the girls named Christina makes a dramatic entrance as she comes on stage and announces that she is ready to fight anyone if need be and asks the audience if she is pretty than one of the other girls. This audio clip displays the inevitable competitive nature of the show. I downloaded the audio from the full YouTube video using KeepVid and trimmed it down to this clip using AudioCutter. The process of finding and cutting the audio was easier than I thought it would be and I feel that it accurately reflects the quote I chose to use.