The Girls Next Door

Sometimes I happen to come across reruns of E!'s show The Girls Next Door and the amusement of the subject matter of the show never ceases to amaze me.  Instead of waiting for one of the episodes to pop up, I went on youtube and found various clips from the show.  After looking through some of them, I picked this episode.  The episode opens with a few of the girls going to a trapeze class.  It starts as Bridget's (one of Heff's girlfriends in the show) idea, and she says that it is something that she has always wanted to try.  When they go, they make it seem like going to trapeze class is a totally normal event.  This is the biggest problem I usually have with this show is that they always seem to be doing something extravagant and seem to think that it is a totally normal thing.  The episode then goes into the girls panning the annual Midsummer Night's Dream Party, and being sure that they meet all of Heff's need at this party.

Usually when I watch this show I only think of how funny and ridiculous it is.  I mean, yeah this is someone's real life but this isn't REAL life.  It wasn't until I received it as an assignment that I asked myself how this may affect the socialization of young girls.  Me personally, I never watched anything like this when I was little.  I, however, had the luxury of a stay at home mom who could monitor what I was doing and what I was watching 24/7.  Now, this situation is much less common, and more children have their own bedrooms with their own TV in it.  With both parents working and out of the house and away from the children more often, I guess it is much more possible that kids are seeing this kind of stuff more regularly that I did.

If a young girl watched this show, she would be getting a lot of mixed messages about what her role in life is.  First, Heff has three girlfriends in his house where any number of hot young blondes with big boobs live.  This tells girls 1. that men will be more attracted to them if they look a certain way and 2. that it is a=okay for a man to be with multiple women.  On the show, all 3 of Heff's "girlfriends" tell him they love him, and he loves them too.  In my opinion, this is not what children should think of love as.  It should not be expressed to them that this kind of behavior is okay, because then you end up with girls sleeping around in middle and high school.  Another thing that this show tells girls is that they could live a fantasy life by being a playboy bunny.  That's all it is... a fantasy life.  There is no other place in the real world where young adults sleep until noon, hang out in their bikinis all day, and party all night.  The only place close to that is college, and that's not even the real world yet.  For example, the episode that I chose to write about earlier in this post, the girls went to a trapeze class.  In another episode I saw a few nights ago, the girls went to Paris and met the Prince.  This is worse than a Disney movie!!

As much as I am opposed to young girls watching this show, I have no opposition to it being on TV.  It's entertainment, pure and simple.  This is one of those times where maybe parents should be paying a little more attention to what their kids are watching on TV.  Every affect that this show could have on girls that I just discussed could be avoided by them just not watching it.  Or better yet.  Let your kids watch what they want to watch but pay enough attention to it and talk about it with them, explain to them that this is not normal, it is purely entertainment.