A Shot at Love...

Posted by Eva, '12Last year, my friend told me that he had officially found the worst show on television: A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila. I had heard a bit about it, but didn’t really know more beyond the basic premise: a bisexual woman on a dating show. So I got kind of bored over break and was watching TV online when I stumbled across this very same show. I decided to check it out, to see if it was as bad as my friend had said. And, because I get very easily addicted to terrible things, I soon had watched all of the first season.

Let me tell you. It is bad. Very bad. Imagine ‘The Bachelor” combined with “Jerry Springer” combined with every single stereotype of a bisexual women you can think of. Why is it so bad? It discredits bisexuals as people who need to figure out if they are into guys or into girls. Girls competed against girls and guys competed against guys, instead of people competing against people. It also totally played up the promiscuous stereotype.

But nothing in this show was as bad as the third season. By now they have gotten rid of Tila and changed the show around a little bit. What do we get? “A Double Shot at Love with the Ikki Twins.” Wow. Two bisexual blonde identical twins. Who are both “looking for love.” They do this by making out with EVERYONE (except each other). It is basically the stereotypical fantasy of a heterosexual man: make out with one blonde with large boobs and little clothing and then turn around and make out with her identical twin. If I thought that Tila was promiscuous and playing up that stereotype, these twins are even worse.

This show disgusted me from the first episode. The twins decided to play a trick on the contestants, but not revealing that there were two of them. They switch in and out, pretending to be the same girl. Finally one of the twins collects all of the contestants and says that she has a secret. She was born with “an extra part.” The way the editing played this up, combined with the comments of the contestants, it was made to seem like she was born with a penis. Of course, the viewers know what is going on, but the reaction that the contestants have, combined with the effect the producers want this to have on the viewers, is disgusting. I don’t know if they were poking fun at intersex people or trans people, but either way it was not cool.

It was so bad, but for some strange reason I kept on watching. I saw all 6 episodes that are currently on the MTV website. They have narrowed it down to 4 contestants, but I am still not sure if both twins are going to pick the same person, or they are each going to pick one of there own, or what they are going to do.

I guess one of the real problems that I have with this type of show is that it falls into the “furthering stereotypes” and “lesbians/bisexuals exist for the erotic pleasure of straight men” categories. I mean, seriously, can you imagine a bisexual man being given the same show. Real men kissing on tv? Never.

I dunno. I just feel like this is erasing any progress we may have made. I think back to the first Fruit Salad we did, on bisexuality, and this plays into everything that we discussed; being bi is a high school fad for girls (and now a pop hit thanks to Katy Perry), a bisexual just needs to figure out if they are into guys or into girls, I can keep on going on but I think you get my point... Oh yeah, one more thing. Everyone is drunk all of the time. Seriously. You hardly ever see them drinking anything but alcohol…

Watch this for a summary of the season: