Besides, I don’t think American women lack as much power in their households as you think. The problem as I see it is that women may have a lot of say in their own families’ lives (a lot of people will report that their mother ruled the roost), but when it comes to activity in the public sphere, we are massively disadvantaged.

I’m reminded of what my mum used to say to us, “if you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” I think it applies to people you know, and people you know by name/reputation only.

(Just to make sure I’m clear, critical analysis and research is whole other different ball park, and not what is meant by the “nothing nice to say” statement.)

I’m an Americanist and a scholar of popular culture, so I’m not saying “there’s nothing to learn from watching reality TV.” Au contraire, a careful reading of it reveals plenty about the gap between what we say we value and what we actually value as a culture.

First off, let me start out by saying I teach cultural anthropology. I love teaching it. I like teaching students about tolerance of other cultures and life choices and reminding them that they can judge up and down all they want but it really won’t get them anywhere.

I watch the Kardashin show as well. In fact I have found myself watching a lot of reality TV and sharing my analyses with my classes. I like to see how different aspects of American culture are highlighted in these shows and how they really, even if they are exaggerated point to how our cultural standards and norms dictate our belief system of gender roles. And for all of the crap that does get exaggerated in the Kardashian show, what is explicitly different than is expected of the patriarchy that is American society is how important the women are in that household. How much control they have, hell they are practically a matrilineal group in America! Matrilineal! The rest of our culture, although it is slowly changing now, it a patrilineal, man comes first, take the husbands name, men make the most money, crap-shoot.

We can bash the Kardashians, and bash the women who “gobble-up” the show, but maybe, just maybe if we get past the exaggerations of reality TV we can see that these women (to some extent) and showing other women that they too can be as important or more important in American households.

Maybe I am just looking at it more optimistically, and yes I agree that people should probably get lives, but I don’t think a blog post ranting about them is very useful.

We really are seeing the same thing with Kim Kardashian–a woman who decides that she’s going to embrace the sex scandal instead of letting it shame her, who is ambitious, who likes to take her of her appearance however she wants to.

Yeah, again, she could actually be a not-so-nice person, but I see more attacks on her looks, hers sisters’ looks, her sexuality, her ambition, yeah…you get the picture.

I would not go that far.

We, as a nation, are an atrocious bunch of schadenfreude addicts and self-important, celebrity-obsessed weasels. Just my two cents.