The Surveillance of Women on Reality Television: Watching The Bachelor and The Bachelorette [Hardcover]

Rachel E. Dubrofsky examines the reality TV seriesThe BachelorandThe Bachelorettein one of the first book-length feminist analysis of the reality TV genre. The research found inThe Surveillance of Women on Reality TV: WatchingThe BachelorandThe Bachelorette meets the growing need for scholarship on the reality genre. This book asks us to be attentive to how the surveillance context of the program impacts gendered and racialized bodies. Dubrofsky takes up issues that cut across the U.S. cultural landscape: the use of surveillance in the creation of entertainment products, the proliferation of public confession and its configuration as a therapeutic tool, the ways in which women's displays of emotion are shown on television, the changing face of popular feminist discourse (notions of choice and empowerment), and the recentering of whiteness in popular media.Rachel E. Dubrofskyis assistant professor in the Department of Communication at University of South Florida.

The work aims to study media representations of women in a particular genre, reality television. It contains depictions of women based on gender and race, two categories of analysis that make sense of natural power relations and hierarchical differences. The author fully achieves her objective to provide a thorough analysis of the American reality show The Bachelor and its spin-off The Bachelorette. The choice of these programs, broadcast in prime time on ABC, is warranted by their success with the public, as evidenced by their longevity and large viewership. The choice of shows is all the more relevant as they inscribe women into a heterosexual group: the norms of femininity can be studied with respect to their male counterparts, thereby avoiding re-substantivation attempts such as those the author wishes to deconstruct. . . .The research is based on a solid theoretical framework, which articulates the work of cultural studies through Foucauldian methods. . . .Dubrofskylƒ.