Beauty and the Geek

A few weeks ago I stumbled upon Beauty and the Geek, a reality show exec produced by Ashton Kusher. VH1 had a marathon of eight or shows, getting our "no she/he did not just say that"-appetite primed for the new season starting. TV marathons, oh how I hate/love you!!

I started watching and it's addicting, as all good reality TV is. But in this show, I couldn't stop laughing at what the geeks (boys) and beauties (girls) say. The premise, for ppl who have not discovered this show, is having beautiful women paired with complete geeks (but likable, able to talk and interact bc believe me, I've known some true geeks that would have a difficult time being on this show and interacting with real humans) and competing to not be kicked off each week and be the last couple left. The girls compete in "boy/geek" games and the guys have to do "girl/beauty queen" tasks. One sample conversation:

Geek: What does RADAR stand for?
Beauty: I don't know. What?
Geek: (Explains. I'm too lazy right now to google it.)
Beauty: But where's the "I"?
Geek: (Pause, tilts head) There's no "I" in RADAR.

Ha ha ha. I may not know what RADAR stands for but I do know how to spell it. Yes, the girls on this show are not the brightest bulbs. But then true to their names, the geeks are often Star Trek devotees or "own 2500 comic books," as the captions below them helpfully point out. Ha ha, it's funny what the show gives them as titles. Besides "owns 2500 comic books," we have "Had a perfect SAT score," "In a Star Wars band," "EECS student at Berkeley" (Hey! Oh yeah ok), and oddly "A MIT grad student." I guess just attending MIT promotes you to geek status. But yeah, this guy didn't break any MIT grad student stereotypes. From the website, another guy's quotes says, "I can recite around five digits of pi and I like strategy board games and Sci-Fi/Fantasy literature." Wow. Have you considered a successful career in Silicon Valley?

The girls are "Playboy cybermodel," "Bikini Model," and "UFC Ring Girl." Yep.

The show is entertaining and on tonight on the CW at 9pm.

All that leads to my actual point which is I feel like there's a new trend in reality shows helping geeky guys build confidence and be cool and be able to talk to hot women. I'm all for these nerdy self-conscious guys getting makeovers and increasing their confidence to relate socially (sometimes we all need help in this area, right?) but why aren't they encouraged to talk to the non-hot women? What about the normal girls?

A new reality which looks really offending (and reading an interview with the main guy didn't help) has this guy called Mystery, some self-titled Pick-up Artist, that says he can pick up any hot women and has, tons of times. He bring in these schlobby geeky guys and teaches them his "art" (gag), and kicks off one guy a week until one guys remains and is his "Apprentice." Part of how he picks up women is he insults/jokes (depending on your view) them to disarm them. Wow, what a winner.

Again, I'm totally pro-becoming a new person but why does is the new and improved Guy only taught/encouraged to pick up the beautiful women? Why isn't part of his training to see past outside beauty and see women not as objects? I'm aware how men in our society/world place value on how pretty their partner is but I wish with the plentiful reality shows out there, at least one could try this more healthy, affirming to women approach. I don't want to see another makeover for women show, another The Swan or whatever crap where they use plastic surgery. I want a show that takes women as they are and helps guys get over their model obsessions and interact for real, with real women. But I guess that would be impossible to come out of Hollywood.

I dare you Ashton. You've done Punked! and Beauty and the Geek. C'mon, you need a new project. This idea's a freebie, I claim no rights. I dare ya!