What you can learn from reality TV
February 11, 2014
We all have our guilty pleasures.
For some of us it’s junk food, for others it’s fashion and then there are those who are addicted to video games.
Mine unfortunately is reality TV, or what my friends and I affectionately call “ratchet TV.”
If there is a reality show on you can be sure that I watch it, whether it be all of the “Real Housewives” franchises, “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” and its spin-offs, “Love & Hip Hop,” “Cake Boss,” “Teen Mom” or even down to the more obscure ones like “Dance Moms.”
For some reason that I cannot explain I have an undying need to watch the somewhat scripted and staged drama of what happened in lives of people that I will never know.
That being said there are a lot of problems with reality TV and the perceptions and stereotypes that it creates, but I can say that there are good things that you can take away from it.
1. Tell the truth because your lies will come out eventually.
Whether it is during the season or at the highly anticipated reunion the truth will be laid out on the table.
It’s the same for real life. Lies just always find a way to be brought out into the open and when they are it is catastrophic.
Sure you probably won’t have a bottle of wine poured on your face and your girlfriend of 12 years won’t fight you when she finds out that you are actually married to another woman, but something will happen.
In all situations it is in your best interest to tell the truth.
2. Keep the right group of people around you.
When you are at your lowest point you need to make sure that you have people who truly care about you there to support you.
Even if they are helping you plot revenge on the rest of the “Bad Girls Club” or talking you out of drunkenly running down the boardwalk screaming “Where’s the beach?”
Have people in your life who are supportive of you, and I promise things will be a lot better.
3. The grass isn’t always greener on the other side.
On many of these shows we watch celebrities and millionaires struggle through mental health issues, health problems, drug addictions, family problems, divorce after divorce and money issues.
They are just like you and me except, you know, we don’t have cameras in our faces everyday.
Like they always say money can’t buy you happiness or, apparently, class and better-fitting clothes.
Stardom is in no way an escape from the trials and tribulations of life, it’s just a way to have them magnified for the entertainment of the world.
You shouldn’t envy someone else’s life because you never know what they had to go through to get there and the struggles that they are still facing.