Date My Stereotype

If you don't enjoy a little masochism and disgust, do yourself a favor and don't watch the above clip. If, like me, you see a car wreck and can't look away, enjoy all ten horrible minutes of it.

I saw these clips from an episode of an MTV show called Date My Mom a few days ago. I don't really watch TV and had never seen this show before. Apparently the concept is that a young man goes on dates with three middle aged mothers and then - based purely on how he gets along with them - picks one of their daughters to date, before he even meets the potential young women themselves. In this particular episode, the twist is that the man is gay and will wind up with one of the mom's sons.

The dude doing the dating (alliteration alert), Sam, starts out by saying that he is a makeup artist who loves "sleepovers," proving his inability to wear a shirt, and showing off his pint-sized dog. At this point I was thinking, okay, there are going to be a lot of stereotypes here. But! It gets even better. He then expresses his hatred for "flamers and queens," in a perfectly g0yworthy fashion. And later on in the video, he trashes one guy whom he decides against dating for being a "queen" when he's "looking for a king," and the other rejected date for having "sharpened eyebrows." Honestly, I don't even know what that means, but from his tone one can tell that this is another too-gay trait.

It seems ridiculous for him to bash others for being a "slut" and "tramp," and say that he's looking for a serious relationship, when he's obviously concerned primarily with how hot his date turns out to be. Picking a guy based on how he fits into gender and sexuality stereotypes hardly seems like the path to a healthy relationship. And honestly, I think it's a little bit slutty to spend most of your TV appearance flexing for the cameras.

(There are also issues of misogyny here. I don't know how I feel about mothers being used as pawns in their sons' sexual games, being ordered by their children to go out and get them some ass. There are lots of jokes about age here that seem to be saying, these women are over 40 and thus couldn't possibly have sexuality themselves; the only way they're getting to go out with an attractive man is through a game show by which they can earn their sons sex. I don't understand why older men can be considered hot at any age - my sister still has a crush on Richard Gere, just shy of 60 - whereas women's sexuality is supposed to expire after 3 or 4 decades on earth. Bullshit.)

What bothers me the most is that the media should be beyond this in its portrayal of the gay community. It's good that MTV was open to having gay men on a dating show, and to show these mothers (mostly) accepting of their sons' sexuality. However, we've been there, done that, got the tight fitting t-shirt. My favorite line is when one of the sons tells his mom to emphasize his love for football, not "because of the tight shorts" but "because gays can like football, too!" Already a pathetic attempt to make these people less-than-total caricatures, its awfulness is completed when the mom replies, "Do you play quarterback or receiver?" Christ.

I've been watching old DVDs of Friends lately to de-stress as finals approach, and I have been shocked at the number of times that queer sexuality comes up. In literally almost every one of these mid-90s episodes, something is mentioned about someone being or "acting" gay. 10 years ago, this was not so bad - at least they were talking about sexuality and making gays a part of the lives of average people. It normalized the idea of queer sexual orientations. At the same time, most of the references were stereotypical and, while not hateful or outright judgmental, also not particularly positive.

It's like they're still trying to say, guess what? There are gay people in America! They live and work in your midst! I think that people have this pretty much figured out. Simply having mentions of gay people, winking and saying "not that there's anything wrong with that!", is not progress. We need positive portrayals that dare to - I don't know - maybe not follow every gay stereotype available. There are a few TV shows that are doing this right now. Ben recently had good things to say about gay themes and a gay character on the HBO vampire series, True Blood. Personally, I think that ABC's Ugly Betty, which features Rebecca Romijn as a transgender executive and several gay male characters, is probably the most gay-friendly mainstream show on TV today. We need to see more of that and less of this shit.