Wanna do some summertime deconstruction? Take the name of P. Diddy supergroup “The Pussycat Dolls” (best known for the achingly good single “Don’t Cha” and celebrity guest performers) and remove the felines. This is the aim of the reality TV show “The Search For the Next Pussycat Doll.”
The concept? Place 20-odd insecure ladies with the burning desire to become pseudo-strippers/pop stars in a Los Angeles studio and watch what happens…hopefully while trying to incite lesbianic behaviour. Hosted by Sugar Ray’s Mark McGrath (who is silently cursing the rehab sponsor who thought this would be a good idea) and judged by Geffen Records CEO David Geffen and infamous “didn’t snitch” hosebag L’il Kim, it’s hard to identify what this show was trying to achieve.
The final three contestants included Chelsea, a hopeful, blunt-banged singer who used to be “totally obese, like 150 pounds,” Melissa R., who strived for her dreams against the wishes of her successful doctor parents, and the winner Asia, a proud 18-year-old single mother. But what were they competing for? The irony is that aside from that one chick with the pencil-thin eyebrows, nobody in the Pussycat Dolls actually sings. At best, the competition offers the chance to become another ornamental figure, a glorified video ‘ho. Let’s pray that they’re hotter than your girlfriend.
One wannabe Doll admitted that she had curled her long brown hair for hours, trying to differentiate herself from yet another Melissa. In another episode, Melissa R. clinched the challenge for having the most rambunctious rump shaking-determined by the level of enthusiasm from a group of perplexed Las Vegas tourists. To properly appreciate this absurdity you need to picture four young girls on stage (a silver pole surreptitiously placed to one side), awkwardly circling each other in spike heels while warbling the lyrics to Christina Aguilera’s “I Turn to You.” “There was no emotion to that performance,” remarked Geffen in his $1000 frames to a contestant holding back tears, lest her fake eyelash/mascara concoction implode. “You have to feel that song in your gut,” added L’il Kim helpfully.
Robin Antin, the omnipotent creator of the group, had facial features so heavily plasticized she could be better categorized as some sort of living sculpture. Her barking demands about “the female empowerment that the PCD represents!” were blasted through the inner recesses of her nose as she willed her lids to blink.
I suppose that there are plenty of girls out there who burn carbs to Carmen Electra’s strip-aerobics and lip-synch lyrics like “You wanna chill in my Lamborghini, You wanna look but you don’t wanna see” into the rear-view mirror of their Honda Civics, but they aren’t subject to the scrutinizing gaze of middle America. The object of “The Search for the Next Pussycat Doll” was to objectify. And unlike Ken Mok’s “America’s Next Top Model” (which represents everything that is captivating about reality TV), we never learned anything about the contestants and we really didn’t care to either.
So what if Mariela was a great dancer? She was, after all, gaining weight due to the pressures of touring. Is it really water-cooler worthy to gripe that Sisley told Asia that she looked like a drag queen? Maybe the precedent was set after the pilot featured a montage of several of the girls vomiting due to a “flu outbreak.” The reason that we want to watch real people onscreen (even if they’re eating bugs or wooing Flavor Flav) is that we care about them enough to invest entirely in an alien identity. While most people are prepared to put up with the oxymoron of “reality TV” in exchange for some quality entertainment, these empty idols are all thigh highs and split kicks, which for now earns them the dubious title of Fakest Reality yet.
