Reality Gendervision

Brenda R. Weber is Associate Professor in Gender Studies at Indiana University, where she holds adjunct appointments in American Studies, Cultural Studies, Communication and Culture, and English. She is the author of Women and Literary Celebrity in the Nineteenth Century: The Transatlantic Production of Fame and Gender and Makeover TV: Selfhood, Citizenship, and Celebrity, which is also published by Duke University Press.

“This book is a must-read for all who are interested in gender studies as well as for economists, sociologists, and people from social sciences who are interested in the social and political effects of the ongoing recession and the rising economic inequality in the United States and Europe. It provides an important missing link between feminist economist and sociological analyses of the gendered causes as well as the gendered impact of the financial crisis and the recession….”  - Margunn Bjørnholt (Women's Studies) “This collection of essays is an informative, interesting, and entertaining read, even for someone who has never watched a reality program because the essays are so well-written, and synopses so well-intertwined, that one can easily understand the arguments.” - Sarah Gawronski (Journal of Popular Culture)

• Acknowledgments Introduction. Trash Talk: The Gender Politics of Reality Television / Brenda R. Weber Part I. The Pleasures and Perils in Being Seen 1. The "Pig," the "Older Woman," and the "Catfight": Gender, Celebrity, and Controversy in a Decade of British Reality TV / Su Holmes and Deborah Jermyn 2. Reality TV and the Gendered Politics of Flaunting / Misha Kavka 3. Keeping Up with the Aspirations: Commercial Family Values and the Kardashian Brand / Maria Pramaggiore and Diane Negra 4. When America's Queen of Talk Saved Britain's Duchess of Pork: Finding Sarah, Oprah Winfrey, and the Transatlantic Politics of Self-Making / Brenda R. Weber 5. Wrecked: Programming Celesbian Reality / Dana Heller Part II. Citizenship, Ethnicity, and (Trans)National Identity 6. Abject Femininity and Compulsory Masculinity on Jersey Shore / Amanda Ann Klein 7. Supersizing the Family: Nation, Gender, and Recession on Reality TV / Rebecca Stephens 8. "Get More Action" on Gladiatorial Television: Simulation and Masculinity on Deadliest Warrior / Lindsay Steenberg 9. Jade Goody's Preemptive Hagiography: Neoliberal Citizenship and Reality TV Celebrity / Kimberly Springer Part III. Mediated Freak Shows and Cautionary Tales 10. "It's Not TV, It's Birth Control": Reality TV and the "Problem" of Teenage Pregnancy / Laurie Ouellette 11. Intimating Disaster: Choices, Women, and Hoarding Shows / Susan Lepselter 12. Freaky Five-Year-Olds and Mental Mommies: Narratives of Gender, Race, and Class in TLC's Toddlers & Tiaras / Kirsten Pike 13. Legitimate Targets: Reality Television and Large People / Gareth Palmer 14. Spectral Men: Femininity, Race, and Traumatic Manhood in the RTV Ghost-Hunter Genre / David Greven Bibliography Videography Contributors Index