Will we look back on programmes like Naked Attraction and Love Island and think wtf?

[VeloVixen]

at the risk of sounding like Mary Whitehouse I think that now to be honest.

in the Russell Brand fall out I saw a clip yesterday of him and Alan Carr getting the female, single audience members of Alan Carr’s show to stand up while Russell walked round deciding which ones were “nice”. The theme been that Russell was picking who he was going to take back and shag after the show. That went out on channel 4 with everyone laughing and thinking it was ok.

Will we look back at current shows which objectify women and men, judge them on their looks, their penis size, their pubic hair, whether they are in a couple or not and think what the hell were we doing letting stuff like that be broadcast? Remember stuff like Kanga on Big Brother masturbating while drunk with a beer bottle in the garden. What on earth were the tv executives doing letting stuff like that happen to drunk, vulnerable youngsters? We had Jeremy Kyle exploiting vulnerable people and look what happened. But it continues to some extent.

I sort of agree with OP, but there's usually a bit of nuance to justify it. For instance, Naked Attraction is purely about judging a date of physical naked looks, but it's not judgemental. I mean, the host isn't nasty about anyone's body and frankly they don't seem to look too great to me. It really isn't physical elitism so one could argue it's refreshing to see sex apportioned to everyone, not just 9/10s the whole time.

Likewise, Brand's take was seen as a bit silly, not to be taken seriously, in an era when everyone was a bit off the rails sexually. I don't endorse it, but that was the context in which a lot of far worse behaviour could go on. I'm not entirely sure however that if you delete that or cancel it, everything follows suit in society. They don't show It Aint Half Hot Mum now except on channel 56 and its mainstay of humour - being set in the Army - is bullying. Doesn't mean that bullying doesn't go on in public bodies like the Army, the Met, the NHS, Westminster and so on, far from it.

The Word - that was another Channel 4 horror wasn't it.

Well I think that now and have from the start

Yep, I’m amazed they are considered acceptable. Also feel the same about Take me Out.

Exactly this!

I think it’s the worse show they’ve ever created!

I cringe for the people who go on it or the people who work on the show.

I’m sorry but I think everyone is conveniently ignoring online dating and the pressure to share videos and pictures of yourself in compromising positions. This and sexting are way more socially acceptable/ expected these days than in the noughties.

I agree that things have changed with regard to media and tv (page 3 gone thank god) but I was reading in Grazia fairly recently that “naked pics” and “sexting” are the currency of modern dating and to lose your inhibitions and go with it.

To my mind this is much worse for women now- this expectation to put yourself at risk. There are websites where you can zoom in on streets where these photos have been sent from and men actually share/ sell these pics of ordinary women. It’s rife.

So I don’t agree we have more respect for women as society … it’s just shifted and women are told lies that they’re empowering themselves by sharing naked photos of themselves with near strangers. I think we’ll look back OLD with horror.

I live in France and one of my colleagues saw an episode of Naked Attraction when he was in the UK on a business trip. On the basis of that alone, he thinks Brits are insane.

Agree with the people who say that things are likely to get worse before they get better.
Society as a whole is pushing the same old sexist expectations, beauty expectations based on the male gaze, and at times obvious misogyny, but dressing it up as female empowerment.

The overall message is that you have to look a certain way, behave a certain way and that a whole multitude of sex experiences should be part and parcel of everyone's sex life.

Combine it with some of the content aimed at teens on sex, beauty and relationships and I'm very cynically viewing it as an overall push to lower boundaries.

There’s an article in the Mail about how exploited and horrible the women on Gok’s Naked Beauty contest felt. There is a photo of him groping a lady’s breasts!

Same.

The way he used to speak to the women on that show was downright derogatory at times. But the whole "It's ok ladies I'm gay so get out your muffin top" attitude allowed him to get away with it.

Does anyone remember the TV show Maury? Actual children, like pregnant 14 year olds or sexually active 11 year olds would be taken on to have audience members call them names such as nasty ho.

I remember watching it when I'd bunk off school and being the sensitive little pleb i was I once cried because some woman didn't know who her DC's father one and she was really badly humiliated, I felt really embarrassed for her, looking back it is absolutely shocking.
(And I no longer cry at talk shows, thankfully)

I expect Love Island we might think why.

In a slightly different vein, Mrs Brown's Boys, foul mouthed so-called comedy. I think it was a practical joke for it to be commissioned, and whoever did is laughing that so many people watch such a bad show.

I'm another one who already thinks wtf and doesn't watch this shit.

But in general, I think it will get worse and then it will get better. As a society we have become more progressive with TV in the sense of no longer accepting openly sexist,. homophobic or and e.g. fat jokes. Even shows from 5 years ago seem dated. I was watching Derry Girls recently (2018) and one of the ongoing jokes is that everyone thinks that the boy main character is gay. It's really jarring, even knowing that it's set in the late 90s, because that sort of joke just doesn't get through today. I think the problem is that at the minute things that are considered sexual are automatically classed as sexually liberating, and so progressive/ feminist. We need to reclassify the sense in which freely chosen sexual actions can still be rooted in misogyny, and so something that we shouldn't show on TV.

I already do now.

Exactly.

Quite relieved so many people think these are crap shows; given all the press and fuss about them it can seem otherwise.

I think they DO - they know that it's WTF, they know it's shocking, that's exactly why they make them because they want people to go "OMG did they really put that on telly?? Gotta watch it!"

I seem to remember reading an opinion piece in the Guardian some years back imagining a tv show where the naked contestants were forced to have sex in the dark at gun point, something like that anyway, saying that was where tv was heading. I keep waiting for that show to be announced.

Well someone’s watching them.
Reality shows are cheap to make I think, and the next one has to be more controversial than the last. Not for me but loads do.

Celebrity juice is another one, how holly and fearne could appear on that I'll never know. Revolting programme and presenter.

I hope they look back on Big Brother and understand that it's strange.

I already do think WTF?!

I remember in the 90s (I think) coming home trolleyed from the pub, switching on the TV and being confronted with a bollock-naked Keith Chegwin on Channel 4. I thought I had been spiked and just sat there, transfixed, believing I was tripping balls.

THAT was insane. The recent stuff has nothing on it.

Please tell me someone remembers that insanity?

Oh blimey I remember a naked Cheggers! 🙈

So it wasn't acid? Yikes.