Jon and Kate plus 8

Reality TV Assignment
Show: Jon and Kate Plus 8
Channel: TLC

The reality TV show I chose to watch was Jon and Kate Plus 8. The premise of the show is that this family has eight children: a pair of twins and sextuplets. Three of the sextuplets are girls and three are boys. (The twins are also girls.) They are filmed going about their daily lives. The children are young: the sextuplets are about 3 and a half in the most recent season and the twins are seven. The cameras follow them around as the parents try to figure out how to raise eight children.

This show is aired on TLC. New shows are shown on Monday Evenings, but I watched it during a Thanksgiving marathon. I watched many episodes of the show for this analysis. TLC is one of the Discovery channels, and many of its shows are clearly made for female audiences. Its producer, Bill Hayes, has produced many similar shows for TV that feature “interesting” people. Stereotypically, females love children, and they would love to watch a show featuring eight toddlers. All of the advertisements were geared toward women. Many featured women cooking in kitchens, or shopping. They also featured families selling their products. The ads were targeting things that women find important. TLC in general caters to female audiences with shows such as What Not To Wear and A Wedding Story, which primarily feature female stories about things such as fashion and weddings which stereotypically interest women.

As I watched the show I found it very difficult to analyze it from a feminist perspective because I was so caught up in the cute kids. The children are adorable and viewers cannot help but sympathize with the parents. It seems relatively harmless compared to other reality TV shows. However, it is not impossible to look at this show with a feminist lens. First of all, it is a very hetero-normative family, with a mother and father who are married. The mother stays home and takes care of the kids, while the father works. Kate (the mother) also makes many comments such as “a good husband would…” She is very focused on male and female roles in a relationship. She also often dresses the girls in skirts and dresses, and makes comments about the girls keeping their clothes nicer than the boys. Although her observations regarding the differences between her boy children and her girl children may be correct, she often make generalizations about the differences between boys and girls that are very stereotypical. All of the girls also have long hair, and a lot of time is spent doing their hair with ribbons and clips. There is also clear socialization of gender that occurs. The girls had a “girl day” where they went with their mother to paint bowls and do other arts and crafts. When the boys had their “boy day” they went golfing. This is teaching them, and the viewers, that certain activities are appropriate for girls and other activities are appropriate for boys.

Jon (the father) is half Korean and Kate is white. There was a very interesting episode when the children discussed their relative “Asian-ness.” The kids were telling each other that they were or weren’t Asian, based on their physical features. Although this was adorable to watch, it emphasizes that they have learned that Asian represents something, and although it was a prized feature in this house, before the age of three these children understood that Asian was “different.”

Ib Bondebjerg wrote an article entitled “Public discourse/private fascination: hybridization in ‘true-life-story’ genres” in which he looked at the rise of reality TV, especially regarding programs that brought private life into the public sphere. Two sections of the article seemed to be applicable to this particular show. The other genre Bondebjerg discusses is what he calls “soft items in female discourse.” These programs feature a documentary-like style which “gives access to the voice of the publicly invisible.” The lives of “ordinary” people are the story, and the setting is intimate. In this case the viewer spends a day with this family, in their house and car, and on their vacations. There are no professional child-care workers analyzing their actions. It is just them being filmed, making it very easy for the audience to relate to them.

As a viewer, I really enjoy this show. I love watching the little kids, and the parents are,who are not saints, but cope with the situation pretty well. It seems very real. However, it does have aspects that can be critiqued from a feminist perspective. But if someone is forced to watch reality TV, I would recommend this show over America’s Next Top Model, or The Real Housewives of ____. I truly think it is much more “real.”