Anyone who currently does or ever has watched television has a guilty pleasure program. I've had many but recently, along with tabloids and tabloid television I have begun to cut out most of my guilty pleasure shows. I just don't feel the need to fill my head with tons of vile, useless crap like I used to.

But there is one show I can't give up. The opening credits are incredibly well-designed (anyone know who did them?), the theme song is sickeningly, and I mean SICKENINGLY infectious... and damn it I just enjoy watching those girls fight and obsess about stupid shit. That show is "Sorority Life" on MTV.

Yes I know there is a male counterpart. But "Fraternity Life" is boring. Similar but masculinised design (why it's blue for boys of course!), same obsessing about stupid shit, yet somehow less exciting. Actually I know exactly why Sorority Life is better... females are cruel. I'm a female. I've been through public school, post-secondary school and I've worked in offices... when females are nasty, they're fucking brutal. I have lots of good ideas and thoughts about why that is that I won't go into here. Let's just say that it's a learned behaviour. No female is born passive-aggressive. Academics aside, when I watch Sorority Life, I can see it all in action without being in the middle of it. I get front row seating into the crazy world of sororities without actually being in a sorority. I can hate on the girl with the super-long American tips and spiral perm and root for the alienated girl who is intellegent, but insecure and fucked up enough to have considered being a part of "the team" in the first place (until she says something really dumb that I can't get behind and it's all over).

Here's where the guilt part of guilty pleasure kicks in for me.... It's too easy. I think we all "get" that shows like this reduce people down to something one-dimensional. It's easy for me to hate on the American tips/spiral perm chick because she's presented as a non-human, future Stepford Wife. I used to be okay in believing that when you sign up for that kind of show, you must know what you're getting into. I even used to believe that I'm in this camp and people like supernails girl are on the opposite side of the field. That it was okay for me to dehumanise her because she did it to herself everyday. But I don't know anymore. I know better. I don't want to participate anymore in a culture of binary opposites. And everytime I turn that damn show on, I'm admiting that there is a little side of me that is entertained watching other people suffer and dehumanise themselves. That despite all my thinking and postulating, I do think I'm better than Frosted tips/supernail girl. Fucking hell.