“Booty Blinded” – Sexual Politics on Survivor

Watching the second episode of the current season of Survivor (this time set in the Phillippens, another tropical island location – shocking!) I had the usual thoughts inspired by my feminist thinking – Why are the majority of the women young, skinny and attractive? How come the women walk around in bikinis but the men manage to wear shirts and shorts? But what was most appalling to me was the phrase used by one of the young men on the show – “booty blinded.”

This concept basically blames a woman’s body for a man’s poor performance in the game. It gives men an “out” – an excuse for loosing, while reducing a woman’s power to that exerted by her body and (assumed hetero)sexuality.

This is not the first time such a concept has surfaced on Survivor, but it’s the first time it’s been given such a blatantly sexist (and ridiculous) name. Such reasoning was used to explain why infamous Survivor player Russell Hantz (far left in picture below) would align with Parvati Shallow (center in picture below).

Photo by JOHN PAUL FILO – © 2010 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved (Fair Use)

In this episode of Survivor, the concept was being used to explain the alliance between Malcolm and Angie (though the two have no special alliance and claim no erotic or romantic feelings). Here’s a recap of the episode.

It got even worse at tribal council when another woman on the tribe said that Malcolm was “booby trapped” by Angie – pun intended. In fact, that was the title of the episode.

It’s easy to laugh at such ridiculousness, but realizing how many people take it seriously is quite sobering.

The sexual politics of Survivor go far beyond this – if you’re interested, check out this New York Times article from back when Survivor first appeared on the scene, or look into Survivor Amazon, where they initially pitted women against men.

Somewhat unrelated – watching Survivor made me rethink my opinion of and reaction to Josh Harris’ We Live in Public “social experiments.” How different were they, really, from what happens every season of Survivor? But perhaps more on that in another post.