“It’s Irrelevant to Me!” Young Black Women Talk Back to VH1’s Love and Hip Hop New York

Introduction

VH1’s Love and Hip Hop New York documents the trouble in love its cast experiences as they navigate the terrain of relationships and careers in the hip-hop industry. Though the show was quite popular in its first three seasons, with spin-offs developing in Atlanta and LA, the fourth season established the show as a pop culture staple. It ranked first on non-sports cable television among women between the ages of 18 and 49, and ranked third in social networking on all television based on trending topics (“VH1’s ‘Love & Hip Hop’ Franchise Hits All the Right Notes,” 2014). Love and Hip Hop NY’s massive and actively engaged viewership allows the show to serve as a “powerful sourc[e] of socialization and ideological domination” (Kellner, 2009, p. 6) through the representations and values the show transmits. Its viewership power, then, warrants critical investigation into both the content of the show and its impact on the audience. Also, because the show is carried on a network that targets and promotes youth culture, it is important to analyze it in terms of its pedagogical value—that is, what Love and Hip Hop teaches young people. In order to obtain a full understanding of the pedagogical implications of Love and Hip Hop NY, it is necessary and important to understand both the representations on the show and how those representations are received by youth.

To probe this idea, I used two processes: first, a critical discourse analysis of the fourth season of Love and Hip Hop NY with an explicit focus on understanding the representations and values presented on the show, and second, through an audience study with young, African American women. Doing so identified both the ways in which the show articulates hegemonic notions of gendered and racialized experience and whether young Black women viewers “affirm the dominant order as it is articulated through an image, or whether they resist it in some way” (G. Rose, 2012, p. 263). To posit that the researcher’s singular interpretation of the show is valid and working in the lives of young Black women is an act of ideological domination (Bell, 1995; Brown, 1993). Doing so centers the researcher as the source of validity and fails to make room for differing perspectives, experiences, and understanding. Because of this, it is necessary to provide a holistic understanding of the show by infusing the findings from my critical discourse analysis with the voices and experiences of those who actually consume it.

The majority of cast members on Love and Hip Hop NY are people of African descent who live the cultural modes of hip-hop. They are established moguls, artist managers, rappers, video models, and actresses outside of the show, and present their “reality” as workers in the hip-hop industry in a way that suggests that their work is as glamorous, sexy, and exciting as it is gritty, heartbreaking, and violent. As will be expounded upon in this article, the men on the show are structurally bound to perform a narrow conception of Black masculinity through their volatile responses to conflict and womanizing behaviors. The women, who are girlfriends, wives, and mothers of their children act in similarly narrow tropes—enacting a pathological representation of women of color as angry, hyper-sexualized, and willing to be abused by their partners. The show also presents a fantasy of material success undergirded by a meritocratic narrative suggesting that all young people—especially those who are racially and economically oppressed—can achieve an equally fashionable life.

Because the majority of the cast members on the show are women of color and the story lines primarily center on the women’s experiences, the show can also be characterized as directing its focus on an audience of young women of color. Also, the cultural modes of hip-hop are part of the Black cultural ethos and can be read as markers of Black ways of being (T. Rose, 2008). Taken together, these reasons made it appropriate to choose African American girls for participation in this study, as the women on the show relay their experience to young women who are like themselves. The show also strikes a personal cord with the author, as I unapologetically identify as a Black woman who was raised and affirmed through the promise and pedagogy of hip-hop. Growing up during the 1990s, hip-hop helped me navigate the liminal space my Black girl status occupied (Winn, 2011)—even as it led me through terrain replete with contradiction and tension. It was a culture that allowed me to express myself and make sense of the social stratification that was part of my everyday reality—even as some of its forms problematically denied and dismissed my budding Black womanhood. It was and continues to be a culture that cannot disassociate from the complexity that defines the Black experience in America. As I watched the show in order to study it, I could not come away from these thoughts—that even as the show reified stereotypes of old, surely Black women and girls continue, as we have through the generations, to carry within us a resistance or a knowing that do not blind us to the show’s workings (Dillard, 2012).

Toward this idea, I wanted to design a study that employed critical race methodology in cultural studies by actively working to centralize race, class, gender, and sexuality in Love and Hip Hop NY and challenge dominant ideologies at play from a contextualized position—all the while privileging the experiential knowledge of those represented by the show’s cast members (Solórzano & Yosso, 2009). In so doing, it works to develop a more complex understanding of the effects of racialized reality television and offers pedagogical implications toward supporting African American youth in the process of becoming more critically engaged consumers of entertainment.

Critical Discourse Analysis and Love and Hip Hop NY

The music and culture of hip-hop, once an organic stylization and artistic expression for Black people at the margins of society, has been appropriated by corporate media conglomerates in ways that have led to what Tricia T. Rose (2008) has deemed a “crisis in hip-hop” (p. 1). This crisis lies in the fact that certain elements of the culture, namely, the justifiably violent, criminal, and hyper-sexualized expressions, are the only form of the genre to be mass produced. This has resulted in the proliferation of a singular narrative about hip-hop, which dominates and silences others. Since its formation in the South Bronx during the mid-1970s, hip-hop has always enjoyed a multiplicity of cultural expressions embodied not only through rap music but also through dance, graffiti, fine art, and fashion. The content of these expressions have always been diverse—celebrating aspects of Black culture that might be considered positive like love, family bonds, and racial pride to those that can be considered contentious like misogyny, violence, and drug use. No matter its orientation, hip-hop “articulate[s] the shifting terms of black marginality in contemporary American culture” (T. Rose, 1994, p. 3) and through contextualized analysis is found to be indicative of the historical inequities that continue to affect the Black community. Still, the mass media obfuscates this rich history by narrowing the diversity in hip-hop culture to stereotypical representations of Black people—namely, that they are violent, greedy, and sexually irresponsible. Tricia Rose has argued that this crisis has also been used “as ‘proof’ of black people’s culpability for their circumstances,” which “undermines decades of solid and significant research on the larger structural forces that have plagued black urban communities” (T. Rose, 2008, p. 9). The reification of this narrow narrative has achieved success “by pandering to America’s racist and sexist lowest common denominator” (T. Rose, 2008, p. 2) and has fueled the discourse on Blackness, associating the race with hyper-criminality, sexism, violence, and homophobia. Love and Hip Hop NY, in all of its popularity, has not shied away from perpetuating these stereotypical representations—serving as another medium through which the culture of hip-hop has been commoditized and reduced to the perpetuation of representations of people of color that have long been deemed problematic (Bogle, 2001; Hill-Collins, 2000; Springer, 2007; Stephens & Phillips, 2003).

Because the show focuses on romantic relationships among people who participate in an art form that is part of the Black cultural ethos, Love and Hip Hop NY serves as a powerful site of discourse on Black love. Critical discourse analysis, then, becomes an appropriate methodological approach to its examination as it works to identify the ways in which texts construct and maintain power (Fairclough, 1989). Discourse is a powerful ideological construct that warrants continual critique and investigation. It creates the objects it describes (Foucault, 1972) and “structure[s] the way a thing is thought, and the way we act on the basis of that thinking” (G. Rose, 2012, p. 190). People define themselves in relation to what is said and who has said it (Gee, 1990) and the immense viewership of Love and Hip Hop NY suggests that many people—young African American women in particular—embody the discourse it creates.

This critical discourse analysis is situated within Niklas Luhmann’s theory of mass media. His framework is particularly relevant because it articulates both the structural nature of the mass media and its effects. Luhmann asserts that the mass media is one of our most central systems of knowledge production in society. He asserts, “Whatever we know about our society, or indeed about the world in which we live, we know through the mass media” (Luhmann, 1996/2000, p. 1). It is a system that constructs a sense of reality through the transmission of news, advertising, and entertainment. Because the mass media operates as a system, its construction of reality is not arbitrary. It has observable operating patterns characterized by a simultaneous process of self and external reference, which produces information that is communicated and received (Luhmann, 1996/2000). In other words, the mass media creates and disseminates information based on information it previously made (self-reference) and the context within which it is situated (external reference). Together, these self and external references continually construct discourses that inform what we come to know as reality or what can be thought about a thing. In the case of Love and Hip Hop New York, for example, the self-reference that the show draws upon are story lines in previous episodes (meant to keep viewers engaged with the cast) and externally, the show draws upon dominant characterizations of Blackness in the media, popular trends in hip-hop, and the social, political, and economic circumstances of Black people in the contemporary moment. In the case of Love and Hip Hop New York, this process allows the show to be part of a system that creates our understanding of contemporary Black culture. The following critical discourse analysis works to demonstrate this theoretical premise and explicate what is learned about Black culture from the show.

Representations of Black Masculinity on Love and Hip Hop NY

Patricia Hill-Collins’ explanation of hegemonic masculinity best situates a discussion on the portrayal of Black men on Love and Hip Hop NY. She asserts that the historical understanding of masculinity is patterned after the gendered behavior of propertied, heterosexual White men. These behaviors become hegemonic in that they are imbued with power based upon what they are not. That is, wealthy White heterosexual men have privilege and power simply because they are not poor or Black or gay or any combination of these “Other” identity markers (Hill-Collins, 2005). The gender performances of men who do not live within these “norms” are relegated to the margins of society and must subjugate their gender expression in order to be acceptable. She also asserts that the socio-political location of men who do not fit the norm often preclude their ability to live up to the idealized version of manhood. As a result, they are blamed for their so-called inadequacy and labeled as deviant.

Turning now to cast members’ representations on the show, we see many examples of Black men representing themselves through hegemonic notions of masculinity. Peter Gunz, a former rapper turned artist manager, embodied a narrow portrayal of Black masculinity through the dramatic story line he carried with two women. He is portrayed as a womanizing liar, as it was revealed that he cheated on Tara Wallace, his long-term girlfriend and mother of two of his sons, with an artist he managed named Amina Buddafly. After many lies about the nature of his relationship with Amina, it was further revealed that he was married to her—leaving Tara to navigate the terrain of motherhood and heartbreak on her own. Peter’s infidelities did not end there, however, as he later cheated on Amina, his new wife, with Tara. Still, he held throughout the show that he loved both women and would tell them whatever he felt necessary to keep them in his life. As such, he enacted a selfish form of love suggesting that women’s emotions are disposable, effectively representing the hyper-sexualized womanizing Black male who uses women’s emotions to manipulate them.

Saigon, a rapper, was portrayed as volatile, distrustful, and emotionally manipulative—often accusing his former girlfriend and mother of his son, Erica Jean, of lying about the paternity of their child and being inattentive to their child’s needs. He would do this even as he would take steps toward building a healthy relationship with her by attending couple’s counseling and inviting her to live with him. On several occasions, Saigon degraded Erica Jean by calling her a “hood rat,” “hood booger,” and “bitch,” all terms meant to locate her as low class and of questionable moral turpitude, and justified doing so because, as he claimed, “that’s all she know how to respond to” (Scott-Young & Gayle, 2013). During a special reunion episode, he exclaimed, “I don’t give a f*ck about these women, honestly. I don’t. You know why? Because they use the baby as a pawn” (Scott-Young & Gayle, 2013), showing his dismissive and mistrustful attitude toward women.

Rich Dollaz was overwhelmingly portrayed through the trope of the pimp—that is, a man who uses women’s sexuality for financial gain. Throughout the show, his relationships with women were located within their ability to make money for or with him. He consistently had sex with the models and artists he managed and called himself a “self-professed creep” because of his unwillingness to separate business from pleasure (Scott-Young & Gayle, 2013). He was often seen kissing or touching the cleavage of women who were working for him, namely, that of Erica Mena, with whom he shared a tumultuous relationship over two seasons.

While it is arguable that these men relayed authentic representations of themselves because Love and Hip Hop NY is a reality television show, the highly produced nature of the show suggests that it is more plausible that these examples illustrate the show’s perpetuation of hegemonic masculinity. It is likely that the men were compelled to enact representations of themselves that were constrained by the boundaries of “acceptable” gender performance and, because of the men’s inability to live up to such notions, forced a notion of Black masculinity that is viewed as “abnormal.” Hill-Collins (2005) asserts,

Representations of Black masculinity within mass media that depict working-class Black men as aggressive thugs or as promiscuous hustlers seem designed to refute accusations that Black men are “weak” because they cannot control Black women. If “real” men are those who can control women, then these representations suggest that Black men can shake the stigma of weakness by dominating unnaturally strong Black women. Being strong enough to “bring a bitch to her knees” becomes a marker of Black masculinity. (p. 189)

We cannot be certain that the men on the show were authentic in sharing their feelings about the women they were in relationships with, but we can be certain that society expects these men to be seen as the source of ultimate power and authority in their relationships. Notions of hegemonic masculinity make it socially unacceptable for the men to infuse their relationships with sensitivity, understanding, and a willingness to build equitable partnerships with the women they share their lives with. Because of this, the men were invited—even expected—to represent themselves in ways that objectified women.

It was also clear that the male cast members on Love and Hip Hop NY reified the use of misogynistic ideology in hip-hop, that is, “the promotion, glamorization, support, humorization, justification, or normalization of oppressive ideas about women” (Adams & Fuller, 2006, p. 940). The perpetual power struggles between men and women on the show, coupled with the show’s promotion of glamorous styling and lifestyle choices, suggest that contentious relationships are normal and even desirable aspects of relationships within Black culture. Such an idea, however, promotes an oversimplification of the hegemonic nature of misogyny. Rather than attacking the men who are on the show and their treatment of women, it is important to recognize that misogyny “does not exist in a vacuum but is instead part of a larger social, cultural, and economic system that sustains and perpetuates the ideology” (Adams & Fuller, 2006, p. 941). In this light, the men can again be seen as enacting the tropes that are expected of them as dictated by the limited cultural appropriation of commercial hip-hop and markers of acceptable masculinity.

The treatment of Black women on the show is not the only harmful gendered performance, however. Love and Hip Hop NY also portrays a devaluation of the humanity of the Black man by dismembering his body to the function of its parts. By failing to probe the interiority of their thought processes or offering any explanation as to how and why they came to view the feelings of the women they claim to love as dispensable, the show relies on certain historical arguments that suggest Black male inferiority. In particular, that he is powerless in the face of his emotions and sexual desire. The show effectively reifies the historical project that “reduced Black men to their bodies, and identified their muscles and their penises as their most important sites" (Hill-Collins, 2005, p. 57).

Representations of Black Femininity on Love and Hip Hop NY

The women on cast were also represented through narrow conceptions of racialized gender. Their depictions did not stray from the stereotypical imagery characterizing women of color in the media throughout history (Bogle, 2001; Hill-Collins, 2000; Springer, 2007; Stephens & Phillips, 2003). Not unlike the men on the show, the women were invited to create negative images of themselves as a result of the nature of hegemonic masculinity. Dominant notions of masculinity are dependent upon the subordination of women. What privileges women do have (by way of race, class, sexuality, or ability) creates a hierarchy of valued femininities. White, able-bodied, wealthy, heterosexual women are held as the normative measure for the ways in which all other women should look and behave; and while it is true that they are still held in a subordinate position to men, the worth of women who experience multiple and intersecting forms of oppression is prescribed in relation to men and White multiply privileged women (Hill-Collins, 2005). The hegemonic standard to which White multiply privileged women are held (i.e., that they be passive, accepting of gendered notions of work and family, and carry appropriately feminine physical features) is the standard for all women, even when a woman’s race, social location and/or sexuality prohibits her ability to live up to this way of being. The women on Love and Hip Hop NY are not exempt from such scrutiny, and in comparison with this ideal, they are portrayed as violent, hyper-sexualized, deviant, and immoral.

Tara Wallace and Amina Buddafly were often shown arguing over the affections of Peter Gunz, with one altercation escalating into a fist fight. Erica Mena, a model and singer, fought with Nya Lea, an exotic dancer and rapper, over a failed attempt at a musical collaboration and once for no particular reason at all. During a special reunion episode, Nya Lea said,

Well, when I came today, after seeing what that girl [Erica Mena] went through, already, I said, “you know what . . . we don’t have to keep arguing.” . . . So, coming today, I wanted to say, “I fight, I gotta fight because I’m the stripper. And I know this girl gotta fight." I didn’t come today to fight you. We have enough people fighting us. We didn’t need to fight today. (Scott-Young & Gayle, 2013)

Still, Erica Mena met this attempt at reconciliation with hostility, even as she agreed with Nya Lea’s sentiments. Though the two made amends, they did so in a confrontational tone—suggesting that despite their desire to heal, the two were innately violent.

The women were also portrayed as hyper-sexualized through the gaze of the camera lens. This gaze—or the vantage point from which the camera captures the scene—was steeped in a “visuality that pre-exists the individual subject” (G. Rose, 2012, p. 172). Namely, the historical exoticization and dismemberment of the Black female body (Hill-Collins, 2005). Often times, even before the women spoke, they were introduced to the viewer with their bodies. The camera would pan the women’s breasts and buttocks before any action in the scene took place. During one scene, Tahiry Jose, a model and actress, was shown taking a hip-hop dance class where the camera was explicitly focused on her hips and buttocks. While the movements were characteristic of the genre of dance, the camera’s perspicuous focus on Tahiry’s body suggested that she was dancing sexually, rather than for fitness, learning, or joy—as can be assumed when a person takes a dance class.

Erica Mena and Cyn Santana’s same-sex relationship was also exploited in ways suggesting that the women were hyper-sexualized. Despite their professions of love and time spent together bonding, the two were manipulated through the gaze of the camera in ways that reduced their relationship to sexual titillation—often reminiscent of pornography. They were shown taking a bath together, where one woman removed the bathing suit top of the other under the cover of soap bubbles—suggesting that the women were naked together in the water (Scott-Young & Gayle, 2013). The pair were also shown modeling at photo-shoots where they were dressed in lingerie and posed in sexually suggestive ways. Despite their professions of love for one another, the camera placed more emphasis on the sexual aspects of their relationship than any other.

The depiction of Erica Mena and Cyn Santana’s relationship also supported representations of patriarchal heterosexual relationships—that is, relationships that are deemed “normal” so long as they remain within the prescribed boundaries of traditional heterosexual relationships. Though the women claimed to be committed to one another, it was not recognized or respected by Erica Mena’s ex-heterosexual lover, Rich Dollaz. Rich would kiss Erica, touch her body, and tell her that her feelings for Cyn were not real throughout the season. The resultant love triangle enacted a portrayal of Erica Mena’s relationship with Cyn as a phase or uncharacteristic behavior, suggesting that their homosexuality needed to be justified or excused.

A conflict between entrepreneur and hip-hop industry insider Rashidah Ali and Tahiry Jose also reified notions of patriarchal heterosexual normativity on the show. Feeling hurt after Tahiry failed to live up to her duties as a bridesmaid in Rashidah’s wedding, Rashidah accused Tahiry of causing problems in her relationship with rapper Joe Budden because of her career as a video model. Tahiry responds,

Rashidah, I’m no weak bitch. Stop talking to me like I got issues. I made a decision and my decisions was to make them videos and have fun with it. My decision was to get on every magazine the way I got on ’em. I am very proud so stop talking to me like I’m a mental case. (Scott-Young & Gayle, 2013)

To which Rashidah replied, “I was trying to show you how to be someone’s wife, not somebody’s jerk off woman” (Scott-Young & Gayle, 2013). Rashidah’s judgmental stance on Tahiry’s career choice, and the show’s refusal to probe the interiority of Tahiry’s choice to support herself through sexually suggestive work, serves as another site of patriarchal heterosexual normativity on the show. It sends a message that in love, a woman’s aspiration should be toward marriage with a man, and that women who engage in different forms of sex-work do not deserve healthy and loving relationships.

Patriarchal heteronormativity was further evidenced in Erica Mena’s gender performance in her relationship with Cyn. She often talked about herself or was referred to in ways alluding to her being the “male” in the relationship. The couple referred to Erica as Cyn’s dog’s “daddy” (Scott-Young & Gayle, 2013) and Cyn referred to herself as Erica’s “wifey” (Scott-Young & Gayle, 2013). Recognizing the fluid nature of gender identity, these things are not particularly problematic. That Erica portrayed stereotypical representations of masculinity in romantic relationships, however, by taking Cyn on expensive trips and dates and buying her jewelry often in an effort to apologize for jeopardizing the trust in their relationship is (Scott-Young & Gayle, 2013). Erica also enacted a narrow representation of Black masculinity through the mode of the pimp. After learning that Rich replaced Erica with model Jessica Santiago in a lingerie photo-shoot for Black Men Magazine she said, “if you wanted a Erica Mena wannabe, I would probably thought about lending you Cyn for maybe 24 hours and she’s only a wannabe because literally, I loved that bitch so much that she became me” (Scott-Young & Gayle, 2013). Here, she talks of her partner in language suggesting ownership and domination in the relationship—that she has the power to make her lover do sexually suggestive work.

These examples, along with Love and Hip Hop NY’s immense viewership, can lead people who are non-participants in hip-hop culture to believe that their depictions are representative of people who do. It can also be argued that the performances on the show are authentic because the show is unscripted and relies upon cast members’ thoughts and experiences to propel action. But as with the nature of hegemonic masculinity, it is more plausible that prescribed notions of acceptable femininity label the women as deviants from the “norm” even before they participate on the show. Their status as women of color, who live the values of “street life” (as can be inferred from their roles as workers in the hip-hop industry) make them outsiders to the so-called acceptable and highly valued gender performance that is expected of White multiply privileged women. Also, since Love and Hip Hop NY has been on the air, it has replaced cast members who do not offer dramatic story lines, produced scenarios that allow cast members to respond to circumstances in particularly hostile ways, and made editing choices that foreground stereotypical performances over others. This invites the cast members to engage in hegemonic representations of themselves as their choices in performativity are limited by the structures that invite their participation on the show.

This analysis of Black gender performance as portrayed on Love and Hip Hop NY makes a particularly salient connection to certain elements of Niklas Luhmann’s theory of the mass media. First, Luhmann asserts that the media is a clear project of post-modernity in that it is dependent upon a “newness” that is not new at all. Every broadcast is “old” as soon as it is disseminated to the public, so media makers continually make revisions of the past in order to produce something “new.” As a result, the media perpetually reifies and reinscribes narratives that audiences are familiar with (Luhmann, 1996/2000). In the case of Love and Hip Hop NY, rather than watching a “reality” television show that offers real depictions of women of color in the hip-hop industry, the show is created in ways that allow viewers to re-engage historical caricatures of old—leaving us with representations of women of color suggesting that they are jezebels, sapphires, evil Black bitches, and bitter Black women (Hill-Collins, 2005; Springer, 2007).

Luhmann also asserts that the media is a closed system that operates without direct feedback from viewers. As a result, the media constructs its own images based upon assumptions, speculation, and statistics. As Bechmann and Stehr (2011) note, “Mass media must individualize and produce on a generalized basis, without being able to configure for individuals. This dilemma describes the structural operation of the media” (p. 143). The mass media develops programming based upon de-individualized subjects. Love and Hip Hop NY works from this generalized frame—again, operating from stereotypical references it has always drawn from.

In light of this analysis, one can seriously question whether or not there is a depiction of love on Love and Hip Hop NY. Instead, the show demonstrates that romantic relationships are sites of domination, conflict, and persistent struggle. It privileges patriarchal heteronormative conceptions of romance and reifies the racist and sexist gaze on bodies of color by inviting cast members to make representations of themselves that are limited by the constraints of hegemonic masculinity and femininity. Still, the show’s immense viewership constitutes it as a site of popular education, where its young audience might take their cues as it relates to acceptable ways of being in relationships. Because of this, proponents of the effects model, or the critique that the media employs “forces that can either direct, or pervert, the citizen-consumer” (Miller, 2009, p. 239), suggest that young viewers of Love and Hip Hop NY are conditionally harmed by the type of imagery that the show displays and the values it teaches about love. While it is true that these images reify harmful discourses about Black people, I contend that the effects model is too limited a paradigm to employ when probing cultural artifacts like Love and Hip Hop NY. It implies that viewers have no agency, are divorced from the contextual factors that create their viewership, and as such, are unable to detach reality from representations in the media. Such a position suggests that young Black women who are participants in hip-hop culture—those who can be assumed to be represented by the women on Love and Hip Hop NY—do not engage or respond to the images they consume critically. The effects model essentially asserts that viewers, in this case young Black girls, are not smart enough to recognize, negotiate, and oppose media problematic media representations.

Resisting Ideological Domination: The Case for Audience Analysis

Luhmann is part of a school of critical theorists who assert that although the structural nature of the mass media is hegemonic, it is not deterministic (Hall, 1980; Luhmann, 1996/2000). Viewers are not pawns who are easily manipulated by the media’s construction of reality. Luhmann asserts,

Entertainment enables one to locate oneself in the world as it is portrayed [. . .] What is offered as entertainment does not commit anybody in a particular way, but there are sufficient clues . . . for work on one’s own “identity.” Fictional reality and real reality apparently remain different, and because of this, individuals remain self-sufficient, as far as their identity is concerned. (p. 62)

On this argument, the effects model is a flawed theoretical framework, then, because it suggests that viewers, especially impressionable ones, do not apply their own reading of the images consumed. Stuart Hall (1980) supports this position, offering that audiences “read” media content and decode its meaning hegemonically, counter-hegemonically, or through some negotiated place within these terrains. Positing that shows like Love and Hip Hop NY negatively affect youth serves as a sight of ideological domination because it makes an assumption that the researcher’s interpretation is the best, true, and right reading of the show without probing for a more complex understanding of the way the media actually works in people’s lives. Hall (1996) calls instead for works in cultural studies to problematize ideology by questioning “the mental frameworks—the languages, the concepts, categories, imagery of thought, and the systems of representation—which different classes and social groups deploy in order to make sense of, define, figure out and render intelligible the way society works” (p. 26). Doing so allows us to understand the complexity of ideological struggle through theorizing that accounts for complexity.

To understand Love and Hip Hop NY’s pedagogical implications for young Black women, a more nuanced understanding of its enactment in their lives is necessary. If the staple plot lines of chaotic relationships and self-destructive behaviors were central and dominant elements of Love and Hip Hop NY, then it is necessary to learn whether or not young women who are also members of the hip-hop generation expect these same ways of being in their own lives and relationships. That is, whether or not they enact a hegemonic understanding of the show. If the representations of men and women of color on Love and Hip Hop NY reify a discourse of pathology, dysfunction, and lovelessness, and as the effects model purports, negatively influences and affects young, impressionable people—then it stands to reason that young women of color, Black women in particular, understand these tropes to be realistic depictions of life from which they might learn valuable life lessons; namely, that the behaviors on the show are rational responses to conflict in relationships.

What follows then are the results of an audience study, designed to understand the ways in which representations of women of color are consumed by young Black women. It resists the idea that because women of color watch Love and Hip Hop NY and all of the troublesome representations it enacts, they do so because they feel that it represents them and offers acceptable forms of sociality. The audience study was conducted with seven young Black women who were high achieving high school seniors attending an under-resourced, predominately Black urban high school in a major Southeastern metropolitan city. In a series of focus groups, the young women were asked to talk about their experience with Love and Hip Hop NY, watch several clips displaying different cast members’ struggles in love, and share their perspectives on what the show teaches young women of color. Most of the girls were active viewers of the show, and those who were not had either been regular watchers of other iterations of it (i.e., Love and Hip Hop Atlanta), had seen a few episodes, or were active watchers of other racialized reality television shows where cast members enacted similarly narrow representations (e.g., Bad Girls Club, Basketball Wives, Real Housewives of Atlanta). No one in the group was unfamiliar with the show or had to have the premise of Love and Hip Hop NY explained to them.

Talking Back, Talking Bold: Rejecting Love and Hip Hop’s Representations

Many of the young women expressed that they understood Love and Hip Hop NY as spectacle and that they were not easily influenced by the tropes that it represents. They overwhelmingly asserted that they consume the show solely for entertainment and speculated that the cast members might be making more drama out of their situations for the sake of creating “good TV.” These sentiments, however, are not uncommon to television (TV) viewers, and as such, it was necessary to probe further. In discussing the “reality” in reality television, the young women shared that the cast members’ behaviors were rooted in the emotional conflicts that actually happen in people’s lives. Nina suggested that, nonetheless, she is unaffected by the performances because she does not view the cast members’ behaviors as standards for her own:

Here, Nina is referring to the ways in which Love and Hip Hop NY promotes an ethos of violence that make harsh responses to conflict socially acceptable. Her decision to walk away from a situation that she could have responded to with hostility shows that her personal values and self-awareness overrides her understanding of the popular notion presented by reality television that physical and verbal fighting between women of color is acceptable.

The young women also shared that their behavior in romantic relationships differs greatly from those presented on Love and Hip Hop NY, suggesting another way in which they understand themselves to be uninfluenced by the tropes on the show. Whitney said,

The people that I choose to be in a relationship with, I make sure that we’ve been friends first. So, I know, like, how you are, like as a person. Like, I can kind of get this perception of you so . . . if they were to do something, I’m going to be mad, but I’m the type of person who’s like, “Ok. It’s over with.” . . . . I’m not the type of person to be like, “who is this? And nah nah nah” and all that [mimicking the confrontational tone of the women on the show]. That’s not me. I’m not the type of person to just sit here and argue with you over nothing. I’m too young for that . . . . I’m not in it for that.

Whitney describes herself here as a young woman with self-understanding and boundaries. She approaches romantic relationships through friendship, which suggests that she looks for someone whom she can trust, and also allows her to meet disappointments within the relationship healthily. She would rather cut ties with a person who does not value her than engage in overly dramatic or even abusive conflict. Rather than understanding relationships as sites of contestation, as Love and Hip Hop NY affirms, the young women shared that they more readily identify with healthy relationships where individuals are valued as equals and support one another as partners. This is in contradistinction to the patriarchal representation of domination in romantic relationships represented on the show.

This stance is further evidenced by the young women’s assertion that overcoming the challenges they face in their own lives serves as their main priority. The women shared that their experiences with conflict in relationships, especially those witnessed between their parents, and concentrating on their personal goals preclude them from the type of constant conflict represented on the show. Many of the young women’s parents face significant financial constraints, causing the young women to serve as caregivers to siblings and providers of supplemental income in their households—even while they concentrate on graduating from high school and meeting their college aspirations. Whitney explains,

Whitney is explaining, here, that the things that the women on Love and Hip-Hop NY fight over pale in comparison with the things the young women have experienced and seen in their own lives. This causes her to feel that she cannot relate to the ways in which the women on the show behave. Their life experiences serve as more powerful influencing factors, showing them how they want to be in relationships and affording them a more critical lens through which they watch the show.

The young women also expressed, that while they were not personally influenced by the show, an uninitiated audience could be. They expressed concern that people outside of the culture of hip-hop and those with limited experience with people of color in general, could take the representations on the show as indicative of the way people of color live and behave. Monica and Nina explain,

Here, we find the young women demonstrating their awareness of the ways in which stereotypical imagery works beyond their control. While they do have agency over whether or not they will take on the attitudes and perspectives of the cast members on Love and Hip-Hop, they expressed concern that they do not have control over the fact that people who are unfamiliar with their culture may not be able to see the cast members as individuals who make certain choices based upon certain circumstances. This notion of raced and classed acceptable standards of behavior are produced by corporate media structures, as Monica alludes. Multi-media mega conglomerates like The Walt Disney Company develop ideas for standards of appropriate behavior through their shows. These ideas are overwhelmingly transmitted through a narrative of White, upper-middle-class values. Even when shows purport to carry a multi-cultural perspective, an ethos of White, upper-middle-class values permeates, sending messages that if you are not White and/or wealthy, you should adjust your standard of living to the best of your ability to live and behave as such (Hill-Collins, 2000).

It is also interesting to note Nina’s perspective on acceptable standards of behavior for women of color in comparison with White women. She makes the claim that White women presented on reality shows like Real Housewives of Beverly Hills are able to fight over trivialities and not have those representations permeate the lives of White women in society. To the converse, women of color on reality television, even when fighting over emotionally charged circumstances like children and romantic relationships, are unjustified in their decision to fight for or because of their feelings. What’s more, the pervasive nature of stereotypical imagery makes it so that their reasons for fighting are nullified and in so doing, cast members are reduced to irrational, reactionary caricatures that are said to be indicative of all people of color.

The young women were clear about the pedagogical implications of Love and Hip-Hop NY. They shared that the show gave a clear depiction of what love is not:

The young women offer an oppositional reading of the show (Hall, 1980). Rather than taking the drama at face value, they read the values transmitted by the show clearly and define themselves and their own values as separate from it. The women use their own definition of love: that it is based in friendship and requires sacrifice, trust, communication, loyalty, and support; that it is a spiritual endeavor where partners share themselves, materially and emotionally with one another in a long-lasting way; and where happiness is the dominant emotion—even when the circumstances in the relationship are difficult. These insights, and this particular definition of love, are radically different from the stance on love produced by Love and Hip Hop NY—suggesting that the young women are particularly adept at identifying the racist and sexist workings of racialized reality television and supporting their position that they are not influenced to operate in love in the same ways that the women of the show do.

Conclusion

Using the effects model to analyze reality television shows like Love and Hip Hop NY might lead researchers to take for granted the fact that young Black women are able to grasp the nuances and complexity of stereotypical depictions of women of color on TV. While it is true that the structural nature of Love and Hip Hop NY reifies the racist, sexist, and homophobic gaze on the Black body, it does not shape the experiences, perspectives, or choices of all of the young women who consume it. The findings suggest that some young Black viewers of Love and Hip Hop NY do so from a position of agency. That is, they derive meaning from the show not from a place of passive consumption, but instead, from a place of critical interpretation—using their own definitions to guide them as they make choices for themselves and enacting Stuart Hall’s conception of the “oppositional reader.” This article has attempted to “overcome one-sided positions in media, communications, and cultural studies” by contextualizing Love and Hip Hop NY, and revealing the complexities within which identities and experiences talk back to it (Kellner, 2009, p. 7).

In these particularly visible racially polarized times, where Black youth are assaulted and dehumanized at every turn in very public ways, it is particularly important that as arbiters of discourse, Black scholars resist deficit ideologies and an over-reliance on the pain narratives that accompany them (Tuck & Yang, 2014). Even as we name and identify the ongoing historical project of marginalization, we have to hold tightly to and make visible the abundance in Black culture that is worth celebrating. This study has attempted to do this with young Black girls, whose liminality is held in the balance of hyper-visibility and invisibility, so that it might be made clear that their voices are not only heard, valued, and validated, but also to challenge, develop, and incorporate their thinking through the practice of active and authentic engagement in the world (Freire, 2010). In light of the structural constraints that preclude students from identifying and acting upon their own values, such spaces are needed—not just for the sake of developing rich, educative experiences but also for the purposes of developing critically engaged citizens in society at large.