Can’t Wait: “When Women Rule the World” (a new reality show)

Picked up from Feministing, via The Debate Link, who sees this new Fox show as a gendered twist on the Stanford Prison Experiment.

The premise:

The participants will be brought to a remote, primitive location where the women will have the opportunity to “rule” as they build a newly formed society – one where there is no glass ceiling and no dressing to impress. For the men, their worlds of power and prestige are turned inside-out and upside-down. And for these women, turnabout is fair play!

In order to win, the men must accede to the women’s every demand, 24/7. Here, women command and men obey. Over the series’ duration, the men will be eliminated by the women until one last man is standing.

How will the men react? How will the women treat the men? Can women effectively rule society? Will the men learn what life is like for some women in today’s world? Will this new society be a Utopia or a hell on earth? And in the end, who will be man enough to succeed in the new social order?

As I asked in “The Question of Female Power“: Is there such a thing as ‘female power’? Is power always ‘power’?

Anyway, more on the show from Reality Blurred and a pretty solid take by Echidne of the Snakes. Here’s a taste:

I’m the polite blogger, yanno. Well, I’ve just had my fill about politeness today. Fuck those Fox assholes. Fuck them for making fun of the real injustices and troubles the majority of women have to endure in this world. Fuck them for making it into a game to prop up their own petty feelings of threatened masculinity. Fuck them for their disgusting slimy bias and their silly little commercial brains. Fuck them for having the empathy of a toe cheese.

And most of all, fuck them to the deepest hell for suggesting that the only alternative to the current system is some perverse upside version of more of the same.

Echidne also links to an excellent post by Jennifer Pozner, “Oh, hell no. Fox wonders if women with “axes to grind” can “effectively rule society”

It includes a dictionary of women and reality-speak!

Sigh, between this and Fox’s other big show featuring women, Anchorwoman (see two stories below)…

Well, it’s good to know entertainment in bad faith is equally opportunistic when it comes to race and gender…