Jersey Shore.

I'm straight up avoiding my civil procedure reading. 

For the past two weeks, my roommates and I have crashed in front of the TV with beer (or in my case, a gin and tonic... I drink like a male retiree, I'm aware) and enjoyed the witty repartee of these 8 crazy kids.  One roommate came in with a love of the show, while the other, while aware of it, had never seen an episode.  Now she's quoting Snooki and getting sick of the Sammi-Ronnie drama.  She's hooked.

I'm just going to say it: I LOVE this show.  It's entertaining as heck, and for me, a bit of schadenfreude every week.  No matter how poorly my life is going, I am not nearly thirty, spending two hours on my hair, and using words like "smoosh."  I'm looking at you, DJ Pauly D.

For those who haven't seen the show, here's a quick breakdown: MTV found 8 exemplary members of society and stuck them in a house on the Jersey Shore, and it was so frickin' entertaining that they did it again, but in Miami.  The show's cast must work for a few hours at entry-level jobs (a T-shirt store and a gelato shop), but they spend most of their time prepping to go out, going out, and then being hungover from going out.  They are all of the "guido" and "guidette" persuasion, and use a very specific vocabulary to talk amongst themselves and others like them.  I did not intend this, but this paragraph looks very David Attenborough plus Steve Irwin-narrated.  My B.

Some of the vocabulary:

GTL: Gym, Tan, Laundry.  It's a lifestyle.  I personally call it Steroids, Melanoma, Febreeze.

Smoosh: to have sex/hook up.

"Insclude": Not a real word, but this is what one character sounds like when trying to say "exclude."

Grenade: an ugly girl, generally a friend of the girl one is trying to hook up with.  The name originates from the need for your wingman to "take one for the team" and throw himself on this girl in order to let you hook up.  Synonyms: Zoo creature, hippo, hyena, landmine (if the girl is thin, but ugly).  Plural: The Bronx Zoo.

Etc., etc.  I have a very difficult time with the fact that I like this show, because some of the behavior on it is absolutely horrendous.  And I'm not talking about pearl-clutching, overreacting, dear,-that-neckline's-a-LITTLE-low horrendous, I'm talking disrespectful to humanity horrendous.  And then there are times people are actually very nice.

In the first season, one of the girls, Snooki, was a bit of an outcast on the show for the first bunch of episodes.  On one outing, she attempted to stop a guy from stealing drinks from her friends, and she got punched in the face for it.  Several of the guys from the show immediately launched themselves at him, the girls took care of her, and collectively, they were very supportive of her, cheered her up, and let her know she was part of the "family."  They went out of their way to make sure she was taken care of, and they didn't need to do that. 

Another girl in the house, Jenni (or JWOWW, as she goes by... it's apparently what the guys say when she walks into the club, I... I don't even...just...ANYWAY) was out with Snooki, when another girl started to harrass them, asking Jenni "Who's your fat friend?"  JWOWW started a fight with the girl and got tossed out of the club.  When Snooki later asked her what happened, she said, "The girl was calling both of us fat." (emphasis mine)  Jenni is not a girl you would look at and say, "Now that is a classy human being" based solely on her appearance.  She gave herself enormous implants as a present, had blond streaks in her black hair for a time, has the unfortunate voice of a 90-year-old chain smoker, and her clothing can best be described as "costume-y" (her outfit on the evening of the fight included a teal bra and a pink, sparkly corset, if I remember correctly).  However, telling Snooki that the girl was calling both of them fat was a classy thing to do.  She was a good friend at that moment, and there are plenty of girls who walk around looking like a million dollars but treat their friends like a non-funny version of the Plastics.  I'd say to her, keep wearing the rhinestone-encrusted clubbing tops, JWOWW: you've got more class than most.

And then we come to the not-fun part of how they act.  I don't mean to pick on only the guys, and this could be MTV encouraging or filming this behavior in some way, but the guys, in particular Mike (also known as the Situation... don't even ask, really, don't), are straight-up misogynists.  The "grenade" aspect of the show seems to be more prominent this season, but the guys spend quite a bit of their time proclaiming certain girls hot enough and the rest grenades (and I for the life of me cannot tell the difference).  Any girl over about a hundred pounds is almost certainly a "grenade," but other than that, I can't tell who is and who isn't.  My favorite time is when they bring girls home, and then pretend to sober up quickly (my interpretation), and then act as if they've suddenly realized they've brought large African mammals into their hot tub.  MTV helps by occasionally inserting a sound bite of an elephant trumpeting at the moment one realizes "We got grenades, man!"

Part of why this is so difficult for me to watch is that I'm 100% positive I would be immediately rejected and labeled a grenade by these guys.  Part of this knowledge is due to a little vignette: several girls who walked into the gelato shop while two of the guys were working attempted to give them their numbers, but as soon as they found out the girls were in law school, they wanted none of it.  That's MEEEEE!  However, even if I were at a club and law school didn't come up (for the love of Jesus why is the music always so loud in those places), I'm not skinny.  I can't even attempt to define their standard of what a grenade is or isn't, but I do know if you ain't thin, you out.  Also, probably, if you're not impressed by their abs or their helmet hair (not hair that looks like it's been under a helmet, but hair that actually is hard enough to double as a helmet), you're probably also a grenade.

I've come to the conclusion that I can watch this show for its entertainment value, but I've also justified watching the misogyny.  These guys have impossible-to-meet standards.  They insult girls who have done nothing wrong to them.  They reject intelligence as a flaw.  They invite girls to their house and then reject them.  One of them regularly cheats on his girlfriend.  They lead girls to their bedrooms past a sign that says "no one's ugly after 2 AM."  They call girls on the cast variations on "fat" when they're disagreeing over something, despite the fact that one girl (Snooki) has openly shared her history with eating disorders.

I may be a grenade, and I may not be on TV, but I am not a sociopath.  I call that a win.