Let’s keep it real!
If you know much about me, you know I love me some reality TV. I’m always game for watching Real Housewives of just about anywhere. I like real estate shows, cooking shows, reunion shows, competition shows, you name it. When it comes to entertainment, I am most definitely not high brow.
Are you surprised? I love it because I get to look into people’s home lives with their family, friends and frenemies. Is it actually authentic and unfiltered? In a lot of ways, no way. But does that curb my enthusiasm? Not even maybe. (In fact, I’ve written another blog about a particular reality TV family that you can find here.)
The other night my husband and I turned on the Kardashians while we were folding laundry. I was half paying attention to it, but I got so irritated by it that I had to turn it off. A rare move for me! Why? I’ll tell you.
Kourtney and Travis Barker were in Milan trying on their couture outfits for their upcoming wedding. And everyone there, the employees of the designer, her glam squad, and what I’ll call her “hype team” were all going on about how mind-bending the dresses would be, and how people will basically fall out dead due to her beauty. “It’s literally going to give life.” (This is actually a normal level of hype for this type of show, if you’re unfamiliar.)
In another scene, we see Kim Kardashian trying on an actual dress worn by Marilyn Monroe, that she hopes to wear to the upcoming Met Gala. Why isn’t she sure she can wear it? Well, as it turns out, what we shall call her umm…amazing ass-et…didn’t initially fit into the dress. Bless her heart. And she had to do a number of things to try to lose the weight to be able to zip it up.
Seriously…I have absolutely ZERO SHADE to throw at that, because I’ve certainly been there before and could be there again tomorrow.
Not only did she have to lose some weight to make it work, but she also had her mom (Kris Jenner) call and deal with the Rippley’s Believe It Or Not people to convince them to let Kim K borrow it for the gala. Again, I do NOT care that she did this because if I had a famous mom, I would beg her to call me in special favors, too. (Alas, I just have Sandra. And she’s not calling in any favors for me, even if she *had* clout, because that’s just not how she rolls.)
I told my husband, “she’s going to ruin that dress.” And he informed me that she actually DID ruin the dress at the gala because it didn’t ever really fit in the first place. Again…bless her heart. I hope she didn’t take it too personally. We’ve all been there.
Here’s what drove me nuts: in both scenes, there was no shortage of people cheering on the Kardashians for doing completely benign things. They were being praised for basically just breathing. People were tripping all over each other to be the next one to sing their praises about completely innocuous things. Did these women actually look good in their dresses? Honestly, I’m not the one to ask. I assume they did. But you know who NEVER would have given them a straight answer about how they actually looked? Their hype teams! They appear to have no purpose other than to follow the Kardashians around and tell them how great they are, how great they look, how great of a job they did hosting SNL…bouncing back after giving birth…breaking up with their boyfriends…you name it. Did they actually do a great job of these things? I don’t know.
Literally no one benefits by someone constantly blowing smoke up their assets.
These women deserve someone to actually give an honest evaluation of their efforts or performances.
We all deserve people who will tell us the truth.
We all need friends, family and coworkers who will have uncomfortable conversations with us and tell us how we can improve on ideas (or scrap them entirely). If people aren’t free to speak openly with us about things, we will undoubtedly be going astray and not have the insight to know it.
Where some people seek out hype teams who exclusively provide exuberant feedback, I encourage everyone (famous for being famous, or just average folks like us) to seek out dissenting voices who challenge us. Even when it’s uncomfortable. Even when it’s not what we want to hear.
If we fail to do this with intention, we will find ourselves in an echo chamber where things that really need to be challenged about us instead get reinforced, with no objective questioning or evaluation. Absolutely no one is served when this is the case. This has major implications for everywhere from the dining room to the board room.
I shudder to think of all the mistakes I almost made except for someone willing to have a slightly uncomfortable conversation with me. These challenges from people I trust and value in my life have impacted men I was interested in, where I chose to live, jobs I’ve turned down, and the list goes on and on.
For us (and the Kardashians) to go from an echo chamber to authentic feedback, two things need to happen: 1) we must seek out relationships with people who are committed to being honest with us, and 2) we must give the people in our lives permission to speak uncomfortable truths to us, without fear of retaliation if we don’t like it, or hope of promotion if it pumps us up.
Ultimately we have to value honesty over hype. It’s not particularly popular in our current culture but it’s trustworthy and true. It may not get us an invite to the Met Gala, but at least we’ll know if our butt really does look good in that dress.
