Hello and welcome to Mind of Micah today is part three of Micah's Rita of the Week.

It's an exploration of 20 years of reality dating shows.

Part one, we've gone over shows like who wants to marry a multimillionaire in The Bachelor.

Part two, we got to shows like,

Plain It Straight, Next, and Flavor of Love.

Now we'll pick up in 2007 with a shot of Love

with Tila Te Kila an MTV show.

A quick reminder, subscribe to the read of the week newsletter.

You get all the things I think are interesting each week in your inbox.

The sign up link is in the description of this

podcast. Okay, 2007, a shot of love with Tila Takela.

Years before Tila, Takela was kicked off Celebrity Big Brother for writing a blog post that sympathized with Adolf Hitler,

and before she revealed herself as a born-again Christian whose old self was dead,

the model and singer was deemed the Madonna of My Space with 2 million online friends.

Thus, she was the perfect fit for MTV's bisexual Bachelorette

on a dating show with 16 straight men and 16 lesbians who competed to date her.

She later said that she was never actually bisexual and was, quote, just gay for pay.

Sherry Williams, an assistant producer, or professor of race media and communication

at American University, remembers that instead of the show offering visibility for bisexual people,

quote, it just ended up showing more about the patriarchy than anything else.

The male contestants were hyper-masculant, she recalls, making it seem like those qualities

could override any desire that Tila Takela might have for a woman.

...