Nearly every night on every major network, “unscripted” (but carefully crafted) “reality” TV shows routinely glorify retrograde stereotypes that most people would assume got left behind thirty-five years ago. What are the implications of a nation of viewers uncritically gulping down this influential genre’s gendered myths—and what can we do about it?

In Reality Bites Back, media critic Jennifer L. Pozner aims a penetrating, analytical lens at a trend most people dismiss as harmless fluff. She deconstructs reality TV’s twisted fairytales to demonstrate that far from being simple “guilty pleasures,” these programs are actually guilty of significantly affecting the intellectual and political development of this generation’s young viewers. She lays out the cultural biases promoted by reality TV, and explores how those biases shape and reflect our cultural perceptions of who we are and what we’re valued for.

Smart and informative, Reality Bites Back aims to arm readers with the tools they need to understand and challenge the stereotypes reality TV reinforces, and, ultimately, to demand accountability from the corporations responsible for this contemporary cultural attack on three decades of feminist progress.