Shows that might be hazardous to your health

With all of the reality shows on the air these days, they all have one similar trait — they make people feel like they’re not good enough. Now it looks like you can add one more show to the neurosis-inducing list. Beautiful People follows around Robert and Greg, founders of the website beautifulpeople.net as they launch the site in Canada.

Taking shallow to a whole new level, members of the site judge applicants based solely on their physical appearance and build an online dating and networking community, excluding average-looking people from the pickings.
There are so many shows on the tube right now that can easily make you feel like garbage. TVGuide.ca is giving you a list of programs that may cause you to want to go see a shrink soon after.

Paris Hilton’s My New BFF
What can I possibly say other than, do you really expect anything more than this from Paris Hilton? The shallowest of the shallow, Hilton chooses from a group of 18 men and women to fight to become the socialite’s pal. What? She doesn’t have enough money to buy a new ‘friend’? Now she’s making a mockery of people by deciding who is “worthy” enough to be associated with her? NOT hot!

Celebrity Fit Club
Between forcing seemingly overweight celebs to participate on the show to putting the two groups on giant scales to see how much their combined weight is, Fit Club gives off the impression that all stars should be skinny. Not at all realistic, this reality show not only screws with the minds of the celebs themselves, but furthers the stigma that celebrities are not like the rest of us and they must live up to their persona. Yes, staying fit and healthy is important but Celebrity Fit Club essentially humiliates stars on TV.

Rock of Love
Gotta love a good groupie, right? Well, it seems like that’s all this Bret Michaels reality show is — one big slut-fest with a D-list celebrity. Throughout the show, Michaels has to pick a new girlfriend using the process of elimination. The 20 “lucky” contestants are faced with challenges to win the former Poison singer’s heart and if he doesn’t like you by the end of the episode, he’ll boot you out of the house. Nice, huh?

Beauty and the Geek
Though the pairing of pretty yet intellectually inept people combined with smart yet socially inept individuals is seemingly intriguing at first, it plays on so many stereotypes. Throughout the show, contestants (who are paired up by a hottie and a nerd) are tested on their intelligence and social skills and if they fail, they get the boot. The only thing this “ultimate social experiment” proves is that people will do anything, including exploiting themselves, for a bit of money and 15 minutes of fame.

America’s Next Top Model
Yes, it’s definitely entertaining to watch a bunch of pretty girls duke it out in one of television’s bitchiest, scrappiest shows but ANTM’s message — that looks and image are all that matters — is enough to make most people run to the gym. OK, so the show has tried to diversify itself by having a few plus-sized models, but how far have any of them gotten? With the exception of Whitney, the other winning models have been stick-thin, furthering the stigma that only pretty, thin girls can have a successful modelling career. So much for having the occasional cookie, I guess...

The Bachelor
It’s every male chauvinist’s fantasy: Put 25 women in a house together, date each of them and give the women the boot, one by one, if they don’t meet your standards. What makes this show exceptionally stomach-turning is that during every episode, the bachelor skanks it up with multiple women, gets their hopes up and then rejects them without blinking an eye. If this happened in the real world, this dude’s butt would be kicked so hard, he’d think John Wayne Bobbitt had it easy.

The Biggest Loser
Yet another show that exploits overweight people. What makes this show degrading is not the fact that their struggles with weight loss is documented on TV, but rather the obstacles that they show puts them through, which either helps or hinders them. One of the worst elements is probably the temptation portion of the show where contestants are given the choice of eating something unhealthy, like a bag of chips, or doing something beneficial, like riding a bike. Not only does this potentially set contestants up to fall off the scale, but gives the idea that a slip-up or two is unacceptable behaviour. How realistic is that?

A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila
Is she straight or is she a lesbian? Likely the trashiest show on TV right now, A Shot at Love follows Tila Tequila as she chooses between 16 men and 16 women to become her new... umm... life-long partner. Think The Bachelorette, but with a bisexual female. Confusing, huh? Having never been in a situation like this myself, I can only assume that contestants feel a sense of ball-busting humiliation as Tila goes back and forth between genders. Ick!

American Idol
The combination of Simon Cowell’s nasty comments and being rejected by the judges and viewers would easily crush any singer’s dreams of super-stardom. Even if your performance is decent, there is always a chance that you may get voted off and someone with less talent will go further in the competition... or even worse... win. William Hung had no musical training or background, but for whatever reason subsequently had a cult following and got a record deal after his infamous “She Bangs” audition. You can’t tell me that doesn’t anger Idol alums who have fallen into musical oblivion.

Hell’s Kitchen
Gordon Ramsay’s honest yet cutthroat personality is very similar to American Idol’s Simon Cowell, except a bit scarier. Between swearing at HK’s contestants to literally throwing an entire plate of food against walls, Ramsey seems like the type of person who would intentionally give someone a complex just for his own amusement. Whether it’s because he’s a perfectionist or just mean-spirited, Ramsey’s one boss I’d stay the hell away from.

By Marlene Benedicto