It is not difficult to find MTV’s “A Shot At Love with Tila Tequila” at least somewhat entertaining. Either you are seing something you have never seen before and you can’t stop watching because of it. Or you are seing something that you have seen before but never on tv so you cannot stop watching. The outline of the show is simple; it’s a reality dating show, the contestants competing for the love of one bachelorette. The catch is that the bachelorette is a bisexual and the contestants are a group that is made up of 16 straight men and 16 lesbian women. You can’t help but be curious after endless sequals of Outback Jack, The Bachelor and other reality dating shows - this is bound to be different. And it is.
A Shot At Love has some extremely strong points that I absolutely must stress, but it also has the predictable flaws every dating show seems to have. I will get to the flaws later.
My first word must go out to praising both MTV and Miss Tila Tequila (who got famous for taking off her clothes and singing on occasion) for opening the conversation about bisexuality. It seems that too often acceptance talk is about homosexuality, and bisexuality is mostly associated with either ‘phases’ or threesomes. Being a bisexual myself I often feel that people don’t acknowledge bisexuality as an equal sexuality to the other two versions. Men think it’s hot because it will get them a threesome, girls think it’s just something that some girls try to get attention. Tila makes more than clear in this show that she is not about to share her girls with the guys - even if the lesbians would never be interested in the first place. Tila does not have threesomes on her mind, and equally she shows that she is truly interested in these women and not just out to get the guys’ attention.
Another strong point of the show is its diversity. The contestants will win your heart in a split second because they are all such characters. There’s the ultimate lipstick lesbian, Amanda, who is gorgeous and tall and looks like Pam Anderson and shows that lesbians can be feminine, sensual and strong and tough at the same time. There’s Dani, who is a girl but can easily be mistaken for a boy - she has breasts, she wears a bikini, but still you’d be torn if you had to figure it out for yourself. The show doesn’t just make Dani out to be a butch, it shows that Dani is a person and not an image, and shows how she and Tila truly bond. Both these women open your eyes to the notion of what exactly we all think a lesbian really is.
The show also showcases the very honest reality; oftentimes lesbian women are not interested in bisexual women because they have been left for men by them. But enough about the girls, let’s talk about the guys.
The guys’ reaction to Tila’s confession that she is bisexual is hilarious and confronting at the same time. Tila explains that she is bisexual and that the women who are also in the house are actually lesbians. Still the guys try to hit on the oh-so-pretty but oh-so-homosexual girls. Comments throughout the show are made about ‘joining in’ and of course the guys are also a rainbow of different colours. From a frat boy to an Italian who makes goofy jokes that not everyone gets. They are shown confronted with Tila’s bisexuality, with the gay girls and most of all; all contestants are exposed to intersexual competition. This is very new for tv. Though the show has proudly bapised itself ‘the ultimate battle of the sexes’, though Tila goes into it saying she ‘wants to figure out wether she wants to be with a guy or a girl’ (it’s never that simple) - the show brings its viewers to some interesting conclusions. Perhaps the most important one of them being; bisexuality is falling in love with people, not genders. Finally.
However A Shot At Love has a strong downside that kind of made it all so much less meaningful. The main downer being the fact that Tila ended up not dating the show’s winner (a guy, by the way) at all. He claims to never have heard from her after the show, and not even getting her phone number. And guess what? Season two is coming up. Combining this fact with the crucial fact that the show features a lot of making out (both hetero but also girl on girl), you’d almost think Tila is doing this to get a career boost. What enhances this idea is the fact that somehow she always managed to keep the numbers even; when there were four guys in the house, there were five or three girls. Neither sex ever got the definite majority, and this makes me suspicious, since it makes it look as if it was tried to keep both sexes in the running for the sake of ratings.
Overall, from the viewpoint of a real person and bisexual, this show is a good statement, but one that fails to back itself up solidly. Maybe season two will bring us a better shot at love.
