Here Comes (My Musing on) Honey Boo Boo

[Content Note: Classism, regionalism, misogyny, body fat prejudice, racism.]Here Comes Honey Boo Boo airs on TLC and it is in the second season. For that absurd sum I purchase cable, I watch roughly 5 channels: Food Network, Cooking Funnel, Analysis Discovery, the The famous host oprah Winfrey Network, and then any random funnel that may possess a reveal that allows me get my crime TV/forensic fix. When these channels concurrently broadcast implies that I've come across or which i can't stand, my existence is tossed into an uproar. I typically throw lower the remote and get a magazine. From time to time, I am going funnel-surfing. Throughout one particular surfing-in-desperation episode, I happened upon the premiere of "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo." I saw people on Facebook covering it and also got the gist from the background from the Shannon/Thompson family (if you are new, the show is one of the now-seven-year-old Alana Thompson, who competes in children's beauty pageants and her family, including her mother and father, three older siblings, and newborn niece). I was expecting to become critical from the beauty pageant element, particularly, and just what I figured will be the difficulty from it (I do not like reality TV), generally. I actually do have a great deal to say concerning the children's pageant element, however i discovered that, overall, I loved the household. Among the primary reasons is the fact that, as rural southerners, they're familiar in my experience. I discovered mom, June Shannon, funny, confident, and patient together with her women. I viewed several episode, a real manifestation of my interest. But… inside a couple of episodes, I recognized, towards the producers of the show, my feelings about June and her family must appear an anomaly. For me, whomever is staging this show is out of hir method to get this to family a topic of mockery, ridicule, and disgust. In the opening montage, the crowd will get an idea of the items to expect—the household is first collected, all smiling, as if they're appearing for any portrait. After which, someone passes gas plus they dissolve into quarrelling among themselves. Why, you might question, could they be frequently cast such an unflattering light? In my opinion we're intended to be offended by them due to numerous social qualities from the family people: they're southern, working class, and a number of them are body fat. I am unable to list all of the tropes trotted to experience stereotypes of people that fall within the aforementioned category, but allow me to try. We have seen June, the most heavy family member, eating. No shame for the reason that right? But we have seen her eating with techniques that people look lower upon. We have seen her eating together with her hands. We have seen the show edited (for instance, the Thanksgiving show) to really make it appear that they eats non-stop. We have seen her eating large portions (as on her behalf date together with her partner, Sugar Bear). And we're urged to create choice how she cooks for and feeds her children, a number of whom (including Alana) tend to be heavy. She sprinkles sugar on their own already sweetened cranberry sauce and states it's the way they obtain portions of fruit. She constitutes a dish known as "sketti" which includes spaghetti, ketchup, and butter. She informs us about providing them with food venison culled from deer wiped out in vehicle accidents. As though that doesn't drive the purpose home enough, Alana laments the truth that they haven't had venison shortly, observing that, "It has been some time since i have had road kill within my belly." Largely overlooked is June's comment that they is attempting to give a household of six on $80 per week, departing little room for gourmet fare, which she cooks almost everyday to manage food costs. And, oh, these uncouth southerners! The kids curse. The mother and father curse. They argue and laugh noisally. Your camera ensures to document every time they pass gas or burp or pick their noses. They play in dirt on several episodes (I am talking about, you are aware how we southerners love our dirt—food, toy, flooring—it's multi-purpose!). They're going to "Redneck Games." The editing of 1 episode stresses that gnats fly around them. When Alana meets the present Ms. Georgia, Ms. Georgia notes that they is unclear about what lengths the small girl will use the pageant world due to her insufficient refinement. And tries to train Alana "proper" etiquette appear aggravating for that child and also the instructor, as though the small girl is hopeless! The presented picture of Sugar Bear, too, is frequently unflattering. He's always proven having a pinch of eating tobacco in the mouth, resulting in comments about his breath. He talks softly and appears shy and, quite frequently, moments are edited to stress that June may be the "boss" and also the women pay him little attention. This adds to the look of the household as disordered, given our culture's creation and castigation of "matriarch" figure and customary lamentations about males losing their status in a variety of ways. However I aren't seeing Sugar Bear as weak while he is quiet. Actually, in Sugar Bear, I see my very own father and my personal favorite uncle. My father would be a quiet guy who loved pickups and hunting and fishing and worked with my sister and me lightly. My uncle is exactly the same and, like Sugar Bear and lots of southern males, he's usually eating a pinch of tobacco and clamoring for any "spit cup." I don't find him disgusting. I have not been offended by his breath or his tobacco habit. A basic disposition doesn't indicate deficiencies in engagement or importance inside a family circle. Sugar Bear's passion for June and individuals women is apparent. He works a hardship on his family. So when June's earliest daughter, his step-daughter, includes a baby, his sweet words about how exactly she reminded him of Alana to see him hugging the child strengthened the comparison I made between him and my father. The Shannon/Thompson family members have a powerful feeling of themselves as working class southerners and therefore are even untroubled through the term "redneck"—and why when they are, given "redneck's" origin like a term to explain hard-working maqui berry farmers whose necks were burned red-colored by sun damage? But given all of the negative associations that label has, it appears outdoors the arena of possible ways to the producers from the show that certain could be comfortable as well as happy with a rural southern identity. In comments of posts or articles that discuss the show, you'll generally discover their whereabouts known as "whitened trash," too. Now, I must say, first, that although I realize the sentiments of poor whitened people and students who've attempted to "reclaim" the word "whitened trash," it's a very problematic term, specifically in its implication that "whitened trash" is really an anomaly that people must incorporate a racial marker. Most whitened individuals are not perceived as being trash, thus the label but exactly what does this say we consider people of color? The racialized terms through which we're known happen to be built with techniques that imply a natural subordination, impoverishment, "less-ness" in ways the term "whitened" is not built. Actually, so anomalous is "whitened trash," that scholar Matt Wray investigated the concept that people with all this label are frequently regarded as "less than whitened." For that reasons of the essay, I wish to concentrate on another adverse concept of the labeling from the Shannon/Thompson family as "whitened trash": within the words of Matt Wray and Annalee Newitz, "whitened trash" is frequently the "whitened Other," "the main difference,Inch indeed, the "threat" inside the bounds from the fortunate status of whiteness. There's no clearer evidence in "Honey Boo Boo" the South and, within this situation, whitened southerners are now being othered, described as foreign, unknown, and unknowable, than the truth that the household's speech is captioned, as though our British is anymore highlighted compared to people using their company parts of the U . s . States! But individuals other accents are normative, undetectable, default, and, ultimately, no accent whatsoever, however the way "real" USians talk! I believe everyone is described in ways to create each member an item of ridicule, however i believe our finest disgust should be restricted to June. June appears, in my experience, to possess a great attitude. She finds the humor in lots of situations and she or he is affectionate together with her women. She's confident about her relationship with Sugar Bear and her attractiveness to him. She's a little adventurous and she or he loves to have some fun. June can also be money savvy she endeavors to become an "extreme couponer": "It will save you money for the family—that's the material,Inch she stated [on Due To Jimmy Kimmel Live]. "I might be a multi-millionare but still want for the greatest deal in my family." Furthermore, "she's putting the show's earnings into trust funds on her children," observing that, "I would like my children to appear back and say, 'Mama performed it wise.'" Funny, confident, beautiful, smart… apparently, individuals are things forbidden to body fat southern women. When June decides to possess fun on the water slide, your camera concentrates on the truth that she struggles to climb it (even so, she laughs amiably at herself and it is clearly getting a great time, however the joke should be on her—HaHa! She's too body fat with this!). She notes that beauty is incorporated in the eye from the beholder which she and Sugar Bear both appreciate her beauty (an undeniable fact that he verifies). Yet, she's proven because the complete opposite of all individuals stuff that are built as beautiful in today's world, from her disdain for makeup to her refusal to obsess over her weight. And, in keeping with common portrayal of southerners, you will find lots of "d'oh!" moments if we are because of the impression the family people aren't intelligent. I am unable to, in a single publish, catalogue all of the ways this lady is mocked and cast because the butt of some joke that everybody else is within on. But, what really endears June, and even, her family, in my experience, is always that, when confronted with a nation that derides the majority of things about the subject, they STAY proud and in keeping with who they really are, something which I realize as (and that i deeply, deeply hope is) a refusal to simply accept the mandate they apologize to be themselves, to be working-class and southern. After I see June, I'm reminded of Liss's publish about getting the audacity to become body fat and happy and that i will not help smiling myself. For me personally, the othering from the South and southerners, the career people as inferior to northerners, the continual stream of jokes about our stupidity and "in-breeding," our "strange" food (as well as deadly, until soul food and southern food are correctly gentrified by northern chefs—but that's another publish!) and strange customs, implies that I proclaim my southern-ness frequently and noisally, in the language I personally use on social networking to mentioning to myself like a southern (b)elle to creating an effort to make use of my "real" voice within my classes along with other configurations to ensure that my accent, that we find lovely and luscious, stands out through. Even though a part of which has range from procedure for being comfortable within my own skin, some of it is Certainly a "'! I'm progressive, wise, funny AND southern"-thumbing-of-my-nose at individuals who'd believe this type of person cannot exist. I just read June's actions and attitude for the same reason. I've got a wonderful feeling that i'm right.