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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
The Princess diaries
Does watching spoiled spendthrifts get schooled help us manage our own finances?
It's no secret that most reality TV has kind of an S&M vibe. Just think of those Japanese shows in which hapless salary men get thwonked by giant mallets and dropped into tubs of Jello.
But even the "educational" reality TV programs turn on a slightly sadistic dynamic. Princess, the newest offering from SSRqTil Debt Do U$ Part money maven Gail Vaz-Oxlade, is all about badly behaved girls getting spanked -- in the fiscal sense, anyway.
In this mesmerizing one hour show, which airs Tuesdays on Slice, demanding divas who've been taking life lessons from Paris Hilton are forced to take them instead from the no-nonsense, down-to-earth Vaz-Oxlade. She tells them to stop shopping, give up primping and get cracking on those debt repayments.
Of course, most of us have debt these days, but at least we have the good grace to stay awake nights and fret about it. Not 25-year-old Ashley, the princess featured in the debut episode, whose attitude to personal finances is dangerously relaxed. According to Ashley, "Not having money isn't really a barrier because I just whip out a credit card," a remark that suggests some confusion about those bills credit card companies tend to send out at the end of every month.
Credit card debt is entirely abstract for Ashley, which is probably why the rest of us can't wait to see Gail smack her in the face with some real-life numbers. The casting call on the Slice Network website explicitly promises financial comeuppance: "Do you have a princess in your life? Want to give her a dose of reality?" The producers vow to take these self-indulgent spendthrifts and "thrust them into the life they've always dreaded: their own!"
The show alternates footage of delusional self-entitlement -- Ashley spends $4,600 a month while making only $870 -- with stern chastisements. It's the same setup used in SSRqTil Debt Do U$ Part, but the deliciously punitive Princess spends more time on the naughty bits.
We watch Ashley walking through a mall loaded with brand-name bags and flushed with shopping endorphins, supremely confident that The Bank of Daddy is going to pay up. We see her sleeping in while her fiancé Kyle, seemingly a born patsy and soon-to-be daddy replacement, heads into work. We listen to Ashley discourse on the sanctity of the marriage bond: "I know we're going to get married because I really want to wear my dress."
Then there's the sudden and dramatic turnabout as Gail forces Ashley to cook and pick up after herself and live on a strict cash budget. In what seems to be a moral makeover condensed into 44 minutes of TV, the once silly and shallow Ashley turns out to be perfectly intelligent and competent once she's forced to buckle down.
Vaz-Oxlade is addressing some serious issues. Despite the advances of feminism, young women are still prone to certain kinds of money problems. Partly it's the "you deserve it" culture, which has somehow enshrined salon pedicures and blingy bags as inalienable human rights. Partly it's the fact that many women are passive about their finances, holding unconsciously to the princessy idea that eventually someone else will take care of everything.
The show counteracts these trends with sober and sound financial advice: Set goals, track spending, increase income. But, really, who watches it for the practical tips? We watch it for the irresistible spectacle. We get to see vanity and selfishness getting punished in a way that's rare in real life.
As undeniably satisfying as this all is, is it actually educational? The show's emotional dynamic is so perfect and so satisfying that it almost overruns the financial details. I worry that witnessing Ashley's ritual whupping just lets me go back to my own relatively modest and dull overdraft with renewed complacency.
alison.gillmor@freepress.mb.ca
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition September 11, 2010 F2
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