An entertaining British reality show called Ladette to Lady takes a bunch of obnoxious, overly sexualized women and sends them to a finishing school to teach them to be ladylike, so when I heard about VH1’s Charm School, I thought cool, an American version of Ladette to Lady.
But I was wrong. Charm School is instead a disgusting, puerile, putrescent monstrosity that represents the very worst television can possibly offer. Words cannot even properly express the loathsomeness of this show; one would have to instead make vomiting noises and play the sounds of flies buzzing around carcasses and shit.
The ostensible premise of Charm School is to take the vulgar, trashy women who vied for Flavor Flav’s affections in Flavor of Love and send them to “etiquette boot camp.” But in fact the purpose of the show appears to be to find new ways to humiliate these women, and the winner is likely to be the craziest, meanest one of the bunch.
There is nothing charming about Charm School. First off, the mistress of the school is comedian Mo’Nique, who is funny in her standup act and quite presentable on the show but is hardly the epitome of style and grace (sorry Mo’Nique, but let’s face it, if you had any real class you would never have agreed to appear on this show to begin with). She is assisted by some woman who seems strict but basically decent, like Mo’Nique, and some guy who is just a prick who delights in insulting women. I can’t find their names on VH1’s website, which shows you about how important they are to the show.
Charm School made its intentions clear in the first episode when the girls were forced to take a long hike and camp in the woods, then were divided into two teams that had to race through an obstacle course. What, you ask, does this have to do with etiquette? Nothing, although Mo’Nique makes some claim about measuring teamwork.
The team that lost seemed to lose primarily (at least as portrayed in the show, which is of course edited for effect rather than truth) because one of the girls chosen to be a team captain chose weak girls who she worried would feel hurt if no one seemed to want them. She was roundly criticized for this shocking display of decency by the judges, who told her that this was a competition and she couldn’t be soft. I’m sure Miss Manners would completely agree.
Article comments
1 - yazmyn
hahaha da only smart 1 is larissa,shay courtney, and saphyri