Panty Chat

Even though Alexandre and I have a questionably legal cable box with about 75 channels, I still often find myself hard pressed to find something good to watch on TV (I mean, a girl can only take so much "Two and a Half Men," and Animal Planet's “Baby Planet” is only on once in a while ). I have a general rule against dubbed (unless it's a documentary), and, well, I'm a snob. 

Anyway, my channel surfing led me into a rip tide of late-night television in the form of Papo Calcinha.  This is a Brazilian show whose name translates to "Panty Chat". Now, it may sound like it's one of those secret porn reality shows, but it's not (but only because they're dressed). Papo Calcinha is a sort of slutty, younger version of “The View.” Just like “The View,” the show has a token black girl and also a token lesbian (you know, because the show is so progressive). It's basically just a bunch of biscates my age all overdone and overdressed, sitting in the living-room-style TV set and justifying their sluttyness by insisting upon "universal truths" about men and women (things like, "all men are smart about attracting women, but we are smarter about attracting them!").  

It's a room full of women talking over each other, talking out of their asses, throwing out incorrect English words and phrases to sound cool, and acting like the terms "slut" and "progressive feminist" are synonyms... in other words, my worst nightmare.  

Some of the girls are from Rio, so I learned some valuable Carioca slang, like the super common use of the super word "super".  One of the girls was talking about some guy she f*%^ed, and she said, "a gente super ficou!" What does that even mean?!?!  

On top of that, I learned the verb "facebookiar", which the linguist in me couldn't help but like a little.

The girls' conversation was also a good lesson in turn taking, which, as every second language learner knows, is difficult to pick up when you're immersed in the culture of your new language. "Panty Chat" taught me that, apparently, the Brazilian way to maintain your turn in the conversation and to keep people from interrupting you is to reach your arm out and SNAP AT THEM if they utter a sound so that they shut up and you can finish your story about how your friend wanted to get with your ex-boyfriend and you thought it just wasn't cool at all. 

I'm mostly sad that my language learning skills are wasted on this kind of Portuguese. I still can't understand my bank statements, but I can understand everything these shameless whores are saying. 

I agree that perhaps it'd be nice if there was some female version of sports commentary shows, but, please, Globo Network. This is not it. Talking about her sex life on national TV and making the first (and second, and third...) move every time doesn't make a woman "modern".  If you want a show about progressive, modern-day women, make a show about women multi-tasking like woah and rocking it at all kinds of normal life things, like studying, working and moving up in their careers, maintaining a house and a family, taking care of all of the bureaucracy-related things in their household, remembering everything that the men in their lives forget, filling about 15 different roles at once, AND most important of all, not kissing and telling.

An honest-to-goodness modern day woman doesn't brag about how many guys she's slept with. She doesn't reduce a relationship down to the man's penis size. She doesn't pretend that she's having sex with all these random guys just because she likes sex.

These kinds of women on Papo Calcinha are the opposite of a modern woman. They are still focusing all of their attention on men, and defining themselves by their history with men. One girl told a story about how she pined after a guy for 6 months before he finally gave her the time of day, and then at Carnival, she threw herself at him and he agreed to have sex. She went to study abroad, and he promptly started dating one of her friends. So where's the modernity in that? The girl was still chasing after a guy that ignored her, and she thought she was successful for finally getting him to sleep with her, and didn't realize that she wanted the relationship and then just got desperate for ANY kind of attention and settled for just the sex. 

It's just this nasty shameful storm of mixed messages and hypocrisy and superficiality. It's women saying that they have nothing better to think about than their underwear. 

Shows like these make me want to just stop watching TV all together. Ok, not all together. If I still have Animal Planet's "Baby Planet", I'll be fine.