Not Here to Make Friends Season 3

Not Here to Make Friends is a zine examining reality television through a critical, often anthropologic, always feminist lens. Commentary and reflections range from the silly to the serious, framing reality TV as an extreme medium through which we can better understand ourselves. SEASON 3:Sarah Chekfa opens Season 3 with an exploration of the ways women eat (and don’t eat) on reality TV, tracing a thread from Hot Ones to The Bachelor to The Housewives. Healy Crews then guides us into the American wilderness, using the survival show Alone as a mirror of contemporary solitude. Next, Maya Man dissects Dance Moms, superimposing the choreography of childhood competition onto the stage of online performance. Shifting our focus beyond America, Akhil Vaidya turns our attention to the spectacle of Dubai, reading The Real Housewives of Dubai, Dubai Bling, and Love Is Blind: Habibi as dispatches from a televisual mirage. From there, Sophie Roessler jumps back in time to the early-2000s, following the gaze of Hugh Hefner into a decrypted Playboy mansion. Rebecca Willner offers a striking contrast, finding agency where it wasn’t expected: Love Island USA. In her essay, she celebrates the summer of 2024, where the women challenged archetypes and the public. Nicole Tremaglio takes us to a different shore: The Jersey Shore, examining the rise of Italian-American stereotypes in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Finally, Sophy Drouin ends this season with a personal reckoning, using The Real Housewives to complicate her relationship with the men in her life.This season’s writers take the screaming matches, the walk-offs, the competitions and performances seriously. They contribute to a scholarship that makes watching Jax Taylor, or Snooki, or Heather Gay a richer experience. In doing so, they allow these characters and shows to act as both artifact and oracle—a record of who we are, and a sketch of who we are becoming.