As a long-time media critic, I can tell you that

this is not a sentence I’m accustomed to writing: Corporate media gave me a huge gift yesterday.

As I traveled to Denver (to moderate a panel and have a wine and cheese reception for my book at the Women’s Studies Association conference), Newsweek’s Jessica Bennett reviewed Reality Bites Back in a lively feature headlined, “Everything I Learned About Women I Learned From Reality TV.” Her subhead that says it all: “Which means I must think they’re all desperate, competitive, plastic-surgery-obsessed bimbos. The problem? Today’s reality entertainment is a lot more like fiction.”

I couldn’t be happier with Benett’s take on the book and the issue of representation of women in this genre throughout the last decade. She writes:

If your main source of knowledge about women came from reality TV, this is how you’d see the world: a place where your mom is a conniving, deceitful gold digger, your sisters and girlfriends vicious and catty. You would learn that “sisterhood” is a thing of the past, as Pozner puts it—and that girl friendships are not powerful but spiteful. And you’d understand that women were put on this earth to compete for male attention—when, of course, they’re not busy pulling each other’s hair out or lounging half naked in a hot tub.

Yesterday, I blogged about new network market research claiming that women want to see bloody, gory violence perpetrated by their small-screen counterparts — and why that interpretation of the research reflects a crisis of vision on the part of programming decision-makers.

Today, I discussed this issue with The Today Show’s Amy Robach, explaining that it’s not the blood and violence women want–it’s fully fleshed-out, well-written, strong, smart, witty female characters with agency. (I described this as the opposite of all those babes fighting for the lone Y chromosome in their midst on reality shows like The Bachelor and sniping at each other on frenemy series like The Real Housewives.) Check it out:

“What Women Want to Watch on TV,” The Today Show, NBC, Sept. 4, 2010:

I’ll add to this post a bit later — so, stay tuned for details about why the segment was framed around female TV heroines, rather than “women want blood!” as it was originally going to be. But since I woke up at 5:30am to get to the studio on time, you don’t want me writing much right now.