One of them is Malaysian Dreamgirl which is already over by now, and they already have a new dreamgirl (Juanita) for Season 2. Oh well, I was supporting Ming and Dawn all along, but then again, it was quite evident that by the end of the show, Pinky was giving better pictures than Dawn. Juanita's pictures were not bad too. good in the view of professional models, but nothing too striking from the eyes of a viewer. Anyway, she bagged the prizes with a margin of 20, 000 votes. Those producers are sure raking in a whole lot of money.
Having watched this series of Malaysian Dreamgirl, I turned to watch the episodes of Season 1, which I have painfully sustained myself from viewing all throughout the semester.
I found the modelling more interesting than the current episode, but with unexpected results -some of the better girls were eliminated earlier, and those that were left behind, especially for the top 3, had very medicore performances. And the girl who won (Cindy), in my opinion, should be eliminated way back in the earlier rounds. Hmm. SMS voting isn't fair at all, to the contestants who fought hard to win this, only to lose to the cash-support factor. At least this year's season (Season 2) was slightly better because Juanita definitely had way more potential in modelling than Cindy, and she worked harder too. It's just that the side of her character on camera irked viewers a lot.I have been wondering whether it would have been better if they could somehow limit it to one vote per phone every week or something like that - or just judge the competition based on the opinion of a number of judges. But then, by then the show might not even exist because there's no big profit in it! Hmm. Reality is reality. Anyway, the Malaysian Dreamgirl series were good entertainment, even if the outcomes were not really fair.
Another series I watched and finished is called 'S Factor', which Dawn introduced to me. It is a Singapore reality show (and I don't even know they put up shows like this), in the search of the one girl with the 'S factor', who is going to win $10,000 in cash, and gets displayed on the cover page of the FHM magazine. It's uploaded on Youtube every week and the last (8th) episode is over.
$10,000 is a lot of money (at least to me - think DOLLARS not ringgit), but getting it is not easy either. Somehow I kind of think this show is weird. They contest in the funniest things ever - for example to test their intelligence they test their speed in performing a secondary level experiment (which, I'm sure even a smart primary school kid could complete but then some of the girls had great difficulty even finishing it). And the debate which followed which was judged by professional judges of a national level was nothing more than picking out the 'best of the worst'. Put one Sec 4 kid in there who could speak English fluently and think maturely - and he or she could beat the whole lot of them at one go. Other competitions - like handling kids, and fine-dining proved to be better. But the intelligence episode was certainly a pain to watch, though it was funny in its own way too.Anyway the whole show is over now and one girl walked away with the prizes. But she had a price to pay for it too - for she (as well as some of the other girls), had exposed so much of the weakness of her character in the process, that it was hard for people to feel the same about her again. Especially in the way she treated the other girls. $100,000 to show the ugly side of a beautiful girl, plus your picture on the cover of a magazine to boot. Is it worth it at all? Sometimes in a way, society does let us think it is worth it.
Take for instance something said by another girl in the competition - that it was necessary for her to blog and 'bitch' about others because otherwise, people will just think that she's some boring, goody-goody girl, and she'll lose all her readers. Is this the trend and mindset today?
In our school days, we learned from moral education and such that you reap what you sow, and how much you put in is how much you get. Also, be kind to others so you get treated kindly in return. We learn to be fair to others so we should be treated fairly too. To respect others to be respected. Well, the irony of all this is, you go out into society armed with all these things and then very, very quickly; you get conditioned into accepting another set of values - the fast way to climb the ladder of success. The good guy seldom wins, or he never even gets to win at all. Pride is rarely followed-up by a fall for people who always get it right. Bad is exciting, being good is boring. How much you reap is just a tiny portion of what you sow. Isn't it disheartening?
But I don't think it's the end of the story yet. The Bible has a much larger view of things. Look at the example of the Beautitdes:
It expresses the consequences of our actions and thoughts - they do have the rightful consequences, though in heaven and not on earth. There were be weeping in the night but joy in the morning. The end of the story is in heaven, not on earth, where there's always the hierachy of the social ladder to climb, and when there are times that being good just isn't worth it's while.
All the more why Christians should learn not to love the world and its values, and practice patience and endurance for the better things ahead :)
