Rant of the week: ShowMatch

This week I am angry. To be more specific, this week I am an angry feminist. If you live in Argentina, then you must know that there is really one television show that everyone watches, and all of the other shows that are broadcasted rotate around this one show. The show is ShowMatch, I know, you can tell the sort of quality the content is just by the name. And the other shows that discuss the events of ShowMatch have equally impressive names: Este es el Show, La Cocina del Show, you get my point. ShowMatch has this sort of magical quality that highlights the best machista qualities of Argentina. Basically it is a sort of “Dancing with the Stars” but with terrible dancing, a lot of exaggerated and forced gossip and naked women. It’s a man’s paradise I suppose, for men who like gossip and constant bitching.

Well, on Monday the show really outdid itself. “Dancer” Cinthia Fernández got completely naked in the strip dance competition. I guess in a certain way, I don’t really understand why everyone was so shocked—I mean the part of the show is called strip, what were people expecting? At any rate, I did a sort of “oh wow” when she took off the bra, she had her nipples painted people don’t freak out, and then got wine spilled all over them, so may be the paint was obsolete. But the big shocker was when her bikini bottom was taken off and her legs were open so wide that her cooch could be seen to Mount Olympus (when she had “clothes” on I think the theme was a Greek god-thing). After digging up some information on Fernández, I am not very shocked at her naughty television behavior. The woman’s resume is full of “theatrical” performances with names like “Exciting” and “Champagne makes them affectionate” and my personal favorite, “Crazier than cows.”

ShowMatch has these sporadic “scandals” when the women are more naked (is that possible? Apparently so) than usual. Last year, it happened in December  when Silvina Escudero, dancer, and vedette,* and her dance partner Nicolás Scillama danced the exact same dance category, strip, and caused polémica. I guess I had forgotten about how scandalous it actually was! I mean, I watched the clip from last year, you know a stroll down porno memory lane, and wow. Escudero and Scillama start the normal strip tease, with the wanting faces and sexual tension. Then it just gets rowdy. Most of the dance is Escudero’s crotch in Scillama’s face—which is actually a talent, since he continues to dance basically blinded by beaver. The dance ends with Escudero’s breasts in Scillama’s mouth. He sort of goes back and forth licking them until the MC Marcelo Tinelli places himself in front of them to cover that action up.

So, naked women scandals are not really new on ShowMatch. When there are no scandals, women prance around in body paint. The entire show is like a circus, and Tinelli is the ringmaster. I think Tinelli is the root of all evil. He has basically been running the television industry in Argentina for at least 20 years. ShowMatch originally started as VideoMatch, which showed funny video clips between sports news updates. This evolved to showing only videos, to singing and eventually “dancing” competitions. Except no one dances on the show (is that mean?). And no one cares about the men—most people can only name the female “dancers” on the show.  The show enrages the feminist inside me but I think worst of all, I find it disappointing. Disheartening. Exhausting. I think Argentina is relatively machista in general, but ShowMatch is just absurd. It is insulting to see dozens of women crawling around half-naked to get attention on television. Perhaps it’s the mass consumption of television that makes it seem worse than it actually is. Unfortunately while evil Tinelli continues to crack the whip, no changes can be expected.

*Vedette: A vedette is a woman with “talent” that gets to be a slut on public television and is “famous.” Slash popular since dudes get to watch her/ them giggle and throw their breasts about on tv guilt-free. There are a million of them—they’re like a rapidly spreading disease, the fastest thing that spreads about them is their legs!