Episode 27 – Foxy Ladies

 

This episode: Foxy Ladies, Season 1.  Watch it on Amazon Prime Video.  Watch it on Tubi TV.

Next episode: Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, Season 22, Eps. 2-6, 8.  Watch it on Hulu.

This month we have a special episode as Mike made the trek across the country to visit JS and we decided to do a ‘live-in-studio’ episode (aka recorded on a mic sitting between us on a card table), so there’s a bit more ambient noise than usual, but hopefully the quality should suffice.

Anyway, this month’s show provoked quite a bit of divergence in opinion as Mike more or less enjoyed it for what it was and JS had to bottle up his disdain for a month and has some grievances to get off his chest.  That being said, we eventually get into the usual talk of concept and structure and give our opinions on the rather large cast of characters and their personal travails.  Then we discuss how this show interacts with class and gender, particularly in comparison to the other ‘occupational’ reality show we reviewed, Highway Through Hell.  This discussion then leads us to our article, which analyzes the relationships between masculinity, sex, and work.  We apply the theories of the article to the two different shows and delve into how the occupations they depict differ both in their ‘cultural cache’ and in the narratives that unfold for their different reality television audiences.  Finally, we end with why we believe this show failed to be renewed and how its attempts to straddle two different audiences might have fallen short.

Show Notes and Links

1:04 / Welcoming you all to a very special live-in-studio episode

1:51 / Introducing this month’s show

2:30 / Our personal differences on the quality of this show

4:40 / The concept and structure of this show

6:08 / A brief diversion into JS’s favorite scene

6:55 / A low-rent Vanderpump Rules

7:35 / Our previous knowledge of the ‘bikini barista’ phenomenon

8:33 / What’s the appeal of a ‘bikini barista’ joint?

10:10 / A digression into food and their excellent website (no nudity, but prepare for some side-eye if you click on this at work or in front of Grandman)

10:51 / Mike’s experiences with Olympia, WA (Mike mentions Evergreen State College)

11:50 / Going over some of the themes for the various episodes

12:35 / JS makes a pitch for a new sponsor

13:27 / The owners of the chain are listed as executive producers

15:28 / Segueing into the cast of characters

15:43 / Kallai – single mother, veteran, manager, recovered addict

16:56 / Dalilah – other manager, relationship issues, history of DUIs

17:45 / Arielle – pastor’s daughter, single mother, boyfriend in jail

19:33 / Mike’s two cents on the characters mentioned

21:00 / A common thread (?) – questionable judgement

21:34 / Why Mike found Dalilah less sympathetic than the other characters

23:41 / Chrystal – recovering alcoholic, cosplayer, Etsy entrepreneur

25:40 / Arianna – newlywed, aspiring manager, most stable

27:53 / Paul and Yulia – owners (K-1 visas are a reference to our episode on 90 Day Fiance)

29:20 / Their story hits the typical beats of the ‘business owner’ narrative (our Highway Through Hell episode comes recommended as a companion to this discussion)

31:00 / The business expansion subplot

32:15 / Stephanie – operations manager, victim of a hatchet-job (?)

33:38 / Jaslin – the one whose name we couldn’t remember, put someone in a coma at 16

34:52 / Ashley – outlier, educational aspirations

36:42 / JS’s plausible theory on the transition from Ashley to Jaslin as the ancillary barista

37:13 / Mike enjoyed Ashley ditching Dalilah during the ad contest

38:02 / The photoshoot as an example of the disconnect between Ashley and the others (future orientation vs. orientation to the here-and-now)

40:42 / The social ties and the divide between ‘education’ and ‘here-and-now’ struck Mike as an authentic representation of this type of entry-level service-sector workplace

41:20 / Bringing Highway Through Hell back in – how representations of occupational reality TV are affected by gender

44:05 / JS would have liked this more if it did focus on the occupational aspects

45:04 / The issue of class (and financial compensation) in the level of ‘openness’ to having personal issues on television (ex. Ashley)

46:50 / We had a suspicion that the personal issues in both shows were similar, but that gender and audience shaped the narrative in terms of depictions of ‘work-life balance’

49:10 / Coming back and looking at the narrative in the finale in more depth

51:15 / The relationships that seemed more long-lasting and authentic worked much better in the finale’s narrative

53:32 / Transitioning to the article, “Masculinity, Labor, and Sexual Power”, Ann C. McGinley, 2013, Scholarly Commons at UNLV School of Law (Article mentions Hanna Rosin’s book The End of Men)

56:51 / Delving more into the topic of post-industrial transition (although Trump is going to bring back all the jobs!)

58:36 / The gendered nature of different occupations; discussing orthopedics and its connection to sport

1:00:44 / The idea of ‘head of household’ and ‘protector’ as last refuge of hegemonic masculinity

1:01:16 / Bringing it back to the show – huge contrast in both gendered aspect and cultural cache of jobs depicted in both Foxy Ladies and Highway Through Hell

1:03:27 / Disentangling the ‘bikini’ aspect from the ‘barista’ aspect in our cultural expectations; discussing the link between sex and work for working-class women (Mike forgot to mention it, but this even goes into ‘professional’ women – think of all the sexualization in pop culture around nurses, secretaries, etc)

1:04:41 / The double-edged nature of sex work (freedom to sell what you have on the market vs. commodification of women’s bodies)

1:06:25 / Returning to the idea of cultural cache of different occupations

1:08:15 / The skills involved in being a (bikini) barista – the ‘taste test’ segment of one episode (JS also briefly mentions his past working at good old Dunkin’ Donuts)

1:11:10 / Why wasn’t this show successful?  Bad luck or bad show?

1:12:28 / Vanderpump Rules as an example of this formula being successful

1:13:46 / Show likely was intended to be televised episodically, but doesn’t seem to have been picked up

1:14:19 / Where JS thought they went wrong – tried to straddle the audience of a ‘male gaze’-oriented show and a more ‘feminine’ show about women’s personal issues

1:16:14 / Mike thought the second-half shift to the personal was what made the show interesting to discuss

1:17:33 / Returning to gender and Highway Through Hell – imagining an attempt to pitch it to a more ‘female’ audience

1:18:04 / Final thoughts and last-minute grievances (our episode on Blind Date)

1:18:38 / Announcing next month’s episode

1:19:49 / Last call for our apathetic listeners to go vote on our listener’s choice poll

1:21:09 / The usual stuff: contact us, rate or review, and subscribe to us