Steve Price: MAFS objectification of women should be stamped out

TV shows like MAFS, which objectifies women to win a prime time ratings slot, is only one example of what’s wrong with the world today.

Perhaps this week Prime Minister Scott Morrison should not have singled out a Sky News political reporter during a fiery media conference and instead taken aim at whoever was representing the Nine Network.

Using the throwing stones at glass houses analogy, the PM was later forced to apologise over his stupid clumsy attempt to paint the media in Canberra with the same tawdry brush being applied to his fellow MPs.

Instead, Morrison should have posed a question to the Nine Network representative in that room over whether they thought screening every night at 7.30 a prime-time TV show objectifying women was helping this debate.

No one expects a Canberra press gallery journalist to be influential in making programming decisions on a show that consistently rates over a million viewers a night, however, the hypocrisy shouldn’t be lost on anyone.

Married At First Sight — or MAFS — is a ratings juggernaut. It’s also poisonous garbage at a time when the nation is engaged in a debate about the way we treat women.

A wedding in this season’s Married at First Sight. Picture: Channel Nine

On the very night after Andrew Clennell was singled out, wrongly, by a Prime Minister who I think has an increasingly glass jaw, guess what went to air on Channel Nine in a timeslot widely viewed by children?

A competitor on the MAFS reality TV show by the name of Alana Lister arrived home from work to cook dinner for her TV husband.

As she starts slicing up cucumber, she pours the bloke who she is supposed to be married to, a glass of wine and proceeds to strip off her clothes, down to a set of red lingerie.

Dressed then in nothing more than a bra and G-string she sets about making dinner.

The dopey husband — as the story line goes — is then supposed to rediscover his passion for his wife, gets turned on and gets dinner made for him, all at the same time.

A few hours after this candy porn in child-friendly viewing time went to air, the PM was forced to apologise to this newspaper’s owners, for referencing a false claim about an alleged incident in a toilet.

MAFS aired an episode of one wife cooking her husband dinner in lingerie.

Surely if we are to have a genuine conversation in Australia about bringing up our children to respect each other and for young men in particular to respect girls and women we might start by stamping out TV sleaze like this show.

The young woman in the g-string – Alana – is described in her profile as being 30 years old working as a teacher.

Is it really appropriate for a teacher to be baring her backside in a red g-string to more than a million people on reality TV?

Incredibly the Nine Network website goes on to describe Alana as being passionate about girl power and empowering women. Really?

Cooking dinner for a slob of a husband in your underwear is empowering women?

No wonder we have problem in this country with men’s attitudes to women.

Lister was shown cooking dinner for her husband in a G-String. Picture: Instagram

The last time I slammed this vacuous, sex shaming, fake marriage show I was actually working for the Nine Network on radio in Sydney.

Nine owned 2GB and I was off my afternoon radio show and filling in on the Alan Jones breakfast show.

Nine had just taken full control of the station.

Having watched the previous night’s episode, I went to work at around 3.30am the next day and at around 4.30am wrote a few words about how trashy I thought it was and invited talkback callers for their view after the seven o’clock news that morning.

To a person, the audience thought it was demeaning rubbish, slammed the show for its cavalier attitude towards marriage and the ugly personalities of the reality stars of the show.

Callers thought fuelling people up with alcohol around a dinner table to stimulate arguments and nastiness was just the sort of show young people should avoid.

The Nine TV executives were not impressed that someone on their own network’s radio station was publicly slamming their ratings and revenue monster.

My then radio bosses backed me and explained talkback radio survived on strong opinions and that no one was exempt from criticism.

Given Nine’s own preachy newspapers — The Age and Sydney Morning Herald — it would have been a bit rich if I had been not allowed to express an opinion on this rubbish of a show.

What makes today so different though is the climate in which we are having this debate about the safety and respect of women in the workplace.

MAFs new “sexpert” Alessandra Rampolla encourages couples, who have only recently met, to be more “intimate” with each other. Picture: Channel 9

How a major media company thinks it can screen a dumbed down marriage show that features — on one episode — not one, but two, examples of the blatant objectification of women is beyond me.

And remember this pre-recorded episode, edited and given approval by TV executives went to air during the very week that the Canberra workplace sex scandal exploded across the country.

Two rape allegations — one allegedly in a minister’s office – stories of male sex orgies in Parliament House, rent boys being smuggled in for sexual favours, sex acts after hours in Ministerial offices — all disgusting and disturbing.

But if we are going to have an honest conversation about how in this age of social media, we are going to shape the views of young women and men toward each other, should we really be screening TV shows that preach exactly the opposite.

Nine will argue — and a million plus viewers shapes their argument — that it’s just a reality TV show, so no harm done.

Problem for them is the word REALITY.

If that’s what they think the reality of married life should be I think they’ve got it horribly wrong.

LIKES

— Playing a round of golf with superstar jockey Damien Oliver and finding out he’s taller than me.

— Crowds back at the footy even if the ticket ballots are a nightmare.

— Not having to wear a Covid mask in supermarkets and seeing the full face of the person making your morning coffee.

— Common sense prevailing on the Anzac Day march numbers now we need to just let it happen with no limits

— Hotels like the Como where I stay in South Yarra all but fully booked out this week first time in 12 months

DISLIKES

— Someone with nothing better to do trying to change the name of the Golden Gaytime ice-cream

— The State Governments refusal to shut down the Richmond heroin room dragging drug addicts into the local school playground

— Canberra’s toxic Parliament House sexual culture

— Aussie farmers smashed by drought and bushfires, now flooded

— International flights being resumed into Victoria despite on-going doubts about hotel quarantine

Originally published as Steve Price: MAFS objectification of women should be stamped out