The thong-wearing ladies on the MTV reality show Jersey Shore are causing outrage among Italian-American groups—but Nicole LaPorte argues that they’re progressive prima donnas.
With her leopard thong, poof hairdo, and “Pornstar in Training” trucker cap, Nicole Polizzi—better known as “Snooki” on the MTV reality series Jersey Shore—is no Meadow Soprano.
And not just because Snooki and her female cohorts on the show—in which a group of self-proclaimed guidos and guidettes shack up in a house in Seaside Heights, New Jersey, for a summer of boozing, clubbing, and Jacuzzi-ing—aren’t Ivy League-educated Good Girls. Or that Snooki’s response to an Italian-American group and companies that recently pulled advertising from Jersey Shore because they said it reinforced negative stereotypes was: “FUCK YOU! If you don’t want to watch, don’t watch. Just shut the hell up! I’m serious. FUCK YOU!”
The truth is, the show is actually undoing age-old stereotypes and replacing them, for better or worse, with a progressive, and even revolutionary, model of prima donna that is more Lady Gaga than Victoria Gotti. In contrast to the one-dimensional portraits of Italian-American women that have been trotted out over the years—the loud-mouthed bimbo (Marisa Tomei’s Oscar-winning performance as Mona Lisa Vito in My Cousin Vinny); the long-suffering housewife (Connie in The Godfather; Carmela on The Sopranos); the daddy’s princess (Meadow Soprano)—the trash-talking, overly tanned ladies of Jersey Shore pick fist fights, refuse to cook or clean up, and shuffle around in slippers and sweats while the guys in the house preen and put on lip gloss. Most dramatically, they are not women who are defined by, or in the service of, the guidos and goombahs around them, whether it’s their fathers, husbands, or boyfriends.
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