Lifetime channel premiered its latest show, Girlfriend Intervention last night, and it lived up to all the side-eyes people were already giving it. The show takes a white woman who feels downtrodden about her look and her life and connects her to four fairy black girlfriends.
The four are Nikki Chu (interior designer), Tracy Balan (hairstylist and makeup artist), Tiffiny Young (stylist) and Tanisha Thomas (soul coach).
The show’s tagline is “Trapped inside of every white girl is a strong black woman ready to bust out.”
Let me find out that our souls have been kidnapped by unaware white women. Let me find out!
Girlfriend Intervention doesn’t even try to act like it’s not a show that places the womanhood of Black and white women on some sort of scale. That in itself is insulting to every woman because it’s defining our behavior by our skin color.
The show’s message is that every white woman needs a black girlfriend (or 4) to set her straight. Also: white women need paid guidance counselors. Oh and Black women are confident robots who put style above everything else.
One of the biggest problems with the show is Tanisha, and that’s because she’s created a reputation for herself for being every bad stereotype about Black women. The woman of Bad Girls Club infamy is in no position to be anyone’s Iyanla Vanzant.
On the show, she epitomizes every bit of the loud, neck-swerving, sassy black woman, and she takes her “job” very seriously. She’s also the expert in the Black woman experience, apparently.
In the first 10 minutes of the show, the following lines are uttered by Tanisha:
Joanie is married to a FINE Black man. A Black woman would never let herself go with a man like that.
With Caucasian women, everyone is really afraid to say how they really feel.
There is not a sister on this earth who’ll miss a red carpet event because she feels fat. That’s a white girl problem.
The other women weren’t much better in what they were saying. Tanisha was just the loudest. The girl lacks an inside voice, but it also makes her words more noticeable. One of them (Tiffiny) even mentioned how white women aren’t happy unless they’re a size 2.
Holy sweeping statement, Batman! The show was full of it.
It was also full of tired and outdated phrases like YOU GO, GIRL! GET YOUR GROOVE BACK, SISTER!!! YES, GIRLFRIEND! I wanted to slide out my chair onto the carpet because it took itself so seriously but was so comedic that it seemed like satire.
I was sure Ashton Kutcher was going to jump out and be like “You’ve been Punk’d! This isn’t a real show but a skit on Saturday Night Live.”
But nay. Joanie was given a terrible makeover where the hairstylist just weaved her up, her home was decorated like an IKEA store threw up and she wore her own clothes mostly. Her “soul” was fixed by going to a salsa class (she used to be a hip hop dancer. Yes, to them this made sense). And at the end, the ladies assured her that she now had 4 sisters, and “you know what they say … once you go Black, you can’t go back.”
I wish I was making this stuff up. “Girlfriend Intervention” had to be produced by clueless white producers who didn’t have a person of color to tell them to have a seat because this show is offensive for many reasons.
One of those is that they have 4 Black women who are trying to fix someone’s life and none of them can fix their own hair to look right. Chile, BYE.
Lifetime didn’t just jump the shark. They somersaulted off the cliff into the shark’s mouth. I didn’t watch BAPS, and I heard that was bad, but “Girlfriend Interventions” is definitely a mess too. It is not worth watching, and I predict that it won’t be on air for long.
Luvvie is a serial ranter and blogger who talks pop culture at Awesomely Luvvie, technology at Awesomely Techie and is the head writer behind DumbestTweets.com. She can also be found on Twitter (@Luvvie), Facebook and Instagram.