“She's Dumb as Dirt”: Female Rivalry in MTV’s Laguna Beach

Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County premiered on MTV on September 28, 2004, just three weeks after I started high school up the coast in Pebble Beach, California. Ostensibly, the reality docudrama was a coming-of-age story that followed the lives of Laguna Beach High School senior Lauren Conrad and her group of friends, including baby-faced heartthrob Stephen Colletti and his on-again-off-again girlfriend, Kristin Cavallari. But Laguna Beach was also a show about a group of teenagers manipulated to hate each other by Hollywood producers. It’ll come as no surprise to anyone who watched and loved its more recent counterparts (The Hills, Newport Harbor, The City) that the success of the show lay in MTV’s ability to convince a generation of teen girls that a lifestyle based entirely on drama and rivalries could be desirable—aspirational, even. Pebble Beach is a six-hour drive north of Laguna Beach, and the two small coastal towns epitomize the Northern/Southern California divide. Pebble Beach is foggy and cool, its jagged stretch of coast endowed with a fearsome tide that beats rocky beaches into submission. The sands of Laguna Beach, on the other hand, are calm and flat, the skies cloudless and blue. Northern California is a land of towering Sequoias and Birkenstocks, Southern California of palm trees and Havana flip flops.Growing up in the former, I spent hours wishing for the latter. “A sunny California tan is slimming,” I read in one of the magazines I used to pour over in 2004, “Take it from Laguna Beach’s Lauren Conrad, you can never be too rich or too thin.” Taking this advice to heart, I decided one afternoon before lacrosse practice to rub foaming self-tanning lotion over my arms and legs in a locker room that smelled like mold and coconut. “Can you spread it on my back?” I asked a teammate, “I don’t want it to be blotchy.” She laughed. “No way,” she said, wrinkling her nose, “Besides, I think you’re supposed to use gloves.” I dabbed my hands with toilet paper that stuck to my skin, and we jogged down to the field. The sky was grey, the air cold and damp. I remember looking at my forearms and watching as the colour rapidly developed on my pale skin.Naturally, my hands were stained orange for weeks. The rest of my skin was patterned with orange and white blobs, a patchwork cut by the sweat that ran down my body during practice. The captain of the boy’s lacrosse team laughed at me the next day and told me that I looked like a freak. I went home and cried, scrubbing my skin raw every night for two weeks until the stains finally faded.

... to engage with mass media is to join a fellowship, to become a part of a shared culture which teaches you how to belong.

Media theorist James W. Carey characterizes two views of communications: transmission and ritual. A transmission view of communications refers to media that imparts information between individuals. A ritual view of communications, on the other hand, reaffirms common societal values and beliefs.According to a ritual view of communications, media of this kind is more than a reflection of culture—instead, it becomes and creates culture. Carey describes this kind of communication using religious terms. Reading a newspaper becomes like “attending mass, a situation in which nothing new is learned but in which a particular view of the world is portrayed and confirmed.” According to Carey, to engage with mass media is to join a fellowship, to become a part of a shared culture which teaches you how to belong.My friends and I watched Laguna Beach religiously. It was our ritual to chat about the nuances of each episode over MSN or AIM. “Cant decide if stephen is cute or not,” I’d message a friend.“YA DUH,” she’d reply. What neither of us realized at the time was that the show transferred information about the lives of a subsect of California teens to its viewers at the same time as it was reaffirming beliefs and stereotypes about race, class, and gender. I think Laguna Beach compelled me to tune in again and again not because it offered novelty, but rather, because it provided a familiarity already consistent with everything I was already steeping in: society’s understanding of power.As a teen girl, power seemed to be in short supply. I spent ages 14 through 17 bristling against the boundaries set up by my parents and authority figures. My mother didn’t want me to cut my hair, so in a rebellious fit, I chopped it off with a pair of blunt scissors. At school, I refused to accept my mediocre grades, so I loudly and obnoxiously argued with my teachers about the correct interpretation of Emily Dickinson’s poetry and basic geometry. And yet, despite my best efforts, every day still seemed to be imbued with a sense of powerlessness. My minor rebellions still didn’t allow me to feel as though I owned my life, my time, or even my appearance. So I looked for power in the channels available to girls, or at least, to girls who looked like me. I gravitated toward power where I saw it: in relationships with boys, designer sunglasses, and gossip.Three million people tuned in to the season finale of the first season of Laguna Beach. The program was a break-out hit for MTV and later evolved into a franchise which spawned the long-running spin-offs The Hills and The City. These shows documented a specific cultural narrative, shaping the experience of growing up white, straight, female, and upper-middle class in Southern California.

The show taught me how to hate other women and it taught me how to hate myself.

A love triangle provides the frame for the first season. Kristin Cavallari loves Stephen Colletti, and Stephen loves Kristin. Kristin hates Lauren Conrad, and Lauren hates Kristin. Lauren loves Stephen, and Stephen likes using Lauren to make Kristin jealous. As the season progresses, the rivalry between Lauren and Kristin grows fierce. The two form duelling cliques of improbably glamorous teens, fighting for the affections of Stephen and the rest of his crew of tanned surfer boys.Even before Laguna Beach, I had long been familiar with the narrative of female rivalry. Like virtually every woman I know, I was taught from a young age that there was only room in our culture for one successful woman at a time. In the early 2000s, tween-stars Hilary Duff and Lindsay Lohan’s feud became the stuff of legend as they competed for the affections of heartthrob pop star Aaron Carter. Later, two of the most powerful actresses of their generation, Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston, feuded over Brad Pitt. I remember cheering from the sidelines for the success of my favourite celeb, fully aware that there could be no compromise, no middle ground. Looking back, it was almost as though we were all intent on restoring a perceived cosmic balance: according to some kind of internalized patriarchal “common sense,” it was obvious that one of these successful women had to be excommunicated—not just from the affections of a smooth-skinned, tan lover, but from the cult of our admiration.At one point in the first season, the dynamics of female power and their precise location in one’s outward appearance become impossible to avoid. “Too skinny is definitely unattractive,” Stephen says to Trey and Lauren on the drive up to LA, “Like there’s a fine line between skinny and unattractively skinny.” To this, Lauren smiles and nods appreciatively. “Yeah,” Trey grunts. Later that night, they sit in the front row of the fashion show. A model walks down the runway. “Is she unattractively skinny?” Lauren asks playfully. Stephen looks the model up and down and shakes his head. “She’s hot. That’s hot … She’s not too skinny. She’s not too skinny at all.”The model invites Stephen to a party after the show. “You’re so gorgeous,” the model coos to Stephen. Defeated, Lauren retreats to her car. “Was [the model] a bitch?” Lauren’s friend Nicole asks later. “No, she was just, like, dumb as dirt,” Lauren replies.It’s a painful scene to rewatch as an adult, because I can acutely remember what it felt like to crave that kind of validation from men. I remember wanting to hear my crush put down other women, and even encouraging him to do so, solid in my belief that if another woman was worth less in the eyes of the man I desired, I would somehow be worth more.Almost without exception, the girls of Laguna Beach were thin, white, and rich, clad in early 2000s Californian signifiers of wealth: bluntly rectangular Chanel sunglasses, denim miniskirts paired with pastel Ugg boots, velour Juicy Couture tracksuits, and Tiffany necklaces. It is not only due to the manufacturing of TV-drama that at one point or another in the series, they all hated each other.

But what stories do we lose when the same cultural narratives are reinforced again and again?

“Christina told me that she still likes me, but she doesn’t like me when I’m around my friends,” Lauren tells Lo, hovering over a makeup counter at the mall. “Oh, so she just hates me,” Lo says. “I guess so,” Lauren shrugs.The show taught me how to hate other women and it taught me how to hate myself. These girls leveraged gossip as a social commodity, letting disparaging observations about others stand in for flirting with boys. To bond with another girl was to hate the same girls she did. Every issue, every drama was somehow the fault of another woman, while men in the TV show continuously skirted accountability and blame. To watch the show was to experience a how-to in internalizing misogyny. You could hate a woman for being too pretty, too ugly, too smart, or too stupid. You could hate her for being catty or mean. You could hate her for nearly anything—which meant you, too, could be hated for anything.But Laguna Beach also felt like a guide on how to be cool and popular. My friends and I emulated Lauren Conrad’s outfits, however weather-inappropriate. We lay out in bikinis under cloudy skies, shivering in our futile efforts to achieve that perfect California tan. Watching the show felt like being invited to the parties of the coolest popular kids we’d ever seen. Watching Lauren gossip with Lo felt like being welcomed into a powerful clique and a different life—one where I could pretend I was confident and pretty and wanted.But what stories do we lose when the same cultural narratives are reinforced again and again? Which voices are silenced? Which representations of people in mass media have the ability to shape a life?Perhaps unexpectedly, every episode of Laguna Beach passes the Bechdel test. That is to say, in every episode at least two women talk to each other about something other than a man. Sometimes they talk about fashion while decorating their eyelids with flawless cat-eyes in illuminated mirrors. Sometimes they talk about parties, or cars, or even college and career plans. I wouldn’t go so far as to call the show feminist, but as a young woman it was revolutionary to think that anyone could care enough about my concerns to broadcast them on screen. Before the show, I had assumed that I was unimportant, my interiority superficial, and my concerns worthless.Getting ready for a party at 19 with a group of friends, I’d borrowed a friend’s black dress with a plunging neckline. My ex-boyfriend was going to be at the party, along with the girl he’d cheated on me with. I leaned in to the mirror to apply red lipstick.“If looks could kill,” my friend commented, catching my eye in the mirror. “It almost feels like we’re suiting up for battle, doesn’t it? Like we’re going to war.”She was right. At the time, I thought I was going to war with other women. Now I wonder who the enemy really was.

Emily Kellogg is a Toronto-based writer. Her work has appeared in publications such as (parenthetical), Room Magazine, and The Huffington Post. Her essay, "List of the Affected," was shortlisted for PRISM International's 2017 creative nonfiction prize.