by Zoe Shapiro

I’m the worst kind of TV viewer: the snob. I go to the opera, have read my way through the classics and love flitting in and out of galleries. My favourite shows are poignant or witty, like Mad Men and 30 Rock. But I’m ashamed to admit that on occasion, I’m also a total sucker for trashy reality TV. After a long week and a boozy weekend, ordering Thai food and watching the E network on Sunday night seemed like a perfect and mindless way to unwind, so my noodles and I settled in to watch the new season premiere of Kendra.

The bleached bimbo from the Girls Next Door has moved out of the Playboy mansion, married a football player and popped out a kid before she turned 25; my age. She represents a lot of things that I find pretty disgusting; the implants, the fame without talent, and being rewarded for perpetuating a less than intellectual viewpoint. But as my noodles dwindled and the show went on I found myself surprisingly touched and impressed with Kendra.

A month after giving birth, Kendra is clearly smitten with her baby, adjusting to her new lifestyle and sharing some very candid viewpoints and personal experiences with her viewers. The weight she put on in pregnancy has not been lost in the super-human fashion which other celebrities have demonstrated by pushing their already taxed post-pregnancy bodies further; getting runway or red-carpet ready seemingly minutes after giving birth. She speaks of her insecurity despite her doting husband’s assurances that he finds her beautiful and whatever her IQ actually is, Kendra has the wisdom to recognize that despite wanting to look sexy, especially for him, and have him acknowledge that she is, her lack of confidence stems from her own current perspective. She is not shy about displaying her body on camera, lifting up her tank to reveal the belly that’s a far cry from the athletically lithe girl who pranced around the Playboy Mansion. When Hank, the hubby, tells her to give herself some credit, that the date-night-dress is hot, she thanks him with tears in her throat; clearly finding it hard to accept and believe the compliments coming from someone she so clearly adores.

In this moment my heart went out to her. We’ve all had days on which we’ve done battle with the mirror and we’ve all heard a piece of flattery that our own insecurities couldn’t let us believe. For Kendra, who exists within the Hollywood pressure of perfection, who has modelled and posed nude and is probably wracked with hormones that I couldn’t even begin to fathom, the stakes, while self-inflicted, are certainly different than for the average girl. For these reasons, her confessions and her willingness to expose both her body and emotions during a time when she feels less than herself and wholly vulnerable struck me as very, very brave. I forgot about her previous glamorous lifestyle and vapid comments and thought about how healthy it was for the young women watching to see something so normal and difficult and average as the post-partum reality. If we’re going to get a dose of ‘trash’ TV, better this than watching trendy girls sipping drinks outside a designated metropolitan hotspot.

Kendra is still reality TV, which we snobs certainly (and I’m sorry, correctly) consider a low form of entertainment. And its heroine may be a sweet or simple girl, who’s done nothing truly inspirational or important with her life. But as far as reality TV goes, I now give her a lot of credit. Instead of trumped up relationships and fake storylines, Kendra was willing to depict herself in what she considered to be an unattractive light and offered us actual reality; even though it was something difficult and honest. Which I found kind of beautiful.