The Effects of Soapies on Sexual Identity

As a little girl, I was a true romantic who believed that one day a ‘knight in shining armour’ would sweep me off my feet. Somewhere along the way I started believing that my life would only be complete and successful if I had the ‘true love’ of a male counterpart and that men were only interested in fun and frivolous activities, rather than love and commitment. Where did I learn this bizarre notion if not from my friends and family? During my teenage years I became very interested in the idea of love and sex (as I’m sure you are) and even though I had liberal parents and a tight circle of friends, I latched onto characters from television to guide me through my sexual and romantic choices.

Television became my friend, I learnt about anything and everything from the different shows I watched. I was particularly fond of soap operas and my favourite was the Bold and the Beautiful. I was fascinated by the character Brooke Logan. Brooke Logan can never be single, she is constantly trying to break up marriages and manipulate people in order to get her latest love interest into her bed and life. Her character implies that woman need a man in order to be happy and fulfilled and even though she is a successful and intelligent woman, nothing else matters as much as her personal relationships with men
The more time I spent in front of the television, the more addicted I became to the idea of love and romance.

Finding ‘true love’ became so important to me that I did not care about hurting people’s feelings let alone my own self worth. By trying to find the romance portrayed on television, I constantly broke up existing relationships, became too intimate too fast and dated numerous boys at once in order to increase my chances of finding it. I immersed myself so far into ‘television reality’ and did not offer enough time to the formation my own identity.

The ‘reality’ portrayed on television soap operas do prove to be highly entertaining but it is questionable whether they depict a valid representation of ‘reality’. The twisted plots of soapies and series make it very easy for one to become addicted to them as well as so involved that one forgets that it is only a show.