MTV's 'True' Look at Young Women Online

I have to admit that I generally tend to like MTV's attempts at documentary work in their shows, "True Life" and in the very early episodes of "Made." (And I could write at length about "My Super Sweet 16," "The Hills," and some of their other finer programming, but that's an entirely different post. Or maybe 100 posts.) This recent episode of "True Life," which one of my students alerted me to, particularly piqued my interest:

'I Live Another Life on the Web': Three Girls Explore Life On the Web" 

(below is just the first segment):

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While the storytelling is fairly good, and while I don't think the producers gloss entirely over some serious emotional and psychological issues that each of these girls has (perhaps one more than the others), they completely gloss over a couple of other really important points. 

First, why three girls? In the case of Judy, what about the creepy dudes who offer to pay a girl's rent in exchange for her walking around naked in front of her webcam? Or in the case of Maleri, what about the guy on the other end who just asks for it for free? Does our culture not find that fascinating as well? Why the focus on girls? And why is sexuality such a huge part of this equation? The case of Amy the musician was different, but you do realize from one of her answers that she was asked by a producer about whether she tried to make herself look better in Second Life (her avatar looks about the same, actually). So even if she were trying to remove appearances and sexuality from the equation, MTV just pulls it right back in there. Not that it should surprise us, I suppose. It is MTV, after all. 

 Second, it seems we get to only see the semi-exploited in these cases. OK, you can argue that each of these young women makes a choice to use the Internet and that perhaps they are getting something in return (that is in fact, what each argues -- one for money and a chance to interact with someone without aggravating her social phobia and the other for a chance at falling in love), but the producers at MTV don't really explore the other side. They show Judy taking her antidepressants, but they don't even ask her about whether she thinks her depression and agoraphobia have any relationship to her web site. I'd frankly like to hear what she thinks. (The storytelling in this case is also incomplete. Is it a pornographic website that people have to pay to access? Or does she just take her clothes off for one of the patrons, who wires her rent money right afterward?)  Missing from each of these mini-documentaries is any real critical reflection what this all means, culturally and individually to these young women, which is a shame because MTV had a chance to do some good here.