Matter-Eater Wife and I have, to our chagrin, been enjoying the hell out of WB's Superstar USA, the mean-spirited version of American Idol in which the judges sought out the worst singers they could possibly find. Part of the appeal is the contestants' sheer willful ignorance of their own suckiness; these people are simply convinced that, while they've been living (to borrow a phrase from another fake-out reality show) their sad existences working for the man, deep down they're the most talented, good-looking, sex symbols ever born. And some of the contestants are instantly recognizable types: The busty blond girl who was told she could sing in first grade, the bizarrosexual teenage guy who announces to the judges that he's really controversial (which is true, if bu "controversial" you mean "sucks"), the white rapper, and so on. It may not be good clean fun, exactly, but the contestants make it hard to feel too guilty enjoying yourself at their expense.

Matter-Eater Wife also noticed that, while the male contestants came in all shapes and sizes, the women were pretty much all of the standard, socially-designated attractive size and shape. My guess is that that's because, when they were younger, people were willing to tell the women who deviated from the attractiveness mean that they weren't very good at singing or dancing and should maybe try painting a picture of a pony or something else, while people were more gentle with (or flat out lied to) the more conventionally attractive girls. An alternate hypothesis would be that pretty people are simply less talented, of course.