Casting Call for “Girlfriends of Silicon Valley” Is Pretty Much the Worst

Super ugh- would there ever be a call for boyfriends of silicon valley? pic.twitter.com/dSAPUnQFEn

— Melissa Silverstein (@melsil) March 31, 2015

Nope, there wouldn’t be.

OK, so you want to make a reality-type program about the dating lives of women in Silicon Valley. Sure, that’s not the most original idea, and it’d be nice to see something about women working in the tech world instead of making the entire point their romantic lives, but it’s also not the worst idea in the world—if the women are at least presented as the protagonists of their own actual lives. But that’s not what this casting call sounds like at all.

Setting the rest of the text aside, a quick change to the title of the casting call would make a world of difference. The one-sided gender call would still be a pretty transparent assumption that women in tech are more defined by their dating and social lives than their work, but at least calling it a “Women of Silicon Valley” casting call instead of “Girlfriends” wouldn’t immediately reduce women to secondary characters whose worth in the story of their own real lives is dependent on the career of their significant—or insignificant, depending—other.

Then there’s the rest of the text, which makes it clear that they’re not interested in whether or not these women are actually directly involved in tech fields—”they” at this point is the independent production company The Connected Set, though it’s unclear who their client is for this particular project. While they don’t expressly state that the women involved can’t also be working in tech, the opening paragraph is pretty clear that they’re only interested in women who relate to the tech industry through their romantic partners instead of through their own actions, skills, and ambitions.

Again, reality TV is all about looking in on other people’s lives, and there are certainly women with lives to be seen that fit these requirements, but there are plenty of women with stories that their entire gender hasn’t already been pigeonholed into. And when someone finally decides to tell them, hopefully that person won’t make them sound like subplots of their own existence.

(via Melissa Silverstein on Twitter)

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