Bravo’s latest reality show Married to Medicine is off to a healthy start. The Atlanta-based show debuted to a promising 1.9 million viewers on March 24, making it the network’s highest-rated series premiere since Bethenny Getting Married? in 2010. But the show about two Black female doctors—Simone Whitmore and Jacqueline Walters—and the wives of doctors isn’t such a hit with students at Howard University’s College of Medicine, who have started an online petition calling for the show’s cancelation because, they say, it negatively “associates Black females in medicine with materialism.”
Writes the petition’s author Olabola Awosika: “Black female physicians only compose 1% of the American workforce of physicians. Due to our small numbers, the depiction of Black female doctors in media, on any scale, highly affects the public’s view on the character of all future and current African American female doctors.”
Now that we’re into episode 2 of Married to Medicine, do you find yourself agreeing with Awosika, or do you think women like Whitmore and Walters—both OB/GYNs—are the show’s saving grace?
When it comes to reality TV, there are those who will argue that the formula, with its catfights and petty arguments, has taken not just Black women but women overall a million years back. Do you agree, or do you feel that there are those few women who get it right and portray us in a positive way? Women like our April cover girls Tia Mowry-Hardrict and Tamera Mowry-Housely and entrepreneur extraordinaire Tyra Banks can hardly be accused of negativity. Tell us what you think. Share your thoughts and comments below.
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