Snooki: The Modern Heroine

Ever since the debut of MTV back in the 80’s, it has had a strong hold on the youth and captured the essence of their culture countless times. From making and breaking the musical heroes of modern teenagers to creating the now inescapable reality television phenomena, they’ve done it all. Every couple years, they truly strike gold as they did last year with Jersey Shore, which is arguably the trashiest show to grace their airwaves. A show that revolves around eight twentysomethings who live in a beach house together by the Jersey Shore for the summer.
The overall values presented on the show are something to be found in the nightmares of most parents. Their lives revolve around tanning, having sex and partying with lots of alcohol. They fight, they fuck, they do everything that shows like The Secret Life of the American Teenager fight against. Yet this is a better reflection on the lives of today’s young people. While MTV is a network that aims mainly at a teenage audience, the cast of the show is mostly in their twenties. These young people have been judged harshly by many critics. Some love their crazy antics for the trashy factor while others find them to be a bad example for today’s youth. But are their antics really an issue to concern ourselves over or are they just another example of harmless fun in the media?
The show has created many stars of its cast. The most famous by a large margin has been Nicole Polizzi, known as Snooki. She’s influenced fashion with her hairstyle that vaguely recalls the obsession with Amy Winehouse’s train wreck hairstyle a few years ago. She’s had many sound bites that have gotten play throughout the media and are now staples in the daily lives of today’s youth. Her influence on Western culture is enormous and not limited to the teen market unlike that of past MTV celebrities like Lauren Conrad.
Her fame comes mostly from the ridiculous antics displayed on her show yet through all the crazyness, she comes out seeming to be a hero of sorts. The show has its douchebag guys, strong women (aka psycho bitches) and dramatic couple, all of which are essential elements for a popular reality show. However, Snooki comes out of all this as the odd woman out. She’s hopeless in love and is cast as the outsider in the first episode, where she has too much to drink and indulges in the behaviour we expect of these people yet is judged harshly for trying to be herself and make a good expression. This is relatable to the youth. She’s the one we’re supposed to sympathize with. She’s just an average, fun girl who got caught in a sticky situation. Everybody loves the underdog.
As the season progresses, we root for her as she gains friends within the house, such as her confidant and partner in crime, JWow, whose selling points seem to be her no-nonsense approach to drama for girls and her large breasts for guys. After she has established herself as a normal human being within the house and has been accepted by the rest of the cast, she begins her second story-arch that draws in the viewer.
Snooki has a specific type of man which she loves to adorn with names like gorilla and juicehead, which are codenames for men who are addicted to working out and steroids because of the horrific standard that the media places upon men. Snooki’s obsession with this type of men does not help the role of men within society and does not allow them to move past this gender stereotype. However, her inability to find a man that will stick with her past a night of casual sex forces the viewer to gravitate toward her longing with sympathy. The hopeless romantic within her comes out and keeps her in the heart of the audience as the poor girl who just can’t catch a break. As the first season finishes her quest for love seems like it will never end.
This all changes in the second season which starts with Snooki and her boyfriend, who will have to continue working on their relationship as Snooki goes off to Miami to party but must resist the temptation of hooking up with anybody who is more than 90% muscle. This temptation does not turn out to be the danger but this storyline is used to further the idea of men being driven only by their genitals as her boyfriend ruins their relationship because he can’t keep it in his pants. While this storyline had been previously explored in both seasons with JWow and her boyfriend, Tom, Snooki brings a sort of first love experience and heartbreak to it that leads the audience to have a newfound sympathy for this played out storyline.
Things seem to be rocky in the third season for Snooki’s love life as she tries to find romance with cast mate Vinny but his penis leads him to hook up with all of Snooki’s friends which leads to further heartbreak. This storyline will surely be played out throughout the season as Snooki’s quest for love is always a big seller with the viewers. This season she will also come into trouble with the law, which seems to be related to her alcohol addiction from the gossip stories of her arrest within the summer. It will be interesting to see how our heroin deals with the bad guys sent by the man to stop her fun.
This isn’t the first time that Snooki’s drinking has lead her to trouble with violence. In the first season, Snooki was punched in the face by a man at a bar over shots that he stole from Snooki and friends. This plotline was surely a surprise for the people behind the show but clearly a delight as it added to Snooki’s role as the poor girl we have sympathy for as it presents the clear value that it is wrong for a man to hit a woman. This standard of violence in society is so deeply assumed yet to make sure we understand how wrong this crime is, each cast member, with emphasis on the males, weighs in on how crazy this situation is. 
Men are not the only gender to be demonized so that we sympathize with poor Snooki. Sammi, who claims to be a sweetheart but whose behaviour suggests anything but that, is blind to the behaviour of her boyfriend, Ronnie, who cheats on her constantly then crawls back to her without revealing any of his escapades. Snooki and her sidekick, JWow, decide to do something about this by writing Sammi a note to tell her all the bad things that her boyfriend is doing to get her to gain strength and become a heroine in her own sense. However, she’s not the hero of the show and Snooki is much better at playing the victim to an evil bitch than she is being the friend who helped get a girl out of a bad relationship. Therefore, the story takes a turn for the worst as Sammi lashes out against the two other girls and they become the victims of the show once again.
While Snooki may not be the best role model for young girls, it is easy to see why they love her so much. She’s victimized in each episode for many different reasons yet through all the adversity she faces, she still manages to have fun and be obnoxious enough for us to love her. Season 3 will clearly bring more pity for Snooki from the audience and cement her place as the modern heroine of the internet age.