MTV has a new reality show featuring the ultra-spoiled rich girls from My Super Sweet Sixteen. Apparently, their parents have gotten sick of putting up with their tantrums and whining. So the girls are being sent to third world countries for a week to learn...well, I'm not sure what exactly. You can watch the trailer for the show here: http://www.mtv.com/overdrive/?id=1587292&vid=232277
When I first heard about this, I thought it was an interesting idea for about three seconds. At first glance, it's easy to think that maybe these girls would learn something from this experience, even if they don't come out of it with a sense of the incredible privilege they've been born with. But then I thought some more, and then I watched the preview. And here are the problems I see with this idea.
1. The lack of meaningful change that's possible. These girls are spending one week in the countries they're being sent to. A week is barely enough time to get oriented and get the feel for another culture for a seasoned traveler. It's barely enough time to adjust to the time difference for half the places these girls are going. And for girls who've probably never stayed somewhere that wasn't a resort or five-star hotel, one week is nowhere near enough time for them to get over their expectations of service and comfort, much less start to reexamine their own lives and privilege.
2. The obnoxious American stereotype being reinforced. The host families for these girls are treated horribly and have their cultures, lifestyles and traditions insulted repeatedly. In the process, stereotypes about American tourists are reinforced, which pisses me off, and the host families are forced to endure yet another case of first-world privilege. In spite of what we like to think, American life isn't inherently superior to these people's lives, and as a basic matter of courtesy, you shouldn't insult the home, culture, country, or lifestyle of your hosts anywhere in the world. But instead of any of these issues being addressed, I'm betting that the girls will learn nothing, or some cheesy one-line statement like "people are poor and that's bad" or "you don't need money to be happy". So they'll come away with nothing, or worse, thinking they've learned something profound that amounts to nothing, and as they fly away, the host family will be sitting there thinking, "Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with that country?" Which they'll be completely justified in doing.
3. The idea that third-world countries are some sort of panacea for all issues that first-world teenagers have. The parents of these girls, instead of looking at the ways in which they've encouraged and enabled spoiled behavior, are assuming that the poor, hardworking villagers in whatever country the girls are being sent to a) are miraculously able and b) want to teach their daughters lessons about work and poverty that these girls should have been learning from childhood in their own homes, rich or not. As the original post on Racialicious (http://www.racialicious.com/2008/06/20/mtv-a-licious/#more-1596) pointed out, there are much better ways to give these girls a dose of reality. Have them support themselves on a minimum wage job for a month, or make them do some community service work. But the idea that sending them to a third-world country is the only way to "fix" them is offensive to those countries, ignores very real social problems in the US, and shifts the blame for their behavior from their parents and upbringing to American culture as a whole.
This isn't just true for this show. The sheer amount of programs where first-world teenagers have the opportunity to travel to third-world countries, do work, experience the culture and live with locals show that this belief is common. Of course these programs have upsides--they allow us to experience incredible things and connect with people across the world. And tourism is a large part of the economy of many developing countries. But I think in all this travel, first world tourists need to be incredibly careful about the assumptions they make about their host cultures.
Too often, I think travel to these countries gets simplified in one of two ways. The first is from the insensitive/unadventurous traveler who stays in resorts and never tries to do anything that involved interacting with locals. And the attitude they come away with is one of privilege, where locals exist to serve them, and any local culture and customs that haven't been co-opted by tourism are stupid, irrelevant or otherwise inferior. Along with this attitude comes and general lack of interest in learning about and appreciating other cultures. Sample behavior: on my Costa Rica trip, one of the adult chaperones and I were discussing languages and travel. I said I'd like to learn Japanese at some point so I could travel to Japan. She responded, "What's the point? They all speak English now anyways." She also got incredibly frustrated when the clerk at a grocery store didn't understand her requests in English and before she finally surrendered and allowed me to translate.
The second way tourists simplify their experiences comes from the liberal, young neo-hippie demographic who travels to escape the consumerism and materialism of American culture. This is the groups that romanticizes the places they go, rhapsodizing about the beautiful simplicity of life and ranting about the evils of corporate America. I admit, I've been guilty of this. When I returned from Costa Rica, I was feeling very anti-American culture and really wanted to go back and live the happy, simple life that I saw there. But this view is only a small part of the picture. It's easy to assume that the families who treated us so kindly in developing countries have a perfect life or that they're free from the worries about work and our future that we have in the US. And to some extent, this view makes sense--studies have shown that the work-related stress and illness experienced by many corporate workers in the US isn't anywhere near as pervasive in other parts of the world. But this view ignores the very real challenges and problems faced by those in developing countries--lack of access to clean water and medical care, increased prevalence of infectious diseases, malnutrition, corrupt government, civil war, and others--issues where Americans fare much better, on average.
The solution to this, I think, is simple. When you travel to another country, listen. Don't make assumptions about what people think or want. Understand their country and culture from their point of view. Don't tell them how to live their life, don't assume their life is better or worse than yours. And I'm not saying don't judge anything. Because in a travel situation, both parties have the opportunity to learn from each other. In Guatemala, I was lucky enough to get firsthand insight from my host mom and language teacher about their opinions of the sort of service work travel programs that come to Guatemala from the US. This was judgement about an aspect of my culture, but it was incredibly interesting to hear their perspectives and discuss them. Also, on the reforestation work team, some of the Guatemalan teenagers were burying the plastic bags that the trees came in next to the trees in the dirt. The GV kids on that work team took the opportunity to explain to them that the bags should be thrown away and that burying them in the ground in the forest wasn't a good method of disposal. Getting other people to think or teaching them something is always a good thing. But do it in a way that doesn't imply the superiority of your culture, ideas, or country.
I think the attitude of a good traveler is best summarized by this quote, which GV hammered into our heads in Guatemala. An aborigine activist once said, "If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you understand that your liberation is tied to mine, then let's work together."
