Season 3

Not Here to Make Friends is back for Season 3!  Sarah Chekfa opens Season 3 with an exploration of the ways women eat (and don’t eat) on reality TV, tracing a thread from Hot Ones to The Bachelor to The Housewives. Healy Crews then guides us into the American wilderness, using the survival show Alone as a mirror of contemporary solitude. Next, Maya Man dissects Dance Moms, superimposing the choreography of childhood competition onto the stage of online performance.  Shifting our focus beyond America, Akhil Vaidya turns our attention to the spectacle of Dubai, reading The Real Housewives of Dubai, Dubai Bling, and Love Is Blind: Habibi as dispatches from a televisual mirage. From there, Sophie Roessler jumps back in time to the early-2000s, following the gaze of Hugh Hefner into a decrypted Playboy mansion. Rebecca Willner offers a striking contrast, finding agency where it wasn’t expected: Love Island USA. In her essay, she celebrates the summer of 2024, where the women challenged arc