Throw a Stone

Survivor: Blood vs Water ended last night. To the surprise of no one, Tyson was the winner. I'm not upset with that. I didn't like him when he played as Coach's pawn in his first season. I was so annoyed with his second season that I didn't even watch it. This time though, he played an almost flawless game. Very impressive.

Overall, I have to say that I loved this season. I did not think I would. I am always apprehensive when returning players are involved and this time returning players made up half the cast. Because everyone came in with an ally, people had to think differently about the game. I usually hate twists to games like this (because they are almost always lame) but this time, the twist was great.

Survivor always lends itself to showing a lot about human behavior. Quite often without realizing it does. This time, maybe because I am about to turn 40, I noticed a lot of the things it was saying about the role and views of middle aged women. I am sure you can guess that little of it was good.

Older women are viewed as a liability to the tribe.  Even though many older women have demonstrated skills around camp that are very useful (building shelter, cooking, fishing) and many, in recent years, have arrived with a lot of physical strength, it is often the older women who are voted off first. The perception is that they aren't useful for the tribe and, indeed, will drag it down.  Even though many of the challenges don't necessarily just rely on physical strength, people will use the 'the old women are weaker' reason for getting rid of them.

People always assume the worst about older women. This happens in many ways, but I think the most common is the sense of betrayal. It seems that any other type of player can lie, cheat, and steal their way to the end, but when an older woman does it, she is despised. People will despise an older woman who makes it to the end by playing an underhanded game.  They will often go out of their way to call the woman out on every thing she did wrong and then not vote for her. Usually when men or even younger women play this kind of game, they're given more of a pass (though men are given a larger pass than younger women).

They will also assume things happen to the older woman due to her flaws instead of her strengths. This season, Laura was voted out of the tribe the first time because her tribemates knew she could defeat a man who they saw as a big threat on Redemption Island. She was sent there because she was strong. Her daughter, however, assumed she was sent there because no one liked her. This one misconception became the foundation for what ended up being her daughter's biggest mistakes in the game. It cost them both.

Mind you, it's not really surprising that the daughter did this, because another thing that holds true is that strength of older women is disregarded. Even though the older women dominated the physical aspects of this season, an older woman didn't win. Of course, Survivor is never based just on the physical aspects of the game, but when we have men at the end who dominated the physical portion, it's always discussed. This time, it really wasn't. Monica won three challenges, but this was never considered a reason why she should win. Three challenges is a large accomplishment, but she had no credit for it at all.

Instead, when people were talking to her about the final vote, many of them kept demanding that she show vulnerability. This pissed me off. I can't recall any time at the end of Survivor when someone asked a man to be vulnerable.  They wanted her to strip away her emotional shields so they could see things about her, things that, so they alluded to, would give them reason to vote for her . . . not that they did.  I found this to be insulting and insane. What the hell kind of qualification is that to decide if someone played a good enough game to win? Besides, who the fuck can be vulnerable on demand?

As I said, Survivor holds up a mirror to human behavior. The same things that happen on the game are more than likely happening in the lives of older women all the time. People will see us as liabilities.  People will assume the worst about us. People will dismiss our strength. More than likely, we won't be able to change that in our lifetimes. Eventually, perhaps, but these things take a long time to alter.  No, the best thing for us to do, as always, is to take the things people would use against us and find ways to make them work FOR us. That, after all, IS the best way to survive.