“It’s the first time viewers had seen Melissa and Julie from The Real World, who left the show frolicking through a bed of roses. Because Battle of the Sexes producers didn’t offer viewers this context, the Melissa/Julie fight appeared to come out of left field.
They claimed Julie would offer to speak at the schools for a smaller fee than her castmates, and the colleges - looking to save money - would book Julie instead. “Every racist thing that could be hurled toward me was, and I don’t think that as a cast - because we hadn’t kept in touch with each other over the years - they understood that perspective or the impact that had on my life.”Īfter the season aired, Melissa and some former Real World castmates alleged that Julie stole their opportunities on the lucrative (at the time) college speaker circuit. “For months, I was called racist, that I’m race-obsessed, that I’m race-baiting,” she said. Social media didn’t exist at the time, but people sent their attacks by email. After the show aired, she was hounded by viewers. She knew she had the right to be angry, but the editing questioned that and in turn emboldened fans. Melissa tried in vain to explain that there is no way for white people to use that word and not have it be malicious. He made excuses for the guide, saying that he wasn’t purposely using the word in a hurtful way. Melissa was disturbed by the guide’s casual use of the word and upset with her castmate Jamie’s reaction. In Melissa’s original season, she and her housemates took a swamp boat tour during which the white guide called one of the bird species by a name that included the n-word. “I also figured,” she said, “what’s the worst that could happen?” Going back on the show is an opportunity for Melissa to tell her story and make sure viewers know she was more than the Black woman who cussed out the white girl. The problem is how that anger is so often presented. It’s not that The Real World and other reality programs can’t show Black women and women of color having angry moments. All were portrayed as versions of the Angry Black Woman, a stereotype rooted in the false and racist idea that anger is ingrained within a Black woman’s nature rather than a normal human response to a frustrating situation. Looking back, it’s clear how The Real World failed Melissa and other Black women: Kameelah Phillips, who was on the show’s Boston edition, Arissa Hill on Las Vegas, Coral Smith on Back to New York. I have no apologies about that.”īeing able to laugh at yourself is a gift, but getting to this point wasn’t easy for Melissa. Reflecting on her fight with Julie, she said, “My arm is so thin. “Listen, there were abs and there was comedy - it’s iconic,” Melissa, now a 44-year-old mom of three living on Long Island, told Vox in a recent interview.
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Real World: Homecoming, a new weekly Paramount+ series starring Melissa and the rest of her New Orleans housemates, is trying to right those wrongs and allow the cast to reassess their experiences. But in its 33-season run, it could also lean on stereotypes - like the Angry Black Woman - to tell those stories. The Real World will go down as one of the more progressive shows in television history for documenting the lives of gay people, people of color, and other underrepresented groups. Two years later, they were onscreen enemies, and Melissa was pigeonholed as “The Angry Black Woman.”
Melissa and Julie had left their season of The Real World: New Orleans as best friends.
Then, in a separate confessional, Melissa uttered a phrase that’s become a part of MTV canon: “You go messing with my money, you go messing with my emotions.” “You got your smug little smile and think it’s all cute - you’re a backstabber and you’re a liar.”
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We’re not friends, because I find you to be very dishonest,” Melissa Beck (née Howard) said to Julie Stoffer the last time the two were on TV together on MTV’s Battle of the Sexes in 2003. “I just want you to know that I don’t like you.