Join Loyalty as we welcome authors and editors Ilana Masad, Stevie K. Seibert Desjarlais, and MJ Corey as they dig into how the pop culture phenomena has changed us as much as we have changed it! Their two books, Here for the Right Reasons: Why We Watch the Bachelor and Dekonstructing the Kardashians: A New Media Manifesto, brilliantly bring together the threads of so many cultural conversations to look in on why these shows have become so central to our public discourse in world that has left mono-culture behind.

ABOUT HERE FOR THE RIGHT REASONS: WHY WE WATCH THE BACHELOR

The Bachelor franchise has been around for over two decades and amassed an army of fans across its four shows. While contestants battle to prove they're here for the right reasons, Bachelor Nation is confronting their own question--Why are we here and why can't we stop watching?

Devout franchise fans Ilana Masad and Stevie Seibert Desjarlais pose the big questions to Bachelor Nation: Who are we? What does the franchise mean to us? And seriously, why on earth can we not stop watching?

For years, fans of the Bachelor franchise have laughed with and at contestants; cried along with their heartbreaks; tuned in again and again each season despite feeling betrayed by producer and contestant decisions alike; and celebrated, alone and together, the love (or loveless) lives of perfect strangers on our television screens. And we wonder, really, why? With reality TV broadly characterized as "trash TV," why are so many intelligent, funny, and critical people watching and discussing it?

Here For All the Reasons seeks to answer this question, diving into the complex negotiations of gender, racial, and class politics that arise within the fandom. This anthology is a polyvocal exploration of Bachelor Nation for Bachelor Nation. So, will you accept our rose and join the chat?

ABOUT DEKONSTRUCTING THE KARDASHIANS: A NEW MEDIA MANIFESTO

From the creator of the highly popular Kardashian Kolloquium comes a new media manifesto for the TikTok age, blending theory and cultural analysis to explain the meteoric rise of the Kardashians and explore what their fame can teach us about the way media functions today

"By far the best book I've ever read on celebrity in the twenty-first century."--Leigh Stein, author of Self Care

"Dekonstructing the Kardashians is Ways of Seeing for the Instagram Age."--Maris Kreizman, author of Slaughterhouse 90210

Since 2007, Kim Kardashian and the extended Kardashian family have been mesmerizing--and scandalizing--America. Whether we've liked it or not, we've been inundated with stories of their social lives, scandals, and reality show shenanigans and have witnessed the subsequent ascent of their multibillion-dollar fashion, beauty, and media empire. But the question remains: Why are the Kardashians so famous in the first place? And what does this tell us about the new media that have delivered them to us?

In Dekonstructing the Kardashians, MJ Corey, creator of the viral social media presence Kardashian Kolloquium, brings us not only the definitive chronicle of the family that's captivated a nation, but, perhaps more important, the story of how media has transformed in the internet age and how it continues to transform us as individuals and as a culture at large. Part media theory, part cultural analysis, Dekonstructing the Kardashians interweaves history from the past fifty years of Western media--from the Old Hollywood studio system, to the advent of the twenty-four-hour news cycle, to tabloid culture and beyond--with analysis of the cultural influence Kim Kardashian wields over us all and the influences that have shaped her in kind. In so doing, Corey offers proof that the Kardashians are, in fact, the First Family of our image-saturated and deeply divided nation, while also demonstrating how they hold the keys to understanding the disjointed, self-referential reality of our current era.

Ilana Masad is a novelist and critic whose work has been widely published. She's the author of two novels - All My Mother's Lovers and, most recently, Beings - and coeditor of the anthology Here For All The Reasons: Why We Watch The Bachelor.

Stevie K. Seibert Desjarlais is an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Her teaching and research interests include representations of gender, race, and class in US literature, film, and pop culture. Her writing appears in the Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Journal of Popular Film and Television, and Pedagogy. Even though she now lives in Nebraska—with her husband and animals—Stevie is a Southern Californian at heart.

MJ Corey is a Brooklyn-based writer and psychodynamic psychotherapist best known as Kardashian Kolloquium on TikTok and Instagram, where she applies media theory and postmodern frameworks to the Kardashian family. Her work has been featured in Refinery29, PAPER, Vogue.com , the Museum of Modern Art, and The New Yorker, among many other outlets.

Pop Culture is Watching You: Virtual Event for Here for the Right Reasons and DeKonstructing the Kardashians