Below is a photo that I just found the other night of me in the dress I wore to the holiday party in my last episode on the show. Although it was not from one of the designers that I worked with, I thought I would share it with you. It was taken at my mom's house. If you look to the right, you can see a picture of me as a little girl.
Back to the question at hand.
Some viewers have made comments about some of the women on the show such as, “Wow she really likes to kiss…ALL she does is kiss- that is all we see her doing”. Or, “She just met that guy, why is she all into him so soon?” Although I really don’t know what happened on their dates or how soon things actually happened, I can say that editing can reduce a relationship that took weeks or months to develop down to 15 minutes. So let’s say I decided to kiss one of the men I was dating….and we kissed every time we greeted each other and departed…and let’s throw in one more kiss on the date. Well, that is reasonable, right? Now let’s say I did that on every date for four dates and that TV land only allows 10 minutes to show those dates. You could conceivably see me kissing someone 12 times in 10 minutes. I think that aspect of editing can be a little unfair to the subjects of the documentary since viewers really cannot get a feel for how much time really elapsed. On the other hand, who knows, maybe that person really did kiss an awful lot or moved really quickly- the point is, we really don’t know.
Editing can also make a story impersonal. Since Hooking Up focused on eleven women in a five-hour series (more like 3.5 hours after commercials), the audience did not get much of a chance to develop a “relationship” with most of the women. Without this pseudo-relationship, it is hard to identify with a TV person and become emotionally involved in her story.
For example, with the show “Sex in the City” (which was a rough model for Hooking Up), some of the ladies made really bad decisions in their dating lives but you just didn’t see many people yelling at the TV, “What are you doing? You are so stupid!” I feel that this is due in part because you were allowed to grow with those women. You were able to feel their pain and understand why they made certain choices. You were able to identify them as a fellow human with real feelings, not just a character on TV (Ironically we were actually real people and they were just characters). You laughed and even cried with them. Although you may not have agreed with everything that they did, you were able to see parts of yourself in each of them. This viewer-character bond was not prevalent in Hooking Up.
So, step into the thoughts of a woman filming Hooking Up. She is thinking that the audience will be following all of her ups and downs and journeying down the core to hear her sort out thoughts and feelings before making a particular decision and even if she makes a mistake, the audience will sympathize with her, because the audience would have been there every step of the way. Hence, she builds a relationship with the viewers and trusts that she can drop all pretenses. However, in the end, the audience mainly wasn’t there. They were picked up at the highs and lows and dropped in between.
So what may have seemed like something too personal for TV, in her mind she was sharing something with someone she trusted- someone that knew her, just as she would with a good friend.
In my experience with filming Hooking Up, I felt a little let down by how much of my footage was edited out. I wasn’t concerned so much about meaningless moments, but I trusted that viewers would at least be there for most of my introspective moments and they really weren’t. So many people didn’t understand what happened in my relationship with Acie that I became annoyed with having to repeat myself regarding something that I was extremely clear about on footage that didn’t air. I feel that the editors had to make some tough decisions. With 26 minutes to convey what happened with me over the span of 200 hours, they were faced with having to prioritize. I feel that their objectives were something like this:
1. Create a contrast between the women profiled.
2. Draw viewers with an intriguing story.
3. Focus on the aspects of online dating.
4. Show the dynamics of the relationships.
Again, that is a lot to cram into 26 minutes. I think that they chose to focus most on my views regarding delaying intimacy, particularly kissing, because it created contrast with the other women and an intriguing story. I feel like the intricacies of the relationship I had with Acie, such as our disagreements, just were not sensational enough to make the 26-minute cut. However, some viewers have said that they would have found that to be much more interesting than some of the other footage that they saw on the show.
Considering that editing can be done in a way that can be very damaging to one’s character, I feel that I came out okay. Although I felt that some of my footage was misunderstood, I can’t say that I regret filming Hooking Up. I would absolutely do it all over again.
There is still more to come about my experiences on Hooking Up, but I will be getting more into issues outside of the show. There is always something more to discuss! This last question took longer than I thought to answer so I am a bit behind in addressing some questions.
UPCOMING POSTS: I will answer this question from ventureheart.com visitors in a blog post in the upcoming week:
...I think it will be a challenge for you to find that "patient" man. You can have massages, dance provocatively with him on the dance floor, cuddle on the couch but not even a kiss will be exchanged without a commitment to marriage? 
I will share tips with stories about my online experiences- particularly what you didn’t see on Hooking Up.Reisha