J-School junior leaves MTV reality show

By KERIANN LYNCH
J-School Web Reporter

photo by Ryan Brennecke

Brianne Burrowes

When University of Montana junior Brianne Burrowes received a mass e-mail looking for American sweethearts and role models for a new reality series, she thought it was perfect for her.

“They were looking for an All-American girl who was really driven and motivated, and I thought, ‘Yeah, that’s me,’ ” said Burrowes, a UM journalism student.

Now, months later, after having moved to New York City to live, work and compete with 16 other young women on “Miss Seventeen,” being constantly followed by cameras and making a dramatic exit from the show,  Burrowes says reality television isn’t the life for her.

“I don’t have any regrets, but I don’t like being the center of drama and attention,.” said Burrowes.

“Miss Seventeen,” which airs Monday nights on MTV, places 17 young women in a New York loft together where they compete in challenges aimed to test character and intelligence. The show was filmed last summer and its goal is to find an all-American girl and role model who will receive an internship at Seventeen magazine, a college scholarship and the cover-girl spot in Seventeen’s February 2006 issue.  Contestants are judged by Seventeen’s editor-in-chief, Atoosa Rubenstein.

While Burrowes says she doesn’t like drama, her choice to walk off the show after the third episode has been one of the most dramatic moments thus far on “Miss Seventeen.”

As gossip and tension mounted in the house, a team assignment at Total Request Live, an MTV audience-requested music show, went poorly. Burrowes began to succumb to feelings of being misplaced and attacked, she said.

“The girls there told me I was their biggest competition and it ended up being a gang-up thing,” she said.

She doesn’t regret her decision to leave the show — MTV touts Web site clips of her actions as “Brianne’s breakdown”— but says instead that it was a choice she made to be true to herself and her feelings.

Burrowes, a student from Polson interested in working in magazines, said sticking with her “gut feeling” was worth sacrificing the opportunity to win the final prize — even the Seventeen internship which was her main focus.

It’s ironic, she says, that gossip and cattiness could force her off a show seeking role models. But despite her differences with the other women on the show, she says everyone involved is still a good role model.

“Competition has the reality aspect that will bring out that catty side of people,” said Burrowes.  “There’s a full week of being taped 24/7 that’s fit into a 30-minute show, so they tend to focus on the bad parts of people because it’s drama and that’s good TV.”

Burrowes experienced some of that manipulation first hand, she says on a video recording on Seventeen’s Web site. 

“In reality TV everybody gets scripted, you know, as their person and how they scripted me happened to be the mean girl, which is not who I am all the time,” says Burrowes in the video clip.

It’s easy to look at people on reality TV and judge their character, but when you’re on the receiving end and coming across poorly to a lot of people, you realize the different definitions of “reality,” says Burrowes.  While people on the show and in Seventeen blogs call her selfish and accuse her of caring only for herself, there’s a side people didn’t see on the show, she says.

“In real life I’m not like that at all; I’m an extremely caring person and I just feel, you know, that that wasn’t exactly shown on the show,” Burrowes says in one of the clips.

Despite the stress and drama, Burrowes says she’s still glad she participated, because it helped her make contacts for a career involving her passion and goal — magazine writing.  Burrowes, who was an editor for her high school newspaper, says magazines have been her focus for a long time. She even published her own magazine, called Unlimited, as part of a high school project in 2002.

Burrowes hopes to still pursue an internship in New York with Seventeen this summer despite leaving the show and plans to graduate from UM a semester early next fall.

“It may sound weird, but magazines are my goal and passion,” said Burrowes.  “They just speak to me.”

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