Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion

Tolentino begins the essay by telling a "secret": she was on a reality TV show, Girls v. Boys Puerto Rico. On the show, eight cast members competed for $50,000. Her high school allowed her to take off the time to shoot it during December 2004, and the 10 episodes aired the following summer on the channel Noggin. Tolentino states that she left the show behind her when she went to college.

Tolentino then shifts into a section written like a script for the show. These sections are interspersed throughout the narrative, explaining the various challenges the participants undertook.

In the present-day narrative, Tolentino reflects on the selection process, which began in September 2004 at the local mall. Her mother remembers suggesting that she audition, though Tolentino didn't want to. Ultimately, her father offered her $20 to do it. At the airport on the way to shoot the show, Tolentino missed her flight and, because she felt bad arriving late, enthusiastically participated in an eating contest. When she uncovered the plate, though, she found hot mayonnaise, which she hates and had a bad reaction to. Tolentino remarks that she always tells the story this way, but now that she's re-watched the show, she realizes she was telling it wrong. She had volunteered to eat the mayonnaise. Tolentino states that these acts of false remembrance appear in other areas of her life, too. For example, she states that it was a random accident she appeared on the show, but actually tells it this way because she prefers it to the alternative, "which is that I’ve always felt that I was special and acted accordingly" (38).

Tolentino contextualizes the show as coming at the cultural height of reality TV. Recently, Tolentino emailed the producer, Jessica Morgan Richter. Tolentino asks Jess how she cast this series, to which Jess explains: she looked for a "basic telegenic quality" (40), openness, and either no insecurity or a high level of insecurity. She also looked for high school archetypes, such as the jock and the prom queen. Tolentino tries to guess hers her role, wondering if she was the nerd or the reasonable one. Jess tells her she was the know-it-all.

Tolentino notes that it took her months to watch the show as an adult. When she did, she found her depiction natural and unchanged from her present-day self. Now around 30, she calls other cast members, finding that they're also more or less the same now as they were then. She also asks them about the roles they saw each person in on the show. Castmates Demian, Ryder, Ace, and Jia herself lacked clear archetypes. Tolentino muses on how the show provided validation of the "classic adolescent fantasy" (44) that one's life is worth watching. She writes that she craved the attention, but at the same time, as her high school diary shows, she later worried about becoming "a character to myself" (44). Nevertheless, she writes, the show helped dissolve part of her anxiety. This was partly due to the fact that, being filmed, she couldn't get enough perspective to perform on purpose. Afterwards, she started to think that the impression she made on others was out of her control; now, she writes, her belief is that "I just started to control it subconsciously rather than consciously" (45).

Tolentino describes the predictable structure of the episodes: the teams participate in a challenge, retreat to gossip together, then repeat. Re-watching it, Tolentino is surprised at how much she had forgotten, including entire challenges: "I forget everything that I don’t need to turn into a story" (47).

Tolentino explores one plot point in-depth: She won't make out with Demian. At the reunion after the show's shooting, Demian recalled this, saying that Tolentino had her behavioral rules written on a note card. Tolentino can't remember doing this but does admit that she did have arbitrary boundaries around sexuality. She wonders if she has strong feelings about making out with strangers or whether her qualms were just about doing it on TV. She writes that, at the time, she thought she was better than the cultural conception of teenage girlhood. She especially did not want to look desperate or slutty. However, she did like Demian, and kissed him on the last night of shooting. This was caught on camera.

Tolentino writes that she hadn't previously watched the show as an adult because she didn't have to. Though the show sent her VHS tapes, these got lost. Later, in 2017, Tolentino messaged Kelley and Krystal about them, and asked Krystal to make a DVD copy for her.

Now, Tolentino writes, the most painful part of watching the show is when everyone gangs up against Paris. She finds this cliquish and mean, characteristic of the "social ruthlessness" (55) of high school and reality shows. She writes to Paris now, and they talk on the phone. Paris states that she understood right away that she would be picked on. She has watched the show a few times and found it upsetting, but also remembers the good times. She and Tolentino meet up later. Tolentino asks if the "Paris" on the show was reflective of her true self, and Paris responds that it was a magnified version.

Towards the end, Tolentino recalls, the show was difficult: everyone wanted the prize money and thought they would win. They did get paid for their time, $750 a week, but Tolentino was still devastated when her team lost. Her parents were having financial trouble and she needed financial independence to accept an early admission offer from Yale. In the end, Tolentino took a scholarship to the University of Virginia instead. Jess recalls Tolentino's mother calling to ask Jess to convince Tolentino to pick Yale. Tolentino remarks that participating on the show showed her the unpredictability of the future and how much she needed financial stability.

Out of all of the participants, Tolentino and Ace were the only ones who did not try to get into show business. Tolentino details the ways in which each had pursued these careers with limited success. Demian now remarks that he saw the career as an easy way to get money. He recalls that everyone on the show said they wanted it to make them famous except for Tolentino; she wanted to get famous for writing a book.