The Price of “Getting to the Bag”
Zeus Network is a digital streaming platform known primarily for featuring Black-led, unscripted content. Founded by entrepreneur Lemuel Plummer and ex-viners King Bach and Amanda Cerny, the platform features influencers and media personalities with a social-media-led approach. Because of this, it’s no surprise that its most popular franchise is the one whose clips and soundbites dominate Facebook, TikTok, and X.
Baddies is a reality franchise following groups of women–reality TV alum, social media personalities, aspiring artists, and local influencers–as they travel and host club events around the world, often generating intense drama for viewers along the way. Since its release in 2021, the Baddies universe has quickly joined the ensemble of reality TV franchises that predominantly feature Black women while also shaping media that drive popular culture.
The faces and voices of Black women have long permeated online meme spaces, often used to express a wide range of emotions with comedic effect. When extracted from reality television, many of these viral moments stem from moments when Black women are reacting to disrespect, experiencing emotional distress, or engaging in verbal and physical conflicts.
These portrayals are not new. Baddies creator, executive producer, and main cast member, Natalie Nunn rose to fame as a breakout cast member on Bad Girls Club, the unofficial predecessor of Baddies. Like its predecessor, Baddies assembles dynamic personalities in ways that almost always guarantee interpersonal clashes. Across shows like Bad Girls Club, The Real World, America’s Next Top Model, and The Real Housewives of Atlanta, a pattern emerges: Black female cast members are portrayed as combative, short-fused, and sassy, often receiving the villain edit.
Despite the successful launch of a Black-owned network marketed towards Black audiences, much of the content on Baddies has fallen into the trap of negatively portraying Black women under the guise of authenticity.
With the knowledge of these past and ongoing characterizations, Baddies has always faced criticism not only for depicting Black women through a narrow lens but also for creating a toxic set environment where violence is rewarded. Baddies may create opportunities for Black women, but it often does so at the expense of their values and mental health.
Though the lack of purpose permeates the conversations around Baddies more than any of the aforementioned shows, Nunn states that the show is about “getting to the bag,” empowering and owning the villain persona, and being authentic. Plummer echoes this sentiment, stating, “it’s not about creating salacious, conflict-driven programming [...] we're creating authentic, real, uncensored content” (Blackfilm).
This directly contradicts both the marketing for each season and the criticism they receive online once the season is over. Consistently, each trailer highlights a few uplifting sequences of the cast partying and hints at potential emotional storylines, but the dozens of confrontations and physical fights that unfold throughout the season are most prominently featured through supercuts.
This show is evidently in the business of sensationalism. Although this is not unlike other reality shows, Baddies was created with the main mantra of young women “getting to the bag.” Contrary to that premise, the show is not centered on entrepreneurship or being your own boss. Along the way, “getting to the bag” has come to be clearly defined as clowning for the camera and monetary gain– gains that are disproportionate to what the executives are earning.
The hustle culture inherent to the show, and what it means to be a “baddie,” does not signify a narrative of empowerment, but rather one of exploitation. This is clearly illustrated in the televised casting process, where Nunn prompts contestants to fight in an attempt to prove themselves. Even in unaired auditions, contestants take to TikTok to recount the lengths they went to get noticed, including stripping, jumping people, and starting fights.
The Baddies universe encourages its audience to invest in contentious characters who partake in random violence and excessive alcohol consumption to create spectacle. In this context, Black cast members often end up leaning into performances that reflect aspects of the Blaxploitation era, where stereotypical portrayals were used for a commercial draw and designed to empower the Black community.
Blaxploitation is a genre and artistic device that highlights caricatures and controlling images of Black people, and makes them the protagonists. These stories featured vengeful vigilantes, rebels, pimps, and sexually liberated, “badass” female archetypes whose stories were rarely told from their own perspective.
While problematic for reinforcing negative characterizations, Blaxploitation relies on interpersonal storylines where characters’ motivations actively go against the systems and institutions that oppress them.
The Baddies cast’s television personas can be understood as modern, more realistic versions of the aforementioned archetypes of Black female characterization. The baddies are generally framed as tough, unapologetic, anti-authority, and provocative. In many ways, the show attempts to play up these aspects with dramatic clips of cast members getting arrested, with Nunn stepping in to bail them out–ultimately playing into that pimp or queenpin role.
However, the grit of Baddies stops at the aesthetic. The show fails to challenge racism, disrespect, or address deeper issues embedded in the entertainment industry. In a number of seasons, non-Black female cast members partake in misogynoir. Additionally, non-Black cast members frequently say the N-word, and this behavior is normalized within the show’s environment. Even worse, those who raise concerns or confront these individuals are often vilified as a bully. For a predominantly Black cast, this creates a hostile environment that contributes to the splintering sense of sisterhood.
In other instances, cast members actively put down their fellow members for not keeping up appearances such as commenting on each other’s hair when it isn’t “done.” They often default to misogynistic talking points to put each other down and exploit known insecurities.
The independence and female empowerment themes that are often verbally reinforced after confrontations are ultimately a facade. The sensationalism lacks subversion and fails to offer a counternarrative to the characters they’re performing. They call themselves ‘baddies,’ but instead of challenging anything meaningful, the only opposition is each other.
Baddies had the potential to course correct the faults that contributed to the demise of Bad Girls Club. After 17 seasons, the introduction of a life coach, and attempts to focus on storytelling due to critiques from audiences and cast members, Bad Girls Club eventually succumbed to the impulse of manufacturing superficial drama. Allowing it to escalate too far resulted in three Black women winning lawsuits against the production, and left the casts with physical and emotional scars.
Baddies has had eight seasons in five years, and over time, cast members have spoken out on their own experiences. One former cast member stated that being on the show turned them into a product of their environment–negative, chaotic, and irritable. This follows in the negligent footsteps of Bad Girls Club. Viewers have also taken to forums to discuss the downward trajectory of Baddies, as hostility continues to overtake the narrative.
As the casts of future Baddies seasons continue in pursuit of “the bag,” one can only hope they can use their defiance to fight back against forces more destructive than their fellow cast members. Leaning too heavily on conflict is not just a weak creative choice, but a precarious one. Baddies can rely on stereotypes, but if it keeps on its trajectory, it is not a long fall until the show embodies modern-day minstrelsy.
