MTV has rejected another reality show that would have followed The Hills star and lady of letters Lauren Conrad around, documenting her everyday struggles while she prepares her upcoming fashion line, working as just a regular career-woman who has ideas and business acumen and innate self-reliance, and whose success as a designer has nothing to do with her years of being a reality star on The Hills, because she is more than that. Although planned as a series that would engineer its own cancellation by making Conrad so successful as a designer that she wouldn’t need it anymore, according to Conrad, the network had unreasonable hopes that the show would be just be The Hills redux, and incorporate more of Conrad’s “personal relationships,” ideally prompting halting conversations about those personal relationships while a time-elapsed scene of L.A. traffic crawls by to the strains of energetic pop-punk.
Instead, Conrad says she gave them a finished product that was ultimately deemed “too highbrow for their audience." (In retrospect, she probably regrets attempting to launch that playfully titled line of Tartuffe Hair-Shirts, and definitely those winking asides about the cameras catching her "Jungian shadow.") But rather than bow to MTV’s lowbrow demands, Conrad took an ideological stand and issued a statement lambasting the network for not believing their viewers to be “savvy enough to appreciate” a show that was more “aspirational… focusing on my career and my goals.” Of course, modern audiences are absolutely savvy enough to appreciate the self-reflexive irony of distancing yourself from reality TV by starring in a reality TV show—but that may not be enough to sustain a show that is, essentially, Lauren Conrad staring blankly at fabric samples. Unfortunately, anyone who wants to learn more about Lauren Conrad’s career and goals now will be forced to pick up a magazine.