This is what immoral reality TV looks like.

TLC

"I don't think it's right that the woman has to stay beneath the man. I think we should be equal," says Rebecca, a pink-cheeked, 20-year-old Amish woman in Punxatawney, Pennsylvania, as she handwashes clothes at 5:45 in the morning. Soon, Rebecca will trade laundry, outhouses, and floor-skimming dresses for strip clubs, jeans, and bars, in the ultimate devil's playground, New York City. With the new series Breaking Amish, TLC follows Rebecca and four other Amish and Mennonite young people living together in a Manhattan hotel on their rumspringa, the window of late adolescence in which youths venture out into the world for the first time to make an informed decision whether austere religious life is for them. From the show's teasers, Rebecca, Sabrina, Kate, Abe, and Jeremiah will get drunk and tattooed, spin on stripper poles, and discover a little more equality between the sexes, while also pining for the simple life they left behind.

Breaking Amish is the latest addition to The Learning Channel's (commonly known as The Leering Channel) provocative reality TV programming. Once a boring educational channel where you could watch a documentary on the spotted owl or get tips for cooking the perfect soufflé, TLC is now the go-to place for gawking. Breaking Amish appears alongside 19 Kids and Counting about the fertile Duggar family; Abby and Brittany, which follows a set of conjoined twins as they navigate college life; Sister Wives, which may instigate the formation of a Mormon Anti-Defamation League; and the self-explanatory freakshows: My Strange Addiction, My Crazy Obsession, and Strange Sex. Breaking Amish is a hybrid of the ethnic minstrel show—along the lines of Jersey Shore or Shahs of Sunset, where a culture is reduced to its caricature parts—and The Real World, where good looking twentysomethings live together in a new city, full of possibilities. (All of the Amish stars of the show are remarkably good-looking. One imagines plucky TLC producers hiding behind barns with binoculars to do their casting). But what sets Breaking Amish apart from the other shows is how much is at stake for the stars: their religion, their families, their identities—the very world they've known up until now.

Detractors of reality TV often decry the genre as exploitative, but usually the show's stars exploit themselves. Subjects are often all too willing to divulge the worst parts of their personalities to nab more airtime. As journalist Lillian Ross said decades ago, loquacious sources tend to "violate their own privacy." Even the most extreme examples of questionable taste, like Toddlers and Tiaras, are not exploitative because the girls are already being pimped by their own parents, and by the pageant industry in general. TLC cameras simply swoop in and document a sensational story that is already underway. And breakout reality stars play along. On the wildly popular Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, Mama and Sugar Bear ham up their redneck tics for higher ratings, and in hopes of being renewed for a second season. Real Housewives know how to stay relevant by stirring up the most drama in the highest hemline. Reality stars play along because they know it will benefit them, in the form of endorsement deals, a devoted Twitter following, and spin-off shows.