Shani Jenkins
By Kharisma McIlwaine
The current dating scene is filled with challenges and obstacles that require new methods to navigate. Online dating, speed dating and — more recently, reality TV — have become viable ways for people to attempt to find love. OWN’s reality TV series, “Ready to Love,” is coming to Philadelphia. Philadelphia native Shani Jenkins joins the cast in its 10th season. She spoke with the SUN about her experience on the show.
Jenkins grew up in West Philadelphia and still holds a soft spot for her hometown.
“I grew up in the University City townhouses,” Jenkins said. “Philly was such a great place to grow up for me. I remember my friends and I would literally get on the train, go downtown, go to the clubs, and to The Gallery. We really didn’t have a lot of money, but we really had a good time.”
As a Cheyney University graduate on a full scholarship, Jenkins always valued education while dreaming of a full life.
“I feel like I’ve always been a dreamer,” Jenkins said. “Coming from humble beginnings and low-income housing, there was a lot of poverty around me and people that were on drugs. With my mom being such an advocate of dreams, I was allowed to dream. I remember looking out my window yearning, and manifesting being in Hollywood.”
While Jenkins was great at school, she did not have the same fortune in her dating life. She is a domestic violence survivor who bravely used her love for fashion to change her life.
“I was never great at dating, so I was choosing people, and I really didn’t know how to love myself,” she said. “I feel like I wasn’t really taught self-love. I experienced abuse when I was in college. My first boyfriend was physically abusive. He would abuse me to the point that the neighbors who would hear me screaming thought that I would die one day — it was bad. After that, I used fashion to pull myself up out of dark places. I was majoring in communications and minoring in fashion at Cheyney. When I got out of the abusive relationship, I got back to fashion and the things that I love.”
Jenkins’ love for fashion allowed her to live out her dream of owning a boutique in Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia. She later moved to Los Angeles, where she became a celebrity wardrobe stylist for artists like Keyshia Cole, PNB Rock and Summer Walker. She is currently still active in the fashion world and works as a licensed provider, opening homes for people with intellectual disabilities and autism. Despite her success, she still felt a void in her personal life.
“I never really focused on myself,” Jenkins said. “I never knew how to put myself first and I feel like that was reflective in my dating choices. For me now, I’m in a place where I know what I deserve, I’m willing to be vulnerable, put myself out there, and trust that what I want wants me.”
After a friend recommended her to the casting director, Jenkins found herself in the casting process of “Ready to Love.”
“I had been single for about a year and said, ‘I’m actually ready to date.’ I never, ever in my life thought I would do a reality show, but I said, ‘However this process goes, I’ll just go with the flow,” Jenkins said. “The process was so brutal. They talked about relationships, what you want, and what were your deal breakers. I’m going to be honest — I never heard about the word(s) “deal breaker” the day before. I didn’t know you should have non-negotiables. I didn’t know I didn’t know how to date.”
In addition to learning new healthy ways to date, Jenkins had to learn how to manage the possibility of developing feelings while being immersed in a competitive dating show.
“The competition was tricky,” she said. “We had 10 women and 10 men. We had two mixers. The mixer on Valentine’s Day is the one I’m in. In the third episode, we all meet each other and are able to date amongst the whole group. Dating in the competition is really intense, because when you’re in a room and everyone is openly dating, you can be in the middle of a conversation and another person will come up and say, ‘Hey, can I talk to you?’ and that’s off-putting. It’s like speed dating on steroids. People got very territorial quickly, and it made things interesting.”
“You had to be very quick with identifying what it is that you want, what you did not want, and if you were unclear, you snooze you lose,” Jenkins added. “You really had to know in a quick five minutes if this is someone I’m interested in, and also not get offended if someone wasn’t interested in you. Dating in front of others when people have genuine connections with someone is really crazy.”
Misconceptions can also be a huge barrier to truly getting to know a potential romantic partner, something which Jenkins experienced firsthand.
“On the show, I felt like if a person was not in a good place or secure within themselves, they automatically looked at me a certain way,” she said. “Being a successful person — man or woman — takes a lot of work, discipline, sacrifice, prayers, commitment and all the above. I don’t believe that as a woman [who is] successful [that] I should be ostracized because of that. People don’t even ask me what I want in a partner.
They just assume that I want a guy with all this money, that he has to have it all figured out. They don’t ask me, ‘Would you be willing to build and grow with someone?’ — they just assume that I’m not. I do want a man who has character, integrity, who believes in God, who will pray for me, cover his family, and is a good leader. None of those things have anything to do with finances.”
Overall, Jenkins expressed gratitude for what she learned through this experience.
“It taught me that you should definitely have deal breakers,” she said. “There are things [like] when you’re dating someone, you should be upfront and clear about what you want — but you need to actually know those things. I feel like I used to be afraid [about what would happen] if you tell a guy you meet you want to get married, or ‘I want kids.’ When I talked to my friends, we all felt like that would scare a guy away.
What the show taught me is that you need to say what you want — be vocal and upfront. I had never done that before. The process taught me that I deserve to have a voice and I deserve to use it.”
To keep up with Jenkins’ journey, visit her website, www.saintsandbombshells.com, and follow her on IG @lifeasshanij. “Ready to Love” Season 10 premieres on OWN on February 7th at 8 p.m.– ET.
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