Living vicariously: Revealing a housewife’s guilty pleasure
if you were allowed a quick scan of my DVR, I’m afraid to say that it would reveal one mildly embarrassing fact about myself. I am a “Real Housewives” franchise-loving nut. Orange County, New York, Atlanta, Beverly Hills, New Jersey – I’ll watch any zip code, any time. Well, with the exception of Miami, which strangely enough, I can’t get into.
The Housewives are my guilty pleasure. Admittedly, a pleasure that’s bordering on gluttonous.
I love to hear Shannon on OC talk about having crystals drilled into her teeth for the benefit of their positive energy and how she’s spent more than $20,000 on Christmas decorations.
I watch in awe as New York Housewife Ramona flips out and throws a wine glass at Kristen for splashing her with water at the spa and then again at the lake. Two places one might go with the intention of getting wet, but not Ramona. She’d just gotten a “blow dry.”
And I will certainly stay up an extra hour to watch Porsha tackle Kenya to the ground, each wearing a ball gown, after Kenya confronted her via a hand-held loudspeaker on the Atlanta Housewives reunion. For lack of a better term, I find it all “‘Gone with the Wind’ fabulous.”
I take the Housewives franchise at face value – an entertaining look at how the other half (allegedly) live. And sure, I find most of the women’s behavior despicable, and I wouldn’t invite any of them into my inner circle of friends. As part-time New York cast member Countess LuAnn de Lesseps will tell you, “Money can’t buy you class.”
Plenty of people may not enjoy the Housewives franchise, or find their sense of entitlement entertaining, but our culture has a particular obsession with wives, in general, these days. From other networks’ reality programing like “Mob Wives,”
“Sister Wives” and “Basketball Wives,” to sitcoms like “Trophy Wife” and dramas like “The Good Wife” and “Army Wives,” every network has found its niche for telling the wife’s story.
And while I may enjoy the outlandish storytelling, I can’t say I ever find it relatable as a wife and mother. In all the shows and programming available to tell my story, and the story of the average wife, none of them actually do. I feel I’d be hard pressed to find a woman who found many personal parallels with the lifestyle of Lisa Vanderpump.
Maybe we don’t actually want to view our reality. We like the glitz and glamour. We like the drama. We like to watch the story unfold of a group of six or so women who can’t go to dinner together without hurling insults and potentially beverages.
That’s not my life. The only one hurling beverages at me over dinner happens to be my 21 month old. And while I may not agree with the decisions and perspective of all the women in my life, I manage to not personally attack them for the choices they make. I’d like to think most women are the same way.
Actor Seth Rogen, best known for his roles in films like “Knocked Up” and “Pineapple Express,” is one of the last people I’d expect to speak out on how women are portrayed in film and television today, but recently he gave an insightful perspective.
While sharing the script for his new movie “Neighbors” with his wife, Lauren Miller, she pointed out to him that the female lead character was completely unrealistic. Humorless and constantly nagging, why would anyone choose to stay married to this woman?
The direction of the film shifted from there to portray a couple that gets along really well. In doing press for the film, Rogen was quoted as saying “Again, in movies they like to portray marriage like, ‘Oh the wife and husband are always arguing and bickering.’ “For me and my wife … the easiest part of my life is my marriage. Like if everything was as smooth and easy and fun as my relationship with my wife then I would have a much easier time getting through the day. We really get along and we like the same stuff.”
Marriage, and more specifically the role of a wife, is no easy ride. But I think most of us find we can relate to Rogen’s comments. More so than any reality wife programming, no matter how much we may enjoy the bizarreness of it all.
The reality of a wife and mother isn’t the most entertaining. Follow me around and you’re more likely to see a woman who incessantly Swiffers her floors, creates excruciatingly detailed grocery lists and is on the endless search for crockpot meals that are actually delicious. That’s just me.
