Real Housewives, Brave, and The Possibility of Redemption In Our Society
I was sitting in a make-up chair, getting my hair done for Anderson Live, when the topic of Real Housewives came up. ”Have you done any famous people’s hair?” I asked the stylist, assuming that famous people usually come with their own styling team, and the people who work for Anderson only do the guests like me and the woman sitting next to me, who was an extreme couponer.
“Steve Carrell,” she said. “Kelsey Grammar. Some of the Real Housewives.”
“Real housewives!!!” I faux gasped. “They try to come off as really rich, but most of them are not!”
Like, you know that Adrienne Maloof (RH of Beverley Hills) gets her hair and make-up done in her hotel room before the show, because her dad owns the Sacramento Kings, and she doesn’t need any hand outs.
But fucking Gretchen Rossi (RH of Orange County) uses the Anderson Live stylists, because she’s the sort of golddigger who lost her Daddy Warbucks to cancer in 2009.
I didn’t mean to demean the talents of the woman primping me—the Anderson Live stylist actually did amazing things to my hair—but having babysat for the children of billionaires, I know that people with real money have their grooming done in private.
“Yeah,” she said. “They were very nice. But I don’t know how I feel about the Real Housewives thing. Have you heard about all of these girls who are beating each other up? Going to houses, pulling girls out into their yards by their hair, getting in fist fights at school. It’s crazy!”
“I haven’t,” I said.
“Yeah, I blame it on the Real Housewives,” she said. “They teach girls on that show that you can act violently, and beat up other women, and still be rich and famous. It’s not good for young women to be watching that.”
“Interesting,” I said. “I’ve never thought about it like that!”
And I really hadn’t. I mostly think about how brilliant the editing is when I’m watching it. Like, the other day, I caught the last five minutes of the Real Housewives of Atlanta. Kim Zolciak was sitting on the couch of her terribly decorated, faux chic house with her husband, who’s some gigantic professional football player, her assistant, Sweetie, and a disgusting toy black dog named Chanel.
While Kim started whining about her landlord kicking her out of the house where they were sitting (what truly wealthy person rents a permanent residence, might I ask?), the camera kept on cutting to close-ups of the dog, which looked deathly ill and weighed no more than 2 pounds.
“I’m going to tear up the $40,000 worth of motherfucking flowers I planted here for my wedding,” Kim preached.
Cut to a shot of the dog climbing up her husband’s chest, and licking him on the mouth.
“Write that down on our to do list,” Kim said. “Rip up the motherfucking flowers.”
Cut to a close-up of the dog, trembling.
“You like a black girl in a white girl’s body,” Sweetie told Kim.
Cut to a close-up of the dog’s souless black eyes.
Somehow, they take women who, in a different era, might have lived behind a veil of privilege, and completely rip open their private lives. From reality, the editors weave a tapestry of damnation. They ply them with alcohol. They catch them at moments of desperation.They send them on vacations to remote destinations, knowing that the situation will get all plastic surgery Lord Of The Flies.
Not a single woman, no matter how reasonable they seem at the outset, no matter how attractive, no matter how famous their husbands are, no matter how much money they are actually worth, emerges unscathed. The editors manage to bring them all down with the tiniest, most subtle of weapons. A little black dog. A shot of them pouring that extra glass of wine. Another woman in the room raising her eyebrow.
It’s brilliant.
But after my conversation with the hairstylist at Anderson Live, I began to think about the role that the Real Housewives franchise—and other shows where groups of women are constantly fighting, like The Bad Girls Club—play in shaping our society. Are they less reflections of an impending downfall, and more the engine behind it?
The role of women is clearly changing. I can’t even begin to expound on how, and I’m fucking exhausted. But I would love to read an intelligent essay by some theorist like Frederick Jameson or, I suppose, Camille Paglia, about the reason why women are increasingly being depicted as physically aggressive on reality tv. Are we inheriting the characteristic from men now that we are taking over society? I say that wryly. (RHYME!)
(Have you ever noticed how, for the most part, female theorists are incredibly beautiful?)
Coincidentally, on Sunday afternoon, after spending Saturday catching up on the RH of Miami—shit gets CRAZY with a German dude in the most recent episode, it’s awesome—I watched Brave, a recently released Disney Pixar movie about a little Scottish girl with amazingly wild red hair.
The movie is bad. I don’t even know how they green lit the story line—basically, it takes place in Scotland, and involves the red-head turning her mother into a gigantic black bear, which in the end, brings them closer together.
But it also contained an interesting message for young women, one that is the antithesis of the prince charming fairy tales spit out by Disney in the past. “Don’t get married,” it tells them. “Do what men do. Reject settling down. Be brave. Most of all, respect your mother, who, on the surface, might seem old-fashioned, but deep down is just like you—a woman. Untethered. Independent. Inherently brave and kind.”
Even if the story is faulty, it’s a good message for young girls. Maybe it balances out the Real Housewives. Maybe both existing in the same sphere of consciousness allows women to weigh good against evil, and, seeing that evil is miserable, choose good. Or maybe I’m reading too much into this all, and should go knock myself out with a sleeping pill. Just saying, it’s something interesting to think about.