Here's what 'The Real Housewives' taught me about feminism

I am not saying that when American actress Kim Richards called former American model Brandi Glanvile “a sl*t pig” in season 2, episode 7 of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, it marked the beginning of the fifth wave of feminism—but hear me out. For the uncultured of us who are unaware, The Real Housewives is an American reality TV franchise by the TV network Bravo (you can watch it on Netflix or Jio). Inspired by one of my favourite shows, Desperate Housewives, this series follows the personal and professional lives of a group of affluent women from one particular American city. It began with Orange County in 2006, and since then has had 11 different series, 21 international adaptations, 27 spin-offs, and multiple run-offs (looking at you Bollywood Wives).

People love to write it off as ‘trash TV’, ‘guilty pleasure’, ‘hate watch-worthy’, ‘frivolous pop culture’. But, I am here to make a case for it being the best thing to have happened since sliced bread...or should I say avocado toast? To an outsider, Real Housewives, which happens to be one of my (and Rihanna’s, of course) favourites of all time, might look like just a show about rich women fighting. But not for nothing, it has taught me a lot about feminism. I look at it as a show about a group of women with complicated friendships—much like all women, everywhere. These housewives are the protagonists, even with their successful, rich husbands lurking in the background. If there were a show about their husbands, who lack charm and are often boring, it’d probably get cancelled even before the pilot airs. The women, however, are complex, multi-dimensional, show their vulnerabilities and are unapologetically themselves—good, bad, evil, conniving. And that possibly is the most feminist thing ever!

 

Mind you, I didn’t need the housewives to clue me in on feminism—I learnt about it way before Bravo got me hooked. I went to an all-girls college, took feminist theory classes almost every semester, had Wollstonecraft on my bedside table, spent the better part of my early 20s with my nose in Nivedita Menon’s Seeing Like a Feminist—so trust me when I say I believe I’ve got the feminist credentials. Am I a ‘good’ feminist, though? I’ll let my therapist—or maybe even Roxane Gay—decide.

Speaking of Gay, when the American writer, professor, and editor appeared on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen back in 2019, she respectfully disagreed with Gloria Steinem’s—the American journalist who emerged as a nationally recognised leader of second-wave feminism in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s—view of the Housewives.

In true Housewives fashion, let me give you the tea. So in 2013, Steinem was on Watch What Happens Live and she didn’t hold back while voicing her very strong dislike of the Real Housewives. Andy Cohen, the host and executive producer of the franchise, made his case for the series, but Steinem stood firm. “It is women, all dressed up and inflated and plastic surgery-ed and false bosomed and an incredible amount of money spent, not getting along with each other. Fighting with each other. It is a minstrel show for women. I don’t believe it, I have to say. I feel like it is manufactured, that the fights between them are manufactured and they’re supposed to go after each other in a kind of conflicting way. So, they might be friends, but you don’t know it from the show,” she said. In her exact words, watching it is like “watching a train wreck.” Ouch!

Fast forward six years, and Gay brought her own take to the same show—one that was way more Team Housewives. “The Real Housewives franchises allow women to be their truest selves. We see the mess, we see their amazing friendships, and everything in between,” she said. “When women are allowed to be their fullest selves, that’s the most feminist thing we can do.”

Does Steinem have a point? Absolutely. But Gay isn’t wrong, either—two schools of thought can co-exist. However, at the end of the day, isn’t feminism about the freedom of choice? Even if that choice involves the housewives getting boob jobs and fighting over trivial things—although I beg to differ that the show is just this, it is so much more. Not to keep going all Roxane Gay on you (but here we go again). In her book Bad Feminist, Gay has perfectly articulated what I am trying to say: “I believe feminism is grounded in supporting the choices of women even if we wouldn’t make certain choices for ourselves.”

Sure, The Real Housewives isn’t exactly perfect. It’s packed with consumerism and classism, among other things—but that’s a debate for another day.

In a world where anything remotely gossipy gets dismissed as ‘feminine’ and, by default, less respectable, like reality TV— something that June Deery, the head of media studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and author of Reality TV, talks about in her book—openly loving such shows might just be the most rebellious, feminist move one can make. Brushing off Real Housewives as brainless simply because it is not testosterone-laden is peak sexism, and the best way to fight back? Watch more of it! And TBH, the Housewives are more entertaining than all those ‘gritty’, ‘serious’, ‘masculine’ shows put together—not to mention, with better hair and great outfits too.

This article first appeared in Cosmopolitan India, November-December 2024, print edition.

All images: Getty Images and Shutterstock

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