Watching the five female stars of the Bravo Chanel’s reality TV series, The Real Housewives of Orange County, is like being transported into a California Freaky Friday scenario: a handful of spoiled teenagers awake one morning with the lives and bodies of middle-aged women. Suddenly burdened with the responsibilities of marriage, child-rearing, and bills, they fumble comically, attempting to cope with the challenges of grown-up life. Armed only with cocktails and credit lines, the OC Housewives seem clueless about how to play the cards adulthood has dealt them.
But this isn’t Freaky Friday, and according to Bravo, these are real women. Orange County dweller and recently evicted Lynne opines during the opening credits: “It’s not enough to have money. You have to look good spending it.” That’s a nice motto for Kimora Lee Simmons and her mogul/model/mom millions, but it fits nearly-broke Lynne as poorly as her polyester sheath dress. The rest of the Orange County Housewives’ strictly blonde cast (Lynne being the sole peroxide-free exception) have their share of troubles, both real and imagined. Vicki, the only member who appears to really work, struggles with a possible diagnosis of cancer for her daughter. Tamra, always the center of the party in big bling and a radiation-bright tan, has a tumultuous private life and a verbally abusive husband. Then there’s Gretchen, a blonde bombshell with a laugh like a jackhammer, perpetually on the husband hunt, and Alexis, a scalpel-happy Stepford Wife who keeps the home fires burning and her husband’s slippers at the ready. But mostly, they spend their days in self-indulgence, gossiping, fighting, and fighting about gossiping. As the official website says: “The ladies show no signs of slowing down, and shopping, dining, drinking, dancing, plastic surgery and working out continue to remain at the top of their list of priorities.” Well, thank goodness.
As distractions from our own meaningful lives, The Real Housewives of Orange County should be a perfect diversion. Incompetence is amusing. But instead of holding up the Housewives’ bad-behavior as the enthralling, shocking aberration that it is, Bravo seriously expects women to want this lifestyle – and they appear to be right. The original Real Housewives of Orange County show has spawned a franchise that extends from coast to coast. There are Housewives shows in Atlanta, New York, New Jersey, and soon, possibly DC, all with equally outrageous “real” housewives. An avid fan-base for these shows has earned the OC Housewives a twenty-five percent increase in viewers in just the past season.
Now, Bravo offers the chance to emulate the Housewives’ lifestyle by winning shopping sprees, purchasing themed merchandise (such as leopard-print baby rompers), viewing bonus footage online, and following Housewives’ blogs. There’s even a spin-off Watch What Happens show, a post-Housewives analysis program that should really be called Re-Watch What Just Happened. Drink like Housewives, dress like Housewives, shop like Housewives. Be all you can be.
Ironically, the modern American woman appears to be longing for a dream world that resembles the 1950s culture their mothers clambered to escape. Many women would like to live in a TV-generated fantasy filled with jewelry and drama, where intrusions by actual reality are medicated with champagne and shopping (Sex and the City, anyone?). These Real Housewives of Orange County are the unwitting anti-feminists, mostly “kept” women who neither toil nor spin. Rather than the bold, carefree adventurers they imagine themselves to be, the Housewives of OC are hold-overs from another era, when women were expected to be child-like, clingy, and helpless – not powerful, mature adults who command their own destinies, or at least behaved themselves for upwards of 15-minutes at a cocktail party. With most childcare and household management left to the hired help, the Housewives spend their courtesan-like days indulging in beauty treatments and surgeries, whining and primping, drinking and dancing. And yet, in work-ethic America, even lay-abouts have a conscience. In one episode, Alexis is insulted when Vicki points out that she doesn’t work. The ensuing fall-out fuels fights for the rest of the season, because ultimately, Alexis knows work is good. She just doesn’t know what it is.
After awhile, those once-exclusive community gates of the opening credits seem to be keeping the Housewives in, rather than the commoners out. It is downright painful watching Lynne, a fanatical shopper about to be evicted from her pricy rental home, blame her husband for their financial misfortunes. Carefully dabbing at tears, her sharply manicured nails dangerously close to inflated lips, Lynne demands to know why her husband doesn’t love her enough to get her what she wants, finances be damned. Later in the episode, herself and her two daughters practically homeless, she splurges on a pleasure trip with girlfriends. There are twenty-first century lessons here for the men too. Instead of wooing doe-eyed, child-like creatures, they have more to gain from dating responsible adults who don’t think a “budget” is a type of parakeet.
Ultimately, women who emulate the Real Housewives are missing the point. As absurd as the OC Housewives are, they are caricatures, not fantasies. Even Housewives daughter Alexa vents in the season finale, “everyone wants to pretend everything is so glamorous and perfect when in reality it’s not.” Their tans may be fake, but their pain and cluelessness are real.
In public, OC Housewives like Tamra (motto: “Housewives come younger, but they don’t come hotter”) appear to have it all, but the cameras also reveal the blemishes under that caked-on foundation. She can’t help remarking of her husband, a real catch who threatens to hit her in the show’s final episode, “I’m scared he’s going to get mad at me. I’m scared all the time.” With the Real Housewives of Orange County show, the fascination is not in watching real people surmount real challenges, but in watching adults recede into adolescence. These are not the women of our future; they are the women of our past. Let’s leave them there.
*****
Skyla Freeman (skylafreeman.com) is a former writer for President George W. Bush. She blogs about style and culture at Sanity Fair online (sfair.blogspot.com).
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