Many females in reality television are portrayed as objects of fascination, envy, and scorn.
According to the logic of the Real Housewives franchise, rich women, not rich men, spend
frivolously, project false appearances, backstab, gossip, and leave their children’s care to paid staff.
This type of lifestyle is attractive to young females which attracts viewing activity. The women on
shows like Keeping Up With the Kardashians and Real Housewives are about women whoa re too
crass to be classy, too superficial to be nurturing, and too self-obsessed to be caring. They are also
self-professed “working mothers” who are barely working, although work more than they mother
which is upsetting. The real housewives may not be housewives, but four of the five are mothers,
and the fifth regrets not having any children. Why is it that these women are complaining about not
having a family, and when they do they don’t properly provide for them? Many of these mothers have
paid staff who watch over, provide, and care for their children while they continue with their daily
social life. The upper-class is not evidence of an economic system that rewards hard labor or elite
education. They are neither models for imitation or spectacles for amazement. The ironies of the
housewives’ performances of class and gender alienate viewers from identifying with the women in
these shows. I think that reality TV is toxic, and although quite pleasurable to watch and get a sense
of what life is like in another class.
As stated above, the woman are all upper class. They are also all white and straight.
Through the use of irony and hypocrisy, this article shows how upper class white women who
break their roles as mothers and caregivers, and who deviate from the the expectations/roles of
what class, wealth, and gender are, in turn, become examples of retrograde gender politics
because of the audience’s disdain for them. The more the housewives deviate from gender
roles and societal expectations, the more the idea that the woman’s place is at home with the
children is reinforced because of their bad behavior and actions. The Real Housewives, amidst
all of this, have created their own version of the “new housewife”, one that acknowledges a
return to domesticity in a culture that also rejects the idea of women as housewives. Wives
dress provocatively, drink, party, go to bars, hangout with younger women, sleep with younger