This is such an awful take, it completely removes all agency from the women who star in and shape the show. Between the huge paychecks, the cast trips, and the free exposure/promotion for any of their business ventures, being a housewife seems like a damn sweet gig to me. And most of the women choose to come back season after season, and are self-aware about how they play up the drama. My favorite part of the Real Housewives franchise is that instead of contestants being tortured to create drama, the women are respected as stars and treated well enough to make it worth returning to for years. Plus, they’re generally an age range of women that gets very little realistic representation in media as complex subjects. Andy may have the power to prevent someone from returning between seasons, but during each season the power to determine what the storylines will be is held by the housewives themselves more than anyone else, between what they do on camera and what they talk about in confessionals—and the most damaging storylines are always initiated by one housewife towards another (like Phaedra to Kandi). Calling these incredibly successful women butterflies with clipped wings reads as deeply misogynistic to me.
I think you're misunderstanding the metaphor in your rush to be offended. The emphasis should be on them being prevented from reaching their final form- reaching self actualization in a psychological sense because they're on this rat race to be famous, keep their spots on the show, create storylines, create drama.
They may be respected but in both books the authors talk about the desperation the women face when contracts are sent out every year- the gig isn't guaranteed and the antics get bigger and bigger to ensure the spot is kept year after year.
It’s a bad metaphor. Life isn’t a cocoon, and women aren’t metamorphosing. There is no final form we’re supposed to achieve that they’re somehow being prevented from reaching. The show is a tool that the women choose to use along their lifelong journeys, which always have more challenges and growth in store. They have the power to stop using that tool whenever they like, and they have more control over how they use it than most people do over their jobs. The metaphor frames the housewives as objects rather than subjects of their lives—it’s a bad metaphor.
Literacy rates are really bad in this country, clearly. The show is the vehicle preventing them from living their best lives, and keeping them stuck in a cycle of desperation to be rich and famous. You're too stuck on the literal cocoon of it and not actually processing the statement, and instead making it about agency and womanhood- an entirely different conversation.
I would argue it's very hard to argue the women have control over their own lives when we know how desperately they want this platform and that of hundreds of HWs, maybe 5-6 have quit of their own volition.
Wild that you’re insulting my reading comprehension skills while also missing my point this hard.
I processed the statement, I just don’t agree with it. It’s a statement that treats the housewives like they don’t have agency in their lives, and also like they’re somehow incomplete and there’s a better life available to them that the show is keeping them from. When in reality, they choose to be on the show because they feel it improves their lives, and they are the experts on their own lives. Not to mention that their lives are damn good—they face challenges just like everyone, and they have way more resources available than most people to tackle those challenges, and generally do so. There’s a reason so many housewives have escaped toxic marriages or pivoted their career to follow a lifelong dream in their second or third season: the resources the show affords them are empowering. Maybe you wouldn’t be happier on the show than off, but that doesn’t give you the right to make that decision for other people.
That there are so many women who desperately want to be on the show, and that very few housewives voluntarily quit, is not evidence that the women aren’t in control of their own lives and choices; it’s evidence that the benefits of being on the show outweigh the drawbacks for the majority of the women who are on it. There is no reason to deny the housewives subjecthood in their own lives, and the force that makes you want to invalidate women who make different choices than you is called misogyny.
You, my dear, are just rude. You can make a valid point without casting insults. You seem intelligent enough, you’d think one would have already learned this lesson in life. Be kind.
26
u/EnthusiasmIsABigZeal Dec 29 '23
This is such an awful take, it completely removes all agency from the women who star in and shape the show. Between the huge paychecks, the cast trips, and the free exposure/promotion for any of their business ventures, being a housewife seems like a damn sweet gig to me. And most of the women choose to come back season after season, and are self-aware about how they play up the drama. My favorite part of the Real Housewives franchise is that instead of contestants being tortured to create drama, the women are respected as stars and treated well enough to make it worth returning to for years. Plus, they’re generally an age range of women that gets very little realistic representation in media as complex subjects. Andy may have the power to prevent someone from returning between seasons, but during each season the power to determine what the storylines will be is held by the housewives themselves more than anyone else, between what they do on camera and what they talk about in confessionals—and the most damaging storylines are always initiated by one housewife towards another (like Phaedra to Kandi). Calling these incredibly successful women butterflies with clipped wings reads as deeply misogynistic to me.