Are You Smart Enough for the “Housewives”?

Consider the sociological prism through which RHOC refracts the American dream, much like how Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth exposed the gilded cage of high society over a century ago, or how Tennessee Williams’s plays laid Southern charm as a mask over alcoholism, financial collapse, sexual scandal, and psychological instability. On RHOC, we see privilege masking—at times—an underbelly of ambition or uneasiness. Other times, we see wealth unmasked as an illusion, revealing financial woes hiding behind a “keeping up with the Joneses” façade. For example, when RHOC’s Lynne Curtin was living in my town of Laguna Beach, her teenage daughters opened the front door of their modern home to a man handing them an eviction notice. Lynne called her husband Frank, who admitted they’d been living beyond their means and couldn’t cover a $10,000 security deposit on the new place. The show then cut to Lynne in a subsequent scene, where she went on a girls’ trip and bought herself a $1,185 leather jacket, quipping, “The check is in the mail,” even as her family was being kicked out of their home. A deep-thinking fan can spend hours pondering the psyche and social factors at play. Some enjoy judging the housewives when spotting irresponsible behavior, but I cannot help but admire the bravery with which cast members open their lives to viewers, flaws and mistakes included, knowing we all have our own flaws and mistakes.

One ironic storyline showed the women nearly unanimously trash-talking the small condo that RHOC’s Gina Kirschenheiter had bought. After all, the other ladies live in lavish homes (one had a backyard playground with the same extravagant pirate ship play structure as our local mega church). But later, we learned that Gina was the only castmate who actually owned her own home, by herself. This suggested that rather than saving their dimes for home ownership, some of the other ladies were possibly renting above their means or else they had others to help fund their good fortune (often while they were busy with the role of leading the family’s well-being and function). Scenarios like this give gifted minds rich soil to till as they ponder how identity and social pressures function and evolve.

Another big question RHOC explores against the backdrop of Orange County’s gated enclaves is that of a woman’s evolving place in the world. RHOC fans are predominantly women—a group historically marginalized. Yet no woman stands behind a man on producer Andy Cohen’s stage. Whereas society has long seemed to want our gender to remain silent and polite, RHOC’s women roar. Any housewife who doesn’t quickly find and use her voice doesn’t last long on the show. In particular, the show features women of a more, ahem…seasoned age than Hollywood casts in other shows, and on RHOC, they look even better as seasons pass, as if conquering time itself. This is a venue for women to stay out of the shadows and speak their minds, and clever minds get to analyze how cast members’ peers, partners, and society respond.

We also get to witness and ponder the very real struggle women face today as we try to be successful on both the home front and the work front, with both roles simultaneously demanding 100 percent from us. Some of the women make this juggle harder on their castmates as tensions spark between the women who have more time on their hands vs. those who are busy juggling a career, kids, or both. I know many a Mensan who juggles both demanding roles, including myself. We can relate to the cerebral cravings of RHOC’s sharp Emily Simpson, who left a successful career as an attorney to spend more time with her children, but then added a volunteer role to her plate (helping wrongfully convicted individuals), where she gets to apply her brainy expertise.

Other complex struggles we watch and analyze are racial, cultural, or homophobic. We viewers get to see candid responses rather than those filtered through a PR-savvy conscience or publicist, providing real data (or as real as we can get with reality TV) for those of us pondering life’s big issues. This sociological lens reveals the show to be a petri dish for observing unfiltered human challenges, needs, and pursuits. Indeed, even Cohen has noted, “The Housewives are reality shows, but they’re more of a docu-series that’s also a sociology lesson” (Stone & Trainor, 2021). This intellectual scaffolding delivered by RHOC transforms viewing into an active pursuit as intellectually rewarding as deconstructing a Shakespearean tragedy, albeit with more vacations and fewer soliloquies. We don’t need iambic pentameter when RHOC’s Vicki Gunvalson can sum up an entire marriage’s failure with the metaphor, “My love tank is empty.” Raw, brilliant, and unexpectedly deep, just like RHOC.