How Real Are the Real Housewives Really?

As someone with (somewhat dubious) claims about the writing profession, it can, at times, get rather difficult to assess exactly how much of one’s real-life interactions one should divulge to the world at large.

(Or at least, to the same three people who read their work.)

Are you, after all, chasing that disarmingly endearing (and entirely emotionally unavailable) stranger out of any real romantic interest, or are you simply doing it for the plot (and the publicity points)? By that same token, are you on the market for a brand new (or perhaps not-so-brand-new) bag for the material enjoyment you seek to derive, or are you also, at the back of your mind, seeking out a potential vehicle for future content?

Because of the powers vested upon us by the Internet, many of our associations that would’ve otherwise remained within the periphery of the parasocial—and hence divorced from our personal lives—can feel extremely real.

And that is how, on the other side of the spectrum, we as a culture have ended up with “Real” Housewives: real women (and sometimes men) with the entirety of their lives on display as they waddle their way through wealth and endless luncheons in sheath dresses and Hermès bags.

Therefore, dear reader here is a look at the real lives of The Real Housewives through the (real) eyes of yours truly, who’s never really watched the show!

Real Housewives, (Not So) Real Style

Sky Tops.

It all started with these bawdy, bouncy blouses back in 2006 when The Real Housewives of Orange County first aired. Nothing was ever the same again. The proverbial can of worms had been opened, and now, said worms were swiftly squirming their way to New York, Atlanta, and beyond, clad in an even greater array of sky tops, sequins, and retail hair.

And everywhere they went, so did their outfits. And of those, there were lots – lunches, dinners, vacations (which require three or more outfits a day). As Real Housewives scholar Brian Moylan quips, “god forbid one of the ladies turns up in the same sunglasses twice.” Crystal Kung Minkoff, formerly of the Beverly Hills instalment, adds “fashion is its own character on the show.”

Oddly enough – and unlike the norm that underscores the grand tradition of influencers nowadays (and these ladies have influence, alright) – the Real Housewives rarely have the privilege of getting their splashy logo sweatsuits and earrings that read “CHA” on one lobe and “NEL” on the other free of cost.

As Moylan goes on to note, “luxury brands won’t lend to them—and they don’t rent the runway. To keep up appearances, they’re buying their Alexis Carrington Colby finery at their own expense.”

In the wise words of Dolly Parton: “It took a lot of money to look this cheap.”

Real Housewives, (Not So) Real Friendships

It is perhaps because of this, however, that Jenna Lyons’ entrance into the much-beloved, much-reviled, and recently-rebooted fourteenth season of The Real Housewives of New York came as a surprise. As a New York Times headline ran, “The Famously Stylish Former President of J. Crew Has Joined the Rebooted ‘Real Housewives of New York City.’ Why?”

After all, here’s a woman who, to her co-wives, was “a total enigma.”

As Erin Lichy explains, “she doesn’t like dill but loves parsley, she likes olives but not the black ones.” Amy Odell of Back Row writes, “Jenna is a woman who sees sequins and thinks, jeans, where her castmates see sequins and think, more sequins,” adding, “Her personal style shines, falling pleasingly between the sterility of Succession and the garishness of And Just Like That. Meanwhile, her castmates seem to order their style straight off of Revolve.com, no edits.” Which makes her placement all the more puzzling.

But isn’t the real question for The Real Housewives supposed to be why they’re all in spangled cocktail dresses (that they occasionally steal from each other’s closets) in the first place when they’re buying it all on their own dime?

One way to go about it, of course, would be to understand that the program primarily pioneers the petty power struggles and micro-aggressions between (mostly middle-aged) women with obscene amounts of wealth for our viewing pleasure, displays of riches – and garish ones at that – are only to be expected (that Faubourg Birkin plotline between Crystal and Kyle springs to mind).

But there’s also something to be said of the more parasocial friendships that we, the viewers, share with the Housewives. Because with the reality stars have come the self-declared “reality babies” (young French design darling Ludovic de Saint Sernin is one) who attend BravoCon, know what went down in the Beauty Lab + Laser parking lot (someone please explain that reference) and regularly recede into their comforting confines for escapist entertainment.

Vogue’s global fashion editor Gabriella Karefa-Johnson, also a Housewives fan, agrees: ” They need to stop casting people that they feel are representative of what society is giving right now. Like, we’re not here to put a mirror up to society. We want to see the disgusting lives of Beverly Hills housewives.”

The “Real” Housewives, you see, are simply not meant to be realistic!

Real Housewives, (Not So) Real Problems?

But even when their lives border on the fantastical (“To me, when I watch, it’s aspirational,” says de Saint Sernin “Because they’re stunning, and rich, and stupid”), the Real Housewives are still real women, with real problems.

Garcelle, for instance, who also gets her own Birkin storyline on RHOBH, still manages to keep it real by calling out Hermès for their pricing. At the same time, Bethenny Frankel of the NY edition, fatigued by the purse-wars, recently claimed to have “sold 50 handbags just as a result of being nauseated by myself.”

“The bags,” she states, “Could be Housewives themselves.” Taylor Armstrong, also formerly of the Beverly Hills installment, found herself in a lawsuit alleging that her expansive collection of Birkins was, in fact, fake. Kyle Richards and Dorit Kemsley, on the other hand, were victims of break-ins, their respective Hermès collections being the target.

And as over-the-top – and, at times, pedestrian – their personal styles may be, there’s still no denying to the sheer sales pull of the program, clocking in a viewership of nearly 1 million an episode at their peak! “For all the bad rap old-fashioned linear TV gets,” says Lyons’ business partner, Brett Bouttier, “it still moves the needle on product sales. It’s directly related. You can see it in the numbers practically instantly. I can watch it move by time zone.”

So really, these reality stars, they’re just like us.

They’re simply outsiders trying to pry their way in through the twisted terrain of the haute le mode. And who knows, maybe with the inclusion of even more fashion people into the scene (designer Rebecca Minkoff and model Ubah Hassan are now part of RHONY, for example) maybe, one day fashion-people will take the Housewives just as seriously as the Kardashians.

Until then, it shall remain the moral obligation of these ladies that every baby Sajid across Middle America knows how to distinguish his LVs from his GGs.