Small Victories, Big Boobs

By Cassandra Handley

It’s been a week of confessing guilty pleasures on Hopscotch. I think we all have them. I certainly have some, too, but most involve the fact that I love going to the movies alone, eat miniature marshmallows by the fist full, and have maybe once or twice used my hair straightener to iron a dress.

I don’t read trashy magazines. I don’t like Facebook. I can’t stand chick flicks. And this all likely has something to do with the fact that as a college undergrad, I studied Female Gender Studies, specifically how women and their bodies are represented in commercial media forms like print advertisements and television commercials. Almost everyone I am introduced to in casual settings knows this about me in less than five minutes.

Since my college years, television has become more and more saturated with a plague of “reality” television, which– I know, I know– some people adore. And that’s fine. But I have generally always despised what reality TV has done to America and our media forms.

Thus, given my overall disdain for reality TV, and especially for how women are represented in this crude and crass television “entertainment” form, most people I know would be astonished to hear that I am a closeted “Real Housewives of Orange County” fan.

Bravo’s Real Housewives series— there is one incarnation in Orange County, Atlanta, New York City, New Jersey, and possibly Washington, DC— is generally a despicable hodgepodge of mindless bickering, irrational shopping, cheap alcohol, and monstrous breasts. But there is something about the Orange County version (the season finale aired last night)  that draws my attention on late nights when my husband has already gone to bed or early Saturday mornings when he is playing flag football.

It’s the only thing I have ever hidden from him. Perhaps, he knows about my casual fascination with these faux-blond, obnoxious women, but if he did, I am sure he would stage an intervention.

Regardless, it’s not a show I watch often. I maybe catch a rerun or two each month. But when I tune in, it’s typically to view, in utter horror, how these housewives are subjecting themselves to the dominating alpha-male characteristics of their car salesmen or down-and-out construction contractor husbands. For the most part, these women are suckers for the pockets of cash that their husbands supposedly possess. (Although in most episodes, a lack of money or financial stability is a sharp undertone.)

The hard-working, sassy Vicki Gunvalson

With one exception. Vicki. She’s the only reason I tune in to the show. The entire series seems to revolve around her as the loud-mouth mother-hen, and that’s a good thing. She makes the show watchable, interesting, fun. Without her grounding nature of sass, sobbing, and female chauvinism, the show could not go on. Constantly, she is rubbing her work ethic, job stability, and over-booked schedule in the boobs of the other women on the show whose only jobs seem to be floundering start-ups and getting dolled up for the camera.

In most cases, while it’s typically expressed without civilized manners or proper form, Vicki is right. She stands up for herself as a woman, is hard-working, earns and spends her own cash, and is probably the most stable and fulfilled of all the women on the show. Why she even tries to befriend the other women is beyond me, but she does.

The entrepreneuring Gretchen Rossi

Interestingly though, when it comes to Vicki and her high-levels of drama, the fighting is usually between her and the weeny husbands on the show. She is the only woman who stands up to the men—not just her own husband, but to all the jerks who don’t know how to value and treat their lovely, if sometimes dim-witted, wives.

The please-everyone Tamra Barney

For this, she should be praised. But isn’t. At least not on the show. Instead, the other wives, while cowering from the unfounded perspiration (do any of them actually work?) of their spouses, hardly stand-up to their husbands, for fear of being kicked to the curb and having their financial lifeline cut off. Tamra is the closest that one of them have been—a least for a while— to expressing her pretty voice in defiance and from the finale and finale previews, we all know how that’s going to end. And Alexis, poor Alexis, I have no words.

The superficial goody two-shoes Alexis Bellino

When watching this show, I have sat back with glee to see that the men are just as crazy and irrational as the female characters. You see, I’ve heard that, typically, the women are the unstable characters on the shows, while the men simply shake their heads with confusion. And while I can’t speak for the other Housewives series, in Orange County, the men are portrayed as the spineless cowards they are. The women take their crap to a degree, but there is always a glimmer of hope that these women will come to their senses and realize that there is life without a dominating and emotionally abusive husband with pockets “full” of cash.

Not that I am promoting divorce, but I am promoting the idea that women learn to take care of themselves without heavily relying on their spouses, that women take charge when they are being unfairly treated, that women taste the freedom of making their own money at least once in their lives, and that a woman takes pride and accountability in whatever life choices she makes as a member of the female sex.

Which all circles me back to the reason why I think so many women tune in to watch the Real Housewives series. It’s not just for the comedic cat fights, emotional carnage, shopping binges, and feeling of horror we secretly love experiencing when a character onscreen acts like a total buffoon. I think it’s because, on some level, women feel empowered by watching other women succeed in their various lots in life, whether it be as a working girl, mother, friend, sister, or spouse. Clearly, a indicated from these shows, there isn’t enough truly good material out there to promote self-esteem, confidence, and empowerment, so we have to communally enjoy the small victories that women achieve– anytime, anywhere we can.

Cassandra Handley

By Cassandra Handley
Boston, MA
Cassandra Handley is the founder and editor of Hopscotch and is a fashion copywriter for J.Jill. She was previously an editorial associate for Vanity Fair magazine and currently resides in Boston with her husband, Brian.