Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photos: Getty Images, Everett Collection
In the mid-aughts, TV producer Scott Dunlop attended a dinner party in Coto de Caza, a wealthy gated community in Orange County, California, where he lived. This was a place where the teenagers all got convertibles for a graduation gift, and where Dunlop’s neighbors said things like, “This isn’t just a place to live; it’s a lifestyle.” As he listened to his neighbors talking about hiring new nannies and getting their kids into Ivy League schools, he realized that they only ever spoke about how fabulous their lives were. Listening to their rose-tinted stories, he hatched the idea for a show about their real, unvarnished lives — a show that displayed the glamour, but also the struggles (and scandals) that happened behind closed doors. The working title? Behind the Gates.
Twenty years ago this week, Bravo first took cameras exactly there. The Real Housewives of Orange County, which started as a fly-on-the-wall docuseries about five wealthy women and their families, has since evolved into a Zeitgeist-defining franchise that explores the nuances (and dramas) of female friendship, plus the pursuit of fame, status, and wealth. While many reality franchises have come and gone over these two decades, Housewives isn’t merely still standing — it’s ever-expanding, with seven other cities currently in production or on air and The Real Housewives of Rhode Island joining Bravo’s roster next month.
I first started watching RHOC way before streaming, when I had to search the internet for dubious links to see the episodes, which almost certainly gave my prehistoric laptop a deadly virus. As a gay man with a propensity for diva worship, I remember thinking there was something extremely glamorous about these women and being allured by how open they were in sharing their lives, including the innermost details about their marriages, financial struggles, and fractured friendships. Over the course of what has become one of my longest pop-culture relationships, I’m still fascinated by this Venn diagram of relatability and escapism that the franchise presents. These women are living lives that are far removed from the average person’s while also facing challenges that we all go through. Last November, I found myself at BravoCon in Las Vegas, a three-day event where 30,000 fans, 160 Bravolebs, and a future landfill site of merch crammed into the glittery Caesars Forum. Every fan I encountered spoke of a deep emotional connection to the Housewives — a perceived friendship that money can’t buy. Really, what has kept the series culturally relevant isn’t expensive handbags or dinner party showdowns — it’s giving viewers a complex, ever-changing answer to the same central question: What is an aspirational life for a woman?
In the early-to-mid aughts, television tried to answer that very question with extremes. In Sex and the City, antiheroine Carrie Bradshaw was an icon of what sociologist Roslind Gill calls post-feminism — the belief that the main goals of feminism had been achieved (if only!) and that women should find “empowerment” through consumerism, sexual freedom, and, as Bradshaw modeled, the individualist goals of “love and labels.” Then came Desperate Housewives, Marc Cherry’s ABC drama about a group of women who lived on the picture-perfect suburban street of Wisteria Lane. The show’s opening credits feature classic depictions of womanhood. We see Eve standing nude in the Garden of Eden, Egypt’s Queen Nefertiti, Grant Wood’s 1930 masterpiece “American Gothic,” 1950s pin-up girls, and Andy Warhol prints and Pop Art before the show’s four leads appear under the biblical apple tree. Each of these women offer a different take on what it means to be a housewife.
Initially, The Real Housewives’s answer was less scandalous — there were none of Wisteria Lane’s murders, tornados or plane crashes. But that’s what made it feel so shiny and new, because these women were real. The first Housewives — Vicki Gunvalson, Jeana Keough, Lauri Peterson, Jo De La Rosa and Kimberly Bryant — each represented a different take on the archetype. Gunvalson and Keough were businesswomen, while Peterson had lived an affluent lifestyle but, after a divorce, found herself perilously positioned outside Coto de Caza’s gates. De La Rosa was a 20-something party girl dating an older, wealthier man (TW: Slade Smiley), and stay-at-home mom Bryant was a housewife in the more traditional sense. From the outset, they reflected the reality that there is no one way to be a housewife — and the (almost) 200 Housewives that followed them have only broadened its scope, with entrepreneurs, professors, doctors, cabaret performers, QVC stars, and even “manifestation experts” joining the fold.
Housewives reflects how much what is considered peak aspiration has changed. At first, women like RHOC OG Vicki Gunvalson and The Real Housewives of New York City’s Ramona Singer espoused the girlboss-era view that women could finally have it all: looks, a career, a husband, and kids. But scratching beneath the surface revealed a more complex reality. In the end, Gunvalson’s and Singer’s marriages both fell victim to the so-called Housewives curse — a pattern we’ve seen over and over again where sudden fame and earning potential changes the power dynamic in relationships. (Surprise surprise, men don’t always love their wife being the center of attention.) Sometimes women join the show strategically, hoping to escape a toxic marriage. Other times we’re left wondering whether a couple would have stayed together if not for the cameras. In the latest season of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, Kyle Richards and real-estate mogul Mauricio Umansky, who are in the process of separating, returned to their former home. Richards wondered whether chasing “more, more, more” — the American ethos that is baked into the DNA of Housewives — made them lose everything.
And yet the pursuit of fame and money is undoubtedly why most women join the show. The Bravo platform allows them to have more, more, more and tell the world about it, which, in today’s hyperperformative world, is basically the new American Dream. Back in 2006, the first crop of Housewives were not paid, but that quickly changed. (Bravo is tight-lipped about the financials, but it’s an open secret that salaries for the longest-serving ’wives exceed $1 million.) Twenty years on, being a Real Housewife is a job in itself — one that comes with endless opportunities for self-promotion. It sometimes feels like these shows are part living soap, part infomercial for all these ladies’ products, from weed gummies to skin care, candles, booze, and toaster ovens. Glam Squads follow them everywhere, powdering, cinching, and preening every inch of their bodies for the cameras. Traditionally, the Housewife has been portrayed as a supportive background figure. But here? These women are stars of the show and, very often, the breadwinners in their families.
Sometimes, the desperation for more — and the need to keep up the Housewives lifestyle — leads to questionable and even illegal behavior. In 2015, The Real Housewives of New Jersey’s Teresa and Joe Giudice were convicted of multimillion-dollar tax fraud; both served jail time. Then, in 2021, the FBI showed up to arrest Jen Shah, one of the original The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City stars, for orchestrating a nationwide telemarketing scam that targeted the elderly. During her trial, Shah was found to have little to no assets — she didn’t even own the opulent “Shah chalet” where she filmed many of her scenes for the show. Most recently, The Real Housewives of Potomac’s Wendy and Eddie Osefo are currently facing serious federal charges of insurance fraud with prosecutors claiming that the couple have “very little money” and were “burdened by substantial debt.” (They deny any wrongdoing.) And who could forget Tom Girardi, former husband of RHOBH star Erika Jayne. The formerly celebrated California lawyer, whose work inspired the film Erin Brockovich, is serving a seven-year prison sentence after embezzling tens of millions of dollars from his vulnerable clients over many decades.
Exactly how important is money to being a Housewife? Last year, I asked Kathleeen French, executive producer of RHOC and RHOBH, who told me it’s about “third or fourth” priority behind their ability to live authentically and integrate with the rest of the cast. Over the years, fans have been a part of real financial success stories, like Bethenny Frankel, who arrived in RHONY as a plucky underdog and went on to sell her cocktail brand, Skinnygirl, for $100 million. And we’ve also seen that, well, wealthy people aren’t always as rich as they make out. On season five of RHOC, when the financial crash hit, several of the cast turned out to be worryingly overleveraged. Lynne Curtin’s kids were served an eviction notice on-camera, and afterward her husband, Frank, confessed that the family had run out of money. In hindsight, it was a big risk for Bravo to follow these women in financial turmoil, but it turned out to be addictive viewing. There’s comfort in knowing that everyone’s shit stinks.
Since its inception, reality TV has been frequently dismissed and minimized — especially shows like Housewives, which are ostensibly about and for women. While the franchise showcases gorgeous gowns, luxurious girls’ trips, and mansions with fridges that make “hexagonal ice,” it’s also about everyday struggles. As Lisa Rinna put it in her memoir, You Better Believe I’m Gonna Talk About It: “Not all RHOBH viewers ride around in limos or vacation in Hong Kong, but maybe they’re in the midst of a messy divorce, deep in credit card debt. Being a woman is complicated, no matter who you are.”
From the start, these shows have been a space that centers the stories of women over 40 by exploring topics that, in 2006, were not prominent in other types of media: female friendship, motherhood, being an empty nester, husbands in midlife crises, divorce, lesbian awakenings, caring for elderly parents, IVF, widowhood, grief. In fact, in the Bravo world, being a woman who has lived many lives full of different experiences only makes you a better Housewife. And make no mistake, this has influenced our wider culture: I find it difficult to envisage the cultural landscape we have today, where women like Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman are seen as vital Hollywood storytellers in their 50s and 60s, without the Housewives.
In a 2021 interview, Harriet Ryan, one of the Los Angeles Times reporters who investigated Girardi’s financial affairs, told me that she received more messages about her work being featured as a story line on RHOBH than when she won the Pulitzer Prize in 2019. “I was amazed at people that I know in my life who are smart women and were obsessed with Real Housewives,” she said. “Initially, my reaction was, ‘Wow, I can’t believe they watch the show,’ but that’s when I realized that their viewership is intelligent women.”
Back in 2007, at RHOC’s season-two reunion — the first hosted by Andy Cohen, who looked practically baby-faced — Jo De La Rosa proclaimed, “I think we’ve redefined how to be a housewife.” This applies to the woman herself, who was the first of many Housewives to bag a spinoff show and release her own music. And it doubles as a mission statement for the wider franchise. Far from being a fixed archetype, Housewives portrays womanhood as constantly in flux. Whether they’re entering a new season of life, or indeed the show, I find it comforting that there are always opportunities for reinvention and redemption. It’s never too late to change and evolve. And through the lens of an anthropological Housewives fan, I can honestly say that the franchise has taught me more about American society than any book, film, documentary, or other art form. That’s not to say that I think these women are representative of the average American, but they embody its values and what is considered to be an aspirational life.
Now that the franchise is old enough to have its own lore, Housewives from the past are returning to the fold. These women reflect a nostalgia for a time before reality-TV stardom was so normalized with a pipeline to paid partnerships on Instagram. That’s why it’s thrilling when someone like celebrity stylist Rachel Zoe appears on our screens to share the imperfect, complicated process of starting over after a divorce. It’s a reminder that, no matter how much the Housewives has evolved from a fly-on-the-wall series where the biggest drama was a “little family van!,” the core of every great Real Housewife is authenticity. And in today’s world, what could be more aspirational than that?
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