7 cities. (OC, NY, ATL, NJ, DC, Bev Hills, Miami)
40 women. (I’m not going to write down all their names.)
Countless hours of my life spent watching their (mostly) vapid lives and delighting in their antics. “Antics” is really a far too Lucy & Ethel word for the RHW universe, but “escapades” is too Janet and “drama” is too 2000.
From weave pulling to table flipping, turtle-timing to arriving late to events, I am utterly captivated.
And I hate myself for it.
But what’s worse than all the time I spend WATCHING these train wrecks (and enduring the network’s chronically-excited nasally voiceover guy sneering “Only on Brah-vo!”)? All the time I spend THINKING about them. About the franchise. About their lives, their hairlines (I’m lookin’ at you, Teresa), their businesses (makeup! wigs! cookbooks! jewelry! pinot grigio! fancy fat-smushing suits!), their dogs- my fixation is really quite time consuming. It hasn’t been this bad since I was obsessed with imagining Beyonce’s conversations with her parents in 2002-2004 (example of a daydream: Beyonce sits at the kitchen table eating a modest breakfast of hard boiled eggs, as her father paces the room and lectures “You’re out growing Destiny’s Child… I can feel it. Take no prisoners, Beyonce.” “But dad! They’re my frie-” [Mr. Knowles slams his fist on the table, rattling the salt & pepper shakers]”Take no prisoners.” Tina rushes in from the other room, with a threaded needle in her mouth, holding a half-stitched leather corset for her daughter, “What’s the meaning of this, Matthew?!”)
While I don’t expect or want them to be “real” in any way…. I’ve always felt rather frustrated that so few of them are married. Housewives- huh!
So, I took hours from my busy schedule (eating cereal from the box takes a LOT of time) and figured out everyone’s marital status. Then I made a chart. View the SHOCKING RESULTS! Ok, the results aren’t shocking at all. But at least everything is all charted up in one place. What a scientist-y thing to say. I really am getting older and wiser.
