Love Bites: Housewives To Lean On

A group of women stir at a dinner table. They swirl their white wine before unleashing fury – a cyclone of peroxide. Glasses fly. Sometimes artificial limbs, too. Underpaid staff shuffle nervously in the background. I can’t help but watch, my eyes fixated on the screen. The shrieking exchange of insults has been the soundtrack of my life for many years – a warm sound bath of privileged chaos.

What began as Andy Cohen’s love letter to the suburban satire Desperate Housewives, quickly evolved into a powerhouse slice of unattainable life. The Real Housewives – whether of New York, Salt Lake City, or Beverly Hills – is now a staple in the television diet of many, including me.

Housewives quickly became a shorthand form of communication among my family, friends, and co-workers. We trade in quotes and memes while occasions are marked by gifts of unlicensed merchandise that memorialise the larger-than-life cast’s most absurd moments (specifically those fuelled by a combination of alcohol and sunstroke). 

Yet beneath the veil of clickbait lies something more profound. On Housewives, women of a certain age, rarely depicted in media, hold meaningful friendships and chart the complexities of life together. Some of the most touching and sensitive scenes are embedded between heavy-handed innuendos and the shoehorned party-of-the-week. A widow travels to collect the ashes of her late husband; a desperate mother stages an intervention for her son’s escalating addiction. The Housewives face similar struggles to us all. There’s darkness among the light, I realise – you must simply look beneath the glitter. 

But they also provide the cure – a dose of hilarity at the expense of the often oblivious starlets or distraction from the everyday with their dizzying penthouse problems. It’s the ultimate Big Sister Television; equal parts obnoxious and earnest. The Housewives are there in the darkest of times, offering a pixelated shoulder to lean on. Just don’t cry on the Chanel.