The reluctant housewife of Orange County

In scripted TV, the beautiful driven woman always leaves the manipulative, controlling man. In Reality TV, she stays. The woman in scripted TV may struggle for awhile. She may sob to her girlfriends only to return to the one who made her cry, sure that her tears are her fault. But by the end of the script she is free of him and possesses a new sense of self-importance and the ability to realize her own worth. Reality TV tells another story -- and one sadly one that is much more frequently close to the truth.

Last night I finished Season One of The Real Housewives of Orange County. I'm hardly new to reality TV. I've watched Laguna Beach, The Hills, and Keeping up with the Kardashians religiously, while well aware that aspects of the shows are scripted. What I know is never scripted though is the actual relationships between the men and women. The producers may decide when and where they meet, but what they say is all them.

Laguna Beach was my first initiation into relational Reality TV (as opposed to competitive, like Survivor). At the time I was trying to get over T, who to this day is the man I still feel was closest to "the one." While he said I was his favorite contemporary author, put my novel behind a glass case, spent hours talking with me, taking dance lessons, and my holding hand while ice skating in the park (among other acts of intimacy that I won't get into), he was so elusive that I would go weeks without hearing from him, breaking plans just by not showing up to them. During this time, I was flipping through channels one night and got hooked on Laguna. When Jason got tired of his girlfriend Jessica and started retreating, Jessica latched on even tighter, going so far as to text him while snowboarding with her girlfriends, sitting in the snow in the middle of a slope with snowboarders rushing down the hill all around her. Suddenly I became completely mortified by the drunk, crying messages I’d left on T’s phone and the time I saw his truck leaving a parking space and tried to chase him down the street with hands full of groceries. He was in no way manipulative and controlling like the other men I'll describe here, but I was still doing myself a disservice by letting a man make me miserable.


In The Hills, Audrina was always eager to reunite with "Justin Bobby" even though their coupling had to be on his terms and with no claim at exclusivity on his part. She was supposed to remain otherwise unattached. Then Kourtney Kardashian kept taking Scott back even though he was a violent alcoholic. And yesterday I started mutely yelling at the TV when 24-year-old Jo took back 40-year-old Slade, crying that she had failed him even though he was the one who made her stay home with his kids (who only came to visit twice a week) instead of getting a fulfilling job to go with her corporate degree. She "failed" by going back to work against his orders.


While Jason and Scott knew they were jerks, Slade had no idea. He is the kind of man who is convinced that he is the quintessential nice guy, but in reality is down right abusive with the way he separates his fiance from everything that would interest her, speaks to her in a condescending voice with phrases like "That's unacceptable behavior," and insists that any unhappiness is her fault. She could have had anyone she wanted, and instead she stayed with one of the most "charming" abusive men I have ever seen.

I worry about the next generation and the messages that young women are being sent by the actions of those they watch on TV. And part of my worry is because I do see this sort of relationship being played out in real life, with me -- and with many others. I wonder though if Reality TV makes us put up with abusive men less because we do see it on the screen. One can always assert that scripted TV isn't real life, and while Reality TV isn't real life either, seeing a woman put up with crap from the man who is supposed to love her makes us cringe in a way that putting up with the abuse ourselves might not. Things are always more clear without emotional attachments, and maybe seeing these men take advantage of these beautiful, confident women and make them into subservient crying messes will help real live women to avoid the same fate. Maybe if Reality TV had existed in the mid-90s, it wouldn't have taken me so long to break up with my "charmingly" manipulative and controlling boyfriend D.

I won't admit that Reality TV is the best way to be spending my time, but there are positives to everything, and every time I yell at the screen over a messed up relationship I feel it makes me that much stronger regards to not putting up with any abuse myself. And while some of these girls never seem to free themselves of their controlling partners, the producers of the show are well aware that female viewers will be disgusted by the subservience and present the relationship in such a way that we know they are disgusted as well (though they also sadly know it makes for good TV -- just think of Spencer and Heidi). It also makes me cringe at bleached blond hair, yellow skin, and fake boobs -- all of which Jo has thus far avoided, at least in Season One. I want to take her natural drive and beauty, see it in myself, and not be her, by not letting any man -- or reality show -- stand in my way.