Abstract
The “empirical nucleus” of Bjelskou’s study is Bravo TV’s Real Housewives of New York City (RHONY), one iteration of the reality show franchise that began in Orange County, California, in 2006, and spread to six other cities. Bravo, a leader in cable TV’s lifestyle showcasing, is an apt forum for the author’s meditations on the conflation of product promotion and entertainment.
Viewers of the show will be well familiar with its wealthy “housewife” protagonists. Bjelskou explores the development of the women’s brands, emphasizing the focus on their bodies as the vehicles they discipline and control to achieve financial success and fame. Skinnygirl Bethenny Frankel is the poster woman for reality TV success with her empire of books, talk show, skincare line, and more. Non-viewers will nonetheless find this textual analysis provides insightful commentary on reality TV and contemporary media culture.
By investigating individual personalities from the show—and the particular circumstances that presumably ushered the way to their brands—Bjelskou describes how each presents herself and how her behavior fits into the larger category of branding at work in the media universe. These women have joined a swarm of “Bravolebrities” and, clearly, the “housewives” are not traditional iterations of the term. Celebrity is a major subject here, especially its current run of democratization, engendering, the author posits, unrealistic expectations, and entitlements. Wealthy lifestyles are implied to be attainable via the array of commodities presented, so that reality TV is complicit in “the neoliberal Promised Land,” as Bjelskou writes in his introduction, “where wealth and fame are available to all who desire them.” Race and class—in RHONY’s case, quite pronouncedly, White and monied—dominate these narratives.
TV is increasingly fictionalized, as the author notes, but whereas a drama like the 1980s’ Dynasty is aspirational perhaps but more pointedly escapist, RHONY and its reality ilk are self-referential to an equally extreme degree. Because we see the process of these women making successes of themselves—whereas the Dynasty’s Carringtons were offered up as an already completed project—the desired message delivered by the housewives is that it is possible for the viewer to emulate them, approximating the manner of a self-help program. It is reminiscent of that other guidebook from the 1995 bestseller, The Rules: Time-Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right, which also inundated women with behavior directives, that is, “Do this and you will be successful like me.” Both resources are strongly and purposefully biased and easily become a target of vitriol or comedy. With regard to extremes, Bjelskou also spends some warranted attention on levels and uses of camp in RHONY. In so doing, he compares its aesthetic values with other shows like Sex and the City, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (an early RHONY progenitor on Bravo), and Desperate Housewives (of which RHONY is an “ironic comment”).
Whereas most reality television is performative and purposefully inauthentic, RHONY goes a step further in encouraging performance as a self-improvement strategy. Bjelskou argues that RHONY offers viewers the idea that the acquisition of the exhibited material goods can allow them to gain access to the higher social classes to which the characters, stars, or personalities belong. Some of these are explicit rags-to-riches stories, heightening the aspirationality and feasibility. No longer is it just a matter of buying products to achieve a certain lifestyle; now viewers are encouraged to adopt personalities and mannerisms to elevate themselves. Despite titles like Countess and Princess attached to two of the housewives, RHONY nonetheless perpetuates the myth of classlessness in American society.
Bjelskou, who teaches American history and cultural studies at the University of Copenhagen, uses a range of disciplinary perspectives in his critique of RHONY. He weaves in a historical survey of the evolving role of women depicted on television, notably the longstanding relationship between women and products, the image of the housewife on TV, and how the changing media regulation climate affects the “relationships between people and things.” Although the author focuses on the epitomized expression of consumerism displayed in current popular culture, he repeatedly reminds readers that it has ever been thus in U.S. television. He uses a sociocultural lens to highlight how politics, labor, television industry practices, and consumer-viewer behavior all set the stage for the reality TV phenomenon and how the genre influences viewers’ choices and behaviors. Conspicuous consumption is a central theme and thereby invites associations with scholars like Barthes, Bourdieu, Foucault, and Marx.
In the concluding chapter, the author shares the impetus for his study and the cultural significance of shows like RHONY. Like many TV scholars, he started out as a fan of Bravo TV and remains one while performing intellectual analysis. RHONY began in 2008 and is still popular, but Bjelskou concludes that the “severely branded nature” and “limited version of femaleness” are problematic. He acknowledges some value within this program type—arguably filling a gap of dying public services and presenting creative approaches to weaving advertising and entertainment—but more diversity would increase its usefulness. A short and dense read, Branded Women is a recommended case study for the implications of unabashed consumerism and industry-sanctioned narcissism—critical facets to grasp in today’s media landscape.