The Housewives' Guide to Better Living: Promoting Consumption on Bravo's The Real Housewives

Abstract

This article applies feminist political economy to Bravo's hit reality program, The Real Housewives. Research illustrates how the show “sells” consumerism within programming, and how fans utilize Bravo's website to respond to the program's proconsumerist messages. Exploring how fans seek participation in—or rejection of—consumerism, research suggests that fans are actively negotiating the meaning and value of the consumerism propagated by the show. Although online comments illustrate acceptance of consumerism, these comments exist alongside a questioning of the housewives' spending habits and misappropriated values. The ideological functions of designating women as shoppers and perpetuating the notion that spending equals happiness conceal the underlying structural flaws within the patriarchal capitalist market, including the failure to create equal opportunities for wage earning for women.

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