“I can close a viewing window faster than any porn addict.”
It was tempting to write this under a pseudonym and carry my secret shame, my most guilty of pleasures, with me to the grave. Instead, I’m fessing up. You might call it a noble act. I couldn’t possibly comment, but surely there are others like me out there that I can help feel less alone.
I am a busy working mother and wife, with a keen interest in politics, social justice, and world events. I have a voracious appetite for news; first thing every morning, I read two news sites that align with my values and beliefs, and one that absolutely doesn’t—because you need to know what the enemy is thinking. I check them regularly through the day, get breaking story alerts on my phone, and watch the news on TV every night. I attend marches and protests for peace, equality, and to support those striking for fair pay. I’m as devastated and despairing about the state of the world—the wars, the climate emergency—as you are. I am also, when I’m sure I’m totally alone (although I can close a viewing window faster than any porn addict), a complete and utter Bravoholic.
For the uninitiated—people I simultaneously admire and pity—this means I’m an avid consumer of the Bravo channel’s output. Of course, The Real Housewives franchises, but they’re just a gateway drug to the entire Bravo Multiverse: Vanderpump Rules, Summer House, Southern Charm…
Every time I think I can’t possibly sink any lower, I discover yet another mesmerizing show, another set of strangers to take to my heart, another community in which to become hopelessly embroiled. Married To Medicine—some of them are married to doctors, some of them are doctors themselves, some of them are married to doctors and doctors themselves—has 10 seasons for me to catch up on. I genuinely don’t know how I’ll find the time, while being absolutely certain that I will.
Luckily, I work from home, so there’s no one to judge every lunch break spent watching Bravo. I can’t wear earbuds because I won’t know if one someone is coming into the room behind me, so I have trained myself to listen at minimum volume when my son and husband are around. My husband has also never noticed that I am particularly tired and need to head to bed early on nights when certain shows drop. Remember reading under the covers with a flashlight when you were a kid? That’s me, now, with my phone and The Valley.
But what is it about reality TV that’s so compelling?
“People really like judging other people. It’s that simple,” Andy Cohen, legendary daddy of the genre, Real Housewives producer for 18 years, and (gasp!) inventor of the confessional interview, told The Hollywood Reporter. “There’s a moral aspect to this—you see people behaving well or behaving badly. People like to sit in judgment and watch people get their reward or comeuppance.”
Being the only entertainment format where you don’t actually need any particular talent to be recognized or celebrated also gives it a strange allure. “There’s a democratic aspect to this—it’s kind of Warholian,” said Cohen. “You can come from anywhere and get your 15 minutes.”
But there’s more to it than that, of course. A recent billboard placed over a busy freeway was emblazoned with an almost too on-the-nose slogan. “BRAVO: Escape your reality for ours.”
Cohen is well aware of this part of it too.“There are legions of fans who are passionately devoted to this brand. It’s a tonic that helps them get through the pains and obstacles in their lives.”
Danielle J. Lindemann, sociology professor and author of True Story: What Reality TV Says About Us, seconds that emotion. “Binging reality TV, at least for me, can have a kind of anesthetic effect,” she says.
It’s certainly true that I fell into the trap/comforting embrace of Real Housewives at a particularly dark time in my life. My beloved dad had been diagnosed with cancer and our days were full of scary hospital appointments, painful treatments, and bad, then worse, news. Zoning out of all that for 45 minutes of Beverly Hills sunshine, where impossibly immaculate women in palatial homes went shopping and bickered over nonsense, did indeed feel almost medicinal.
The shame most Bravoholics feel about their passion also seems fairly universal—a fact exploited by the recent introduction of BravoCon, a three-day event where fans congregate and let their freak flags fly in a safe space. At last year’s extravaganza, 35,000 of them descended on Las Vegas to meet 160 stars of the most popular shows—or Bravolebs, if you speak the lingo. I have a fantasy that after bonding for life while they were there, they would ignore each other in the street if they passed by the week after, like the Masons, but more embarrassed.
Because while Bravo fans may be judging the Bravolebs, they’re usually judging themselves far more harshly for being so invested in the brand, and are terrified of accidentally outing themselves. Or maybe that’s just me?
Recently an acquaintance confided in me about her shock and upset when a death in the family that she’d assumed would bring her nearest and dearest closer together had instead ripped them apart. I nodded sagely as she spoke, saying I thought this was quite common, and began to tell her about a friend of mine who had gone through the same thing. Halfway through a sentence, I had a horrifying realization: It wasn’t a friend of mine that this had happened to, it was Jax from Vanderpump Rules. Shudder. (To clarify: Some people on that show are my friends—Team Ariana for life—but certainly not him.)
It was too late to abort, so I had to awkwardly carry on with the anecdote. But the panic I felt that I might be about to reveal who I really was to this person was horrifying.
It’s almost as if I think that if anyone discovers that I enjoy reality TV, it will cancel out every single other aspect of my personality. I also worry that mine is the worst branch of reality to be into. There’s no aim to it, no prize at the end for mastering a new skill or being the best; it’s utterly pointless. If people knew this was my jam, wouldn’t I be seen as silly, vacuous, braindead? Written off as a joke, because of course a serious, sensible grown woman shouldn’t be interested in such shallow fluff.
Perhaps my fear about being unmasked as a Bravoholic is out of whack though. Rihanna recently proudly admitted that Bravo was her biggest obsession after her children. “It’s Housewives, Vanderpump Rules, and then anything Bravo,” she said on the red carpet. “Andy Cohen didn’t pay me to say that, I promise. I’m just… I’m obsessed.”
Actor Jon Hamm has gone on record too, telling Today, “I’m a Jersey man. I’m a Vanderpumper. I’m a Beverly Hills-ian. I like New York.” Meryl Streep revealed to Entertainment Tonight that she accepted the role in the climate change movie Don’t Look Up because, “If we don’t survive, we won’t be able to watch Housewives,” and Lady Gaga put several of the Beverly Hills cast in the music video for her song “G.U.Y.“
During a book tour interview with Gayle King, even Michelle Obama happily discussed her love for the Potomac and Atlanta franchises, for goodness’ sake.
“I’ve always felt secretly guilty about watching Bravo’s The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, and occasionally, its 20-something spinoff Vanderpump Rules,” confesses Melanie Greenberg, PhD, a licensed psychologist, and expert on mindfulness, media, celebrity, and relationships.
She’s wondered if being into the “superficial shenanigans of these privileged, Botoxed divas [would] kill brain neurons,” or lead her to be ostracized by her Ph.D. peers. But in an interesting turn of events, she was surprised (and secretly, delighted) to find out that she was not alone among her intellectual counterparts in watching this “pink, frilly eye candy.”
Yup, the good news for Melanie and me—and anyone else hiding under the bedsheets with a boiling iPhone—is that a study of over 200 people by Psychology Today’s Steven Reiss found that people with intellectual interests were equally as likely to watch reality TV as those with none.
So there you have it! Watching reality TV proves you’re a genius (that’s what I took from that, anyway). The first step is admitting you have a problem… and maybe the second step in reality TV rehab is accepting that it actually isn’t a problem. It’s fine. Let’s remove the guilt from this pleasure, enjoy it, and admit who we are. You first though.
Want more stories like this? Follow us on Instagram, Threads, and Facebook for regular updates and a lot of other silliness.
Leave Us a Comment