I can't do a definitive list because I don't watch every franchise, but even if I don't like New York, there are still New York housewives on the list. But also because there are so many it would take forever and I have a life, a limited one but a life nonetheless. Now if you're a novice you're going to notice damn fast that there's basically very little difference between how they all look because they are all for the most part menopausal and all have that melted barbie look and are either way too tanned or way too blonde. But if you are a Real Housewives enthusiast, congrats because you're way cooler than all the haters out there, and you'll know exactly the difference is. We are not going on aesthetics alone. We're going on class (of which there is little) general attitude, and a means of carrying oneself. We used to call it femininity, now we call it ready-for-HD. Starting with #20 and going to the hottest. Also, if you watch you probably know who goes at the very top of the list but I still beckon you to read the whole post.
20. Kathy Wakile (Real Housewives of New Jersey)
A lot might be shaking their heads, but this fly-eyed over-tanned almost grandma looking housewife knows how to bake and keep her cool like no one's business. Yeah she uses way too much make up and the face is a bit busted, but we all use 'it's a good salad' when we want to get out of a sticky situation thanks to her.
19. Heather Dubrow (Real Housewives of the OC) The newest addition to the cray cray of the OC, Miss Fancy Pants who's married to the biggest plastic surgeon on that coast is '99% natural' even though she can side-eye someone like no one's business but she is straight up no bullshit. Go ahead try to eat a bow off her cake.
18. Sonja Morgan (Real Housewives of New York). The ladies of New York are more batshit than you would think, but this one seems to rise above the fray which means she probably has the least screaming interactions, then again I don't know much about her. She's not a lot of drama and in Bravo land that means booooooring.
17. Kelly Bensimon. (Real Housewives of New York). From one end of the cray spectrum to the other, perhaps this was all aboard the hot mess express. Whether its crying rivers at reunions or going straight up Exorcist while on vacation, or my personal favorite jogging in the middle of New York traffic. This is like the cray Cindy Crawford.
16. Kandi Burruss (Real Housewives of Atlanta). This firecracker is awesome. She like the other ladies of Atlanta has a strict no bullshit policy, and can look cute as a button not taking shit. I love her.
15. Lisa Rinna (Real Housewives of Beverly Hills). Pint-sized, big lipped, and having the same haircut for 20 years, can still rock being a full on milf, who is way protective of friends and family and also full of some of the best one-liners in only one season of the show...so far.
14. Taylor Armstrong (Real Housewives of Beverly Hills). Perhaps this is the best picture of her. Everyone knows Taylor loves to drink and then dissolve into tears, but you know what? If my husband killed himself and left me with nothing but lawsuits I'd probably be drenched in chardonnay as well. This I think as also when she got deathly thin, she's now remarried to her lawyer (of course) and apparently doing better. Fingers crossed. We don't know she was fired off the show...duh.
13. Brandi Glanville (Real Housewives of Beverly Hills) Lets get this out of the way. She is a goddamn bitch and a trouble maker, but she is crazy hot. The former model stands at 6'2 with the world's longest legs and a body that won't quit we all remember her bikini or lack thereof, and she would rock a burlap sack, if only we could get her to cover up more. But do we really want that?
12. Teresa Giudice (Real Housewives of New Jersey). This Jean Valjean of the Real Housewives universe is currently serving at the halfway mark of her 15 month prison sentence for major major fraud. She basically made the franchise what it is, way back in season 1, travel back in time with me when the Teresa table flip became a thing. Say it with me. You were engaged 19 fucking times!?
11. Cat Ommaney (Real Housewives of DC) This British transplant was married to a white house photographer and had absolutely no filter and seriously a no bullshit policy. But she never raised her voice and always had a glass of wine at the ready whether it was to throw it into someone's face or to drink it while rolling her eyes.
10. Melissa Gorga (Real Housewives of New Jersey). This one is a real moron. Like even by Jersey standards, whether she's totally misunderstanding how to use hyperbole and/or metaphors or advocating marital rape, or making horribly auto-tuned pop songs, she's still a bit of a bombshell, or as she would say a 'knock out' again, mixing metaphors.
9. Kyle Richards (Real Housewives of Beverly Hills). Kyle is pretty flawless her house-husband was voted the hottest one out of all of the franchises, she's a great mom to 4 beautiful girls, lives in Belaire, drives a Maserati, and has been the long suffering youngest sister of Kathy and Kim (Kim is the hot mess alcoholic, Kathy is Paris and Nicky's mom). Even being surrounded by such Beverly Hills pomp, Kyle maintains her sincerity, and her brunette hair.
8. Dina Manzo (Real Housewives of New Jersey). Perhaps the only blonde in Jersey, she came back after 5 seasons to bring the zen bitches. She's got a natural beauty about her, and its difficult to find that well in any of the housewives. And considering the murky family bloodlines she's from, she came out looking like the champ amongst a bunch of zoo creatures.
7. Camille Grammer. (Real Housewives of Beverly Hills) Mrs. ex Kelsey Grammer, can you imagine how lucky he was to lang a woman like that, and then leave her for some flight attendant urly? This blonde bombshell might be a little fake around he edges and have done playboy but she has a USC degree and more class than you can shake a stick out. No pre-nup, and he cheated, ergo she won. You will always win Camille.
6. Cynthia Bailey (Real Housewives of Atlanta) Former model/overall ridiculously hot human being Cynthia has chestnut eyes to die for and beautiful ok...eyes lips hair combo. Everything about her. She's got it going on, and she doesn't need Nene's snark because her thighs don't touch.
5. Gretchen Rossi (Real Housewives of the OC) She hasn't been on the show for a while, but while on it she was as close to a living breathing barbie doll as someone is physically capable of getting to. But even without the pounds of make-up and enough hairspray to make its own hole in the o-zone, Gretchen had it going on.
4. Eileen Davidson (Real Housewives of Beverly Hills). Can you believe this dynamo is in her 50's? I can't. She's a former soap star, Emmy winner, with a hippie disposition, and a great franchise; 'I'm not a bitch but I play one on TV'. And she's straight up a class act. She had wine thrown in her face by a drunk Brandi and she was able to diffuse that shit instead of pull a Teresa so bless her heart, and also excuse the fuck out of her for giving a damn.
3. Kenya Moore (Real Housewives of Atlanta). Straight up, I don't even watch the RHOA, and I know who Kenya Moore is. She's Gone With the Wind fabulous. C'mon! Former pageant queen, her beauty and her attitude make for one hell of a mane-eater incarnation. She's perfection.
2. Yolanda Foster (Real Housewives of Beverly Hills). According to Brandi the only housewife that's neer had work done and that's quite the feat, this Dutch bombshell and former model now Master Cleanse enthusiast and the mother of two really hot supermodels, Yolanda is happy to play the harriet housewife to her husband, David Foster, and wear white pants all the live long day. No complaints.
1. Lisa Vanderpump (Real Housewives of Beverly Hills). Did you really not see this coming? She's what Madonna is to pop music to the Bravo cannon. This boss bitch has everything, also she literally has everything, but she's worked her ass for it, her perfectly shaped ass. She might be one of the oldest housewives but you'd never tell and it's not the botox. She's British, gorgeous, and sassy. She's the mother hen, and the classiest woman of them all. Boss bitch, we salute you...and Giggy.
Promo still for the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Season 4 reunion. Premiered yesterday.
I hate reality TV, and I mean with an adult pre-occupying hate. There is really nothing likable about it except for the schaudenfreude we all feel after finishing an episode of Couples Therapy or some show where someone's just the personification of the 'hot-mess express', which is basically every show. You look into my iTunes library, and it's seasons of cerebral shows like Sherlock, Mad Men, Downton Abbey, some Lost because you know, of course), and then a plethora; just a cornucopia of different episodes of different incarnations of the Real Housewives franchise. I have two favorites, the others, I really don't pay much attention to, but the 'classy' ladies from Beverly Hills and the nutbags from New Jersey have transfixed me, and I'm an Ivy League graduate. It's beyond a guilty pleasure it's more of a guilty obsession, to where I actually imagine myself on the cast.
Frenemies Brandi Glanville and Lisa Vanderpump share a laugh on Watch What Happens Live.
Here's the irony, a lot of these women are not even housewives. They are not even wives some of them. Par example; Brandi Glanville a regular 'housewife' on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills has been divorced for 6 years. Another member of the cast; Lisa Vanderpump is certainly not what we think of as a housewife considering she's an entrepreneur and a working woman, with 2 high-end restaurants in Los Angeles to constantly manage. But apparently being the equivalent of a homemaker is not the criteria it takes anymore to be cast on this Bravo juggernaut.
White house gate crashers Michaele Salahi and Tareq Salahi shake hands with President Obama.
One incarnation of the franchise that I loved was The Real Housewives of DC, which was absolutely brilliant. When it ran for it's one and only season back in 2009-2010, DC was the 'it' city with everyone's fascination tuned into that city's culture. Obama had just become president, and it was a hub of culture and activity. It was like move over San Francisco, Portland, and New Orleans, there's cool shit going on in DC. Bravo was not about to let that pass them by, and decided to move their cameras to DC, and what was cool about those broads was that unlike most other housewives from basically every city that they pick, they actually had class, were 'old money', and spoke articulately, which is something you never expect from a Bravo syndicated show. There was just a tiny bomb on that train which happened to explode all over the network and they found themselves in some serious hot water and that bomb goes by the name Tareq and Michaele Salahi. Remember them? The White House Party crashers? Yeah they were on the show, and Michaele was a bona fied housewife, but believe me, it didn't take for the others long to figure out just how big of a phony she really was and when the gate crashing happened and the two were put on trial, the other housewives had a big laugh watching it together to bask in the glory that was Michaele's demise. Unfortunately, because of that little stunt, Bravo was disallowed from continuing the DC franchise and there were no more seasons filmed there.
Table flipping, weave-pulling, and general screaming was a staple of the Jersey Housewives franchise.
The Jersey housewives kill me because there is literally nothing stopping them from bad and tacky behavior. These are not 'ladies', these are Jersey girls, who all married rich and now they get to act like completely despicable morons, but it always comes back to the same thing 'family' a very Jersey notion. And also very ironic because most of them spend their free time which is all their time trying to sabotage one another considering that most of them are related, so I'm not sure how high 'family' actually exists in the totem pole of important things for them. I'd imagine somewhere between Louis Vuitton handbags, and cheap wine.
A never-ending supply of booze was definitely a housewife unto itself.
And then there's my favorite girls to see unravel with every blessed episode; The chicks from the hills, Beverly to be exact, so much irony in calling them that since most of them don't even LIVE in Beverly Hills. One lives in Malibu, two in Belaire, and I think one's even in the Valley. They switch up that cast the way a girl switches up her favorite pair of jeans to wear. Lately they've had two additions; British-born Wicca Carlton whom I love, and Puerto-Rican beauty queen Joyce, whom I can't stand...and let's face it, none of us can. Drunky Taylor, who's husband killed himself probably because the show was getting a bit too close for comfort on all of his embezzlements and fraudulent money deals, is off the show (fucking finally) as is heiress, gravely-voiced monster uberbitch, Adrienne Maloof. And that's all well and good, but I love how even in the face of the worst kind of estrogen motivated backstabbing and drunken arguments, they still manage to act like ladies...this includes Brandi by the way. For those not in the know, Brandi came on like a spitball on fire as Adrienne's then Lisa's BFF, who was cheated on by her husband B-movie actor, Eddie Cibrian with his co-star at the time, Leanne Rhymes. She drinks, she cusses, she wears clothes that are far too revealing but keep in mind she's a former model, that's just par for the course. She's kind of like the American Patsy Stone if Patsy Stone was a real person. She's had tiffs with basically everyone else on that show but still somehow manages to come out on top, and not because she's taller than everyone else. I think she's basically the main reason to watch it if you're going to get into it. At the reunion, which premiered its first half yesterday she had no problem telling Joyce that she looks like an Olympic figure skater in her dress, adding to that 'Sochi's calling bitch'. So I guess that's basically why. It's also the same reason women tend to 'hate their friends'...there's even a term for that; remember 'frenemies'? In Julie and Julia (2008) there's this great scene when Julie her husband and her friend are eating and Julie says 'what does it mean when you don't like your friends?' and her friend answers back 'it's totally normal', then her husband tries to add 'men like their friends!' and Julie says 'we're not talking about men, who's talking about men?'. So if you're a woman, you should get into it, the only season running now is The Real Housewives of NYC, which has been a snoozefest since Bethenny Frankel left, so punch those reruns into your iTunes and prepare to laugh your ass off if not find yourself totally relating to some completely inexcusable behavior, because you know what ladies? It's all within us, these broads just have the balls to show it off, in front of cameras. Once a week. On Bravo...in 8 inch Louboutin stilettos.
RHOBH Season 2 intro, with some old faces, that look like new faces thanks Botox! Damn these girls are smart...no sassy, sassy's the word I'm looking for :P
RHODC intro. They just have the 1. Sorry for inability to find clips Bravo runs a tight ship.
And finally the new seasons of Jersey intro. You can just smell the animosity.
