Finding Empathy on Bravo: What The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City Taught Me About Being Human

Words: Alexia Jacoby

If loving reality TV is wrong, I don’t want to be right. So sue me! I’ve been watching reality shows ever since I turned on the Real Housewives of Orange County one late night in high school and was fascinated by the flashy, fighting women on my screen until the early hours of the morning.

Their seemingly petty arguments over nothing ended in an explosive drink throw, which thoroughly intrigued me and left me wanting more. Since that night, I’ve been a loyal Bravo girlie (read: if it’s on Bravo, I watch it). Recently, like most of the Bravo fans I know, I've been captivated by the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City (RHOSLC). I’ve watched all six seasons of these ladies since the show premiered in 2020, so you could say I’m an expert in their drama (I promise I have a social life).

This show, like most reality TV, invites us to judge the characters on our screens. We can scrutinise their marriages, their clothes, the way they talk, the way they parent, their homes, and how much money they have. The list goes on. Yet after six seasons of getting to know these women, I find myself moving away from viewing with judgment and towards watching from a place of empathy. Seeing Mary’s heartbreaking story of her son fighting and tragically losing the battle to drug addiction, Lisa’s disconnect from her husband, Whitney’s failed business, and watching all of the cast try to balance motherhood with their careers helps prepare me for the unknown. If they can go through this life, making mistakes, facing hardships, but coming out on the other side, maybe I can too.​
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“We might view these ladies as so different from ourselves, so seeing their outrageous actions play out on our TVs can make us giddy, because I would never yell at a friend like that / I would never sleep with my friend's ex.”

It’s easy to write off these women as self-centered, vapid, or on TV for the wrong reasons - and I know some of them are - yet I am struck by their imperfections and their readiness to display them to the world. In a society that rarely wants to know how we’re really doing, their willingness to show the worst parts of themselves can feel admirable. It’s something not all of us would be inclined to do for the closest people in our lives, much less vicious strangers online. When we watch Meredith repeat a nasty rumor about another housewife's husband, or Bronwyn get caught in a lie about buying an expensive necklace, we can get wrapped up in our righteous opinions and take to the internet to voice our criticisms, often, I believe, to make ourselves feel better about our own inadequacies. If these wealthy women, whom we hold to a different standard, can mess up, then maybe our biggest regrets or embarrassments will become more palatable.

We might view these ladies as so different from ourselves, so seeing their outrageous actions play out on our TVs can make us giddy, because I would never yell at a friend like that / I would never sleep with my friend's ex. Which, maybe, is true, yet haven't we all been the villain in someone else’s story, either intentionally or unintentionally?

As a fiction writer, I’m taught that good characters must be complex, dynamic, and far from perfect. As a reality TV consumer, society tells me to judge the housewives as two-dimensional caricatures with barely any depth besides which designer bag they will wear to a ladies' lunch (they do discuss this). I know that a story is only as good as the characters and their development, and reality television, for all its manufactured drama, is not that different. Like an author writing a novel, producers can fabricate drama, create a sympathetic character or a villain, and overall skew viewers' perspectives by creating scenarios that will have us looking at “reality” through a different lens.

But after watching six seasons of RHOSLC, I've realised this show is doing what great fiction does, providing us with interesting, dynamic, messy characters we can empathize with. No one likes to read or watch a character that never makes mistakes, because that’s not real life, and we should know that someone's morality is not black-and-white, because we know ourselves. We’ve all had moments we’re not proud of, moments we want to forget, and moments where people praise us for doing the right thing. The difference is we don’t have a producer and a camera in our face filming it all for the world to see.

Eventually, if we watch long enough, or are a human on this planet for long enough, the villains reveal vulnerability, the fan favorites make terrible decisions, and everyone shows a side of themselves they’d probably rather keep private. I’m not saying that these women shouldn’t be held accountable for their actions. The other housewives and the internet should call out Heather for lying about how she got a black eye. Really, you need to watch this show. I’m saying that viewing their ups and downs unfold season after season makes it clear that they are imperfect people, sharing their stories and, reality check: we’re all just characters stumbling through our plotlines.