How Real Housewives Turned Into the Ultimate Influencer Competition Show
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Competition is a pervasive thematic structure in contemporary media and pop culture. From reality shows like Survivor or Love Island to prestige dramas like Game of Thrones and Succession, even a minor, competitive undercurrent can inject natural stakes and structure to our engagement with media. The compulsion to compete and compare trickles down into many cultural products, particularly those that exploit the impulse to pit women against each other.
Though Bravo’s Real Housewives franchise is not a reality competition show in the traditional sense, its mutually dependent relationship with its audience has mutated the lifestyle docusoap into an elaborate, years-long reality competition of character development, rhetorical skills, improv, and performance. Of course, Real Housewives has no official prize, but by offering an alluring proximity to celebrity, the franchise has created an influencer ecosystem that deeply resonates with today’s social media landscape.
In the 2000s, the cultural dominance of celebrity incubator/reality competitions like American Idol and The X Factor was inescapable, partially because they could reliably manufacture one of America’s most lucrative and powerful cultural exports: celebrity. At the end of the aughts, however, the firm hold of these reliable celebrity incubators began to fracture, as record companies started to more easily scout pop stars through viral YouTube videos. While traditional celebrity competition shows like American Idol were slow to adapt to the dawn of social media, Bravo, a budding American reality television network, shaped a reality format that could satisfy an appetite for various gradients and niches of celebrity lifestyle content that we can now recognise as the predecessor to the current influencer era.
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As Real Housewives expanded from Orange County to Beverly Hills, Atlanta, and Potomac, Bravo was able to bridge the gap for audiences that wanted to consume celebrity, personality, and class aspirations in a digestible weekly hour-long episode. Still, broader cultural trends, timing, and the promise of glamorous drama still don’t fully explain the runaway success of the franchise. The show’s real magic, and its most powerful alignment with the present influencer culture, lies in the connection, dialogue, and competition that the show’s storytelling fosters between its cast members and audience members.
In its most elemental form, the game of Real Housewives is based on self-fashioned storytelling. Each Real Housewife has a standard arsenal of tactics to build her character from, including but not limited to severe marital problems, messy divorces, rumorus of financial problems, legal issues, half-hearted business ventures, and more.
Only a few episodes of Bravo’s reboot of The Real Housewives of New York City have aired, but early projections for the frontrunners of the new cast are already pouring in. Brynn Whitfield, a PR professional and one of the youngest cast members, started strong after making a power play before the show even started by calling herself the “villain” of the new cast, but a few episodes in and she is already adding texture to her confrontational and flirtatious persona by being open about her tough upbringing. Ubah Hassan, a model and hot sauce purveyor, is frequently highlighted for her one-liners and unique quips, but her comedic edit seems to limit her from a more nuanced narrative arc. Arguably leading the pack is Jenna Lyons, a powerful lesbian and former executive creative director of J. Crew, whose witty elegance and impressive background are perfect ingredients for an early fan favourite in the Real Housewives franchise. As many Real Housewives historians know, however, the power dynamics of an initial cast are likely to be upended quickly. My personal long-term bet is on Jessel, the first South Asian cast member of the Real Housewives, whose vulnerability about her sex life, innate ability to create conflict, and slight delusion are markers of a true real housewife’s willingness to play the game.
In its most elemental form, the game of Real Housewives is based on self-fashioned storytelling. Each Real Housewife has a standard arsenal of tactics to build her character from, including but not limited to severe marital problems, messy divorces, rumorus of financial problems, legal issues, half-hearted business ventures, and more. Cast members, producers, and editors work in conjunction to develop arcs, conflicts, and subplots for the characters of the show, but it’s up to the charisma of the cast member herself to sell the authenticity and appeal of her own storylines and character.
In addition to solo segments, a Real Housewife’s contributions to the group dynamic are vital to her performance evaluation. Does she shy away from conflict or is she willing to bring everything to the table? Is her timing and choice of setting appropriate? How does she confront her castmates – with sympathy or with condescension? Can she distinguish when it is smarter to forgive, but also know when to strategically hold a grudge? How does she react to rumours about her husband? About her business? Are children involved? Did she cross a line, and does the line feel justified? Does she deny doing coke in the bathroom or does she refuse to stoop to that level? When exactly does she throw a glass of wine? Perhaps most importantly, what will the people watching think?
Making these quick judgment calls with style is a skill and an art, as the Real Housewife must always predict sentiment and play to an audience, who will ultimately determine her fate. The fan cultures that have developed around the Real Housewives franchise are predicated on rigorous, amateur social analysis, and the flow of content to scrutinise is nearly constant in the influencer era. Anything from text messages, Instagram posts, off-season parties, offset comments, and off the record reveals are fair game, cultivating a parasocial fan culture of dedicated gossip blogs, real-time update accounts, and meme artists that can add substantial commentary, nuance, and context to the official episodes. This perpetual discourse, in turn, threads the competitive tone of the franchise, as viewer consensus on performance is reflected in a Real Housewife’s reunion seat placement, screen time, salary, spinoff potential, future employment, and legacy.
The Real Housewives franchise has a unique ability to continually innovate and penetrate pop culture discourse. Some of the most celebrated memes, iconic taglines, and frequently referenced reality television moments originate in the depths of Real Housewives lore. While the cultural contributions of the franchise are evident, these women are often restricted to the low cultural class of reality television.
When I watch and discuss the Real Housewives with my friends, however, I often marvel at what it’s like to become a cast member – structuring your entire real life with narrative, turning your daily activities into a character, and dedicating yourself to the cult of your own televised persona. Yet, what makes this show so resonant is that this process is the essence of today’s dominant influencer culture, where we all feel compelled to cultivate and broadcast a character and develop an audience. In this way, the Real Housewives franchise has evolved into an apt and complicated fantasia of modern womanhood, reflecting the condition and effects of a universal influencer culture.
Words: Akhil Vaidya