- 2 minutes ago
Television seems to be obsessed with wives but less and less women are marrying. Elisa talks about this trend and explores why the women on the wife related shows usually aren't married.
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00:08There's a thing that's been weighing on me and I'm embarrassed to admit that I'm
00:11embarrassed by it but I've always felt really guilty about how much I enjoy
00:15watching reality TV shows about wives. I mean there's just so many. There's the
00:20starter wife, the good wife, the farmer wants a wife, the real housewives, hockey
00:25wives, sister wives, extreme cougar wives, baseball wives, trophy wife, desperate
00:31housewives, my five wives, celebrity wife swap, mob wives, an American housewife.
00:38It's true we really are in the golden age of TV but while I kept seeing more and
00:43more shows about wives I also kept reading more and more articles about how
00:47women are actually putting off becoming wives. In 2009 the percentage of women
00:52marrying in America dropped below 50% for the first time ever and according to
00:58the 2010 census only 20% of American households consisted of a married
01:03heterosexual couple with children. And yet there are so many books and TV shows
01:08about wives. My favorite franchise is the Real Housewives but it's hard to find a
01:13woman on that show who's like actually a wife. No shade I'm just pointing it out.
01:17How many of these housewives are actually married? And does it even matter? I reached
01:22out to a Real Housewives expert and Andy Cohen's Chief of Staff Darren Karp to find out.
01:34You are the housewife expert. Do you know how many housewives are actually wives?
01:40I'm gonna test you to see if you know the answer. This feels like an SAT for Bravo.
01:44I feel like I can pass this. It is. Well if you don't pass you lose your job.
01:48Okay, Bethany Frankel. Not married. Great, yes. One for one. Cherie. She is not married.
01:55Correct, not married. Ramona Singer. Ramona Singer is not married. Correct.
02:00Cynthia Bailey. Cynthia Bailey is not married. Correct. Phaedra Parks. Phaedra Parks is not
02:05married. Correct. Teresa Giudice. Good pronunciation of the last name. I'm a fan.
02:11She is married. She is married. She is married. That is correct. And that was kind
02:15of a trick one because jail. I know because I thought about it and I was like
02:17did she divorce him? But no, no. She's good. They're strong. Jersey strong. Luanne Dele Seth.
02:22My little countess is not married anymore. Dorinda. Where's Dorinda? She's not married.
02:27Vicki Gunvalson. Vicki Gunvalson is not married. Adrienne Maloof. Oh my god. Is Adrienne Maloof
02:34married? She's divorced. She's not married. You're correct. Yes. Yes. Mimi Leakes. Mimi Leakes is
02:41married to Greg Leakes. She's married. Yolanda Hadid. Yolanda Hadid. Yes. Was foster. Is not married.
02:51Correct. Yes. That was so good. You got all of them right. I'm impressed with myself. I too am impressed.
02:56I'm sensing a theme with the housewives that most of them aren't married and I never put two and two
03:01together. So why do you think that is? Divorce is just as common as marriage and I think that's
03:06why people love it because Bravo is taking this stereotype of what it means to be a housewife
03:12and spinning it to be completely something different. Yeah. And that's great. Like we're
03:15changing the narrative of what it means to be a businesswoman but also maybe like a stay-at-home
03:19mom who's kicking ass. When you watch housewives you see how independent they are and we're like
03:24re-establishing that for women. We're reinvigorating that term and like empowering it for us. The overall
03:29divorce rate for the Real Housewives series is 35 percent. The Real Housewives of DC have
03:35a 100 percent divorce rate followed by the Real Housewives of Atlanta with a 60 percent
03:41divorce rate. If women aren't rushing to become wives and even the women on wife-related shows
03:46aren't wives then why are we obsessed with wives? What is up with the rise of wives? I asked
03:53Wife Inc. author Dr. Suzanne Leonard about this. She literally wrote an entire book about it.
04:06Why are there so many shows devoted to wives yet women aren't actually becoming wives? Marriage
04:13numbers are actually declining. People are getting married in fewer numbers and yet there's this
04:17explosion of programs, of television shows, of books, of movies and it's all about wives.
04:23The only way that popular culture has to understand a woman's life is by calling her a wife. So what
04:30you find in a lot of these stories are actually stories about women. Many of them aren't even wives.
04:35Some of these stories aren't even about marriage. Any story that we want to tell about women's lives,
04:40in some strange way we have to tell it as a story about a wife even if it's a story
04:45about something
04:46completely different. Why do you think we need men to negotiate our identities? I love that question.
04:51Part of the reason is because historically women have always needed to negotiate their relationships.
04:57Part of that was sort of socioeconomic. Men were the means by which women could like get money,
05:01have access to property. So this is historic on some level. If you tell a story as a wife,
05:08I think in some ways it's a lot less threatening because it suggests that a woman's entire identity
05:13is defined in relation to presumably a man. What's so depressing is that we're just so happy that
05:20they're telling women's stories at all. Not to be Debbie Downer here, but we also are continuing
05:25to tell the stories of privileged, rich, mostly white women's lives. And so yes, it is a way to
05:31tell women's stories, but it's also a way to really only tell certain women's stories. And that's really troubling.
05:36What role does race play in this conversation? Particularly for women of color, there has been
05:40a long-standing conversation about the fact that there weren't viable men to marry. And there's been a
05:45lot of rhetoric about this kind of scarcity, right, in these communities. This scarcity,
05:50though, didn't really appear on popular culture's radar until it started to affect white women.
05:56Then you started getting a lot of discussion about, oh my goodness, it's the end of men. But really,
06:02what was the subject of that conversation is that there weren't enough economically viable men left
06:07for white women to marry. And so white women kind of became the face of all of this insecurity.
06:14And white women, always. Their problems are the only ones that matter. But I think it's really important
06:20that we recognize the economics that are at play here too. Many of the representations of marriage
06:26that we see, if we think about it, are really representations of wealthy people's marriages.
06:31Marriage is increasingly becoming a luxury item. Well-educated, middle- and upper-class women are still
06:37getting married in pretty stable numbers. People of lesser financial means are not. There's really good
06:42research to show that one of the best things a woman can do for her financial future is to get
06:47married
06:47and stay married. But she has to marry somebody who is kind of a viable economic partner. A lot of
06:55people
06:55don't feel financially secure enough to get married. But watching, you know, The Bachelor on television,
07:02is a situation, right? Here is a situation, a completely fantastical situation, where all you get to
07:07concentrate on is the emotions.
07:09Are we outsourcing our feelings and our emotions about romance and partnership to pop culture?
07:16I love that idea. And I think we are outsourcing our emotions to pop culture. People don't necessarily have the
07:21emotional bandwidth in their lives, right, to feel in those ways and develop those relationships and nurture those relationships.
07:27So, you get to watch them, live vicariously through them, without having direct access to it.
07:33Right. So, I hope you're not going to tell me that I shouldn't be watching The Real Housewives or I
07:37should feel guilty for watching The Real Housewives,
07:39because it's essentially how I'm outsourcing my emotional relationships. That and wine.
07:45Women are always getting criticized for the things they like to watch. So, no, I don't have any guilt about
07:50watching wives' shows,
07:51because I don't think women should be made to feel bad for the things that they watch and get pleasure
07:56out of. And that's really important to me.
07:58This idea that we're outsourcing our emotions and relationships to popular culture really struck a chord.
08:05I mean, when do I watch The Real Housewives? When I've come home from work and I'm totally exhausted and
08:11just need to chill.
08:13I'm literally living vicariously through these women because I don't have the emotional bandwidth to go out or answer a
08:19text.
08:20Let's pick it up there next week.
08:21Wasn't that deep? Aren't you proud?
08:22That's time.
08:23Do you remember how Hillary Clinton's Twitter bio started with the word wife up until a few months ago when
08:28she changed it only after internet outrage?
08:30You need to leave.
08:31She's too threatening without it.
08:33Oh, dear God.