#13: Are You Still Watching? "A great feminist tableau": on reality TV, feminism, and Barbie-core 🎀
A special newsletter edition of our reality TV column, Trash Medicine, by Steph Wong Ken & Beth Baines—plus the lineup reveal for our next launch party!
Lineup Reveal: Halloween/Issue 8 Launch Party
TORONTO: Join us for a spooky night of readings and games (+ merch prizes 👀) to celebrate the launch of Issue 8: MOODS!
October 24 ◦ 7:00pm
Houndstooth (818 College St) ◦ PWYC
FEATURING:
Alison Lang
Rasiqra Revulva
Lee Suksi
Ethan Vestby
Fan Wu
Hosted by Gabrielle Marceau & Sennah Yee
Trash Medicine:
"A great feminist tableau": on reality TV, feminism, and Barbie-core
by Steph Wong Ken & Beth Baines
Welcome to Trash Medicine, a column where two friends and reality TV fans celebrate guilty pleasure viewing and love/hate-watching. Each column explores the highs, the lows, and the shenanigans of our favourite shows, served up every week, piping hot. We lean into the absurdity of the reality TV show format to explore how consuming trash content can actually be the right kind of medicine.
This time around, we’re diving into the technicolour pink dream world of Barbie feminism and considering how it reflects the femme politics of reality TV. We discuss Barbie (2023) and The Real Housewives franchise to answer burning questions like: what does modern feminism on reality TV mean in the context of a world swept up by Barbie? What does it mean to love reality TV and recognize the female tropes being depicted on these shows? Do the women on these shows have agency? How do they manage their Kens?
SWK: So we went to see Barbie. And we had *feelings*. The time spent in Barbieland was so camp and delicious, a fantasy space to play in. The impractical designer purses, the shoes not made for walking, the outfits you wear once as a set. I wish we had stayed there longer instead of going into the real world where second wave feminism slapped us in the face (and of course Ken).
I cringed through the speech about how women have to lean in and have it all, not because I don’t understand and agree with this gripe, but because it felt so obvious and in some ways reductive. Post viewing, I wanted to go home, bed rot, and binge-watch The Real Housewives.
BB: Barbieland definitely reminded me of the world of The Real Housewives, with all the blonde highlights and houses that don’t quite look real. It’s fun to live in these fantasy spaces for a while, and that’s precisely why we buy tickets to see Barbie or binge-watch reality TV. We aren’t necessarily seeking an education in feminism, but that seemed to be the intent with Barbie. The film attempted to do everything simultaneously, and in the process, it failed to deliver a full camp experience or provide a satisfying feminist perspective.
SWK: I’ve certainly felt the judgemental glare of Man At Party when I mention my love for reality TV, followed by confusion around how you can be a feminist and watch trash that seemingly portrays women in negative, stereotypical roles for consumption. But the refreshing part about reality TV when it comes to its representation of women is the way it allows these women to act badly. I can get the feel-good feminism elsewhere, aka the Barbie movie.
BB: I have mixed feelings about this one! One of the best things about the Housewives franchise is that it gives space to female friendships, which we don’t often see in film and television. The show consistently passes the Bechdel test since much of the drama involves women fighting both with one another and about each other. Setting aside the issue of class, there is diversity within the casts. The franchise gives representation to various expressions of womanhood. There are women who work, those that don’t, and even those who have never been wives, allowing viewers to witness a wide range of women living their lives, making mistakes, and receiving support from fans through their ups and downs.
SWK: The housewives are catty, campy, and too much, and the shows allow them to express that. Similar to soap operas, telenovelas, or any type of “lowbrow” entertainment, The Real Housewives runs on manufactured drama, jewels, and spray tans. These are all things I want to exist in a feminist world, and indulging in them feels equally necessary and ridiculous. They tell us there are many different ways to access power as a female-identifying person, including being a hot mess.
BB: I think we can say that the Housewives franchise is a kind of “feminist tableau” as Andy Cohen claims (lol). However, there is also a lot happening in the producing, editing, and packaging of the show that contradicts this. Sometimes, I will be watching an episode and think “Do the people that make this show hate women?” because there is no effort to protect, nurture, or advocate for the cast members.
Andy Cohen would probably argue that this is precisely what makes the show feminist; it doesn’t attempt to show women in any specific way, it simply portrays them as they are. Of course, these women are carefully selected for their wealth, status, and beauty, but what the show does is gradually peel away whatever “persona” the women bring in with them. It deconstructs them over time to reveal their flaws and strengths.
SWK: Definitely, the producers are still pushing their goals, which are all about ratings and money, and not so much about the safety or care of these women. And it’s hard to tell how much control they have of the narrative they’ve been assigned or pushed into. Cast members who aren’t happy with their storyline will leave the show, though likely more infamous and maybe wealthier than they were before. So the show provides a platform, and in some ways, can expand the social clout of these women.
BB: There are definitely instances where these women gain social capital, but there are also cases where they become trapped in the reality TV cycle. They make money, but often it’s not enough to quit the reality TV game and, if they make too much, Bravo can take a cut. After Bethenny Frankel made millions selling her “Skinny Girl” brand in the early seasons of The Real Housewives of New York City, Bravo started adding a “Bethenny Clause” in cast members’ contracts, requiring them to fork over a percentage of profits generated from businesses they launch on the show. Also, some of the women’s reputations are destroyed, making them famous but also, um, unemployable. They become trapped, needing to continue with the show to maintain their lifestyles, even if they do want to get out.
SWK: It’s like you can’t go back in the box, housewives. There’s no return to Barbieland.
BB: Haha exactly. The cast members who are most successful are the ones who create a new character—a Barbie of their own—to remarket themselves. Luann de Lesseps from The Real Housewives of New York City, for example, suffers a pretty awful blow to her reputation when she is arrested for battery, trespassing, and disorderly intoxication. She makes a remarkable comeback creating a cabaret show that pokes fun at her arrest and now makes six figures in cameos alone.
SWK: Unlike Barbieland, The Real Housewives world also revels in the ugliness of a female space. The show isn’t afraid to show the traumas, backstabbing, and pettiness, and in fact capitalizes on them for our viewing pleasure. In some ways, it reflects the opposite of Barbieland, playing on the trope of women not being able to get along or coexist without drama.
BB: Right, Barbieland is unsettling for that very reason; the lack of mess. The Housewives franchise gives us various flawed women, whereas Barbieland gives us Scientist Barbie and Lawyer Barbie, all idealized female figures, mess free. Each of them are also endlessly caregiving and compassionate to Ken—yet another stifling version of femininity!
SWK: Watch some feminist theory videos on YouTube, Ken. Read some seminal texts in your mojo dojo casa house. Let Barbie live! There is a flatness to having an idealized everything for women, with no grey space to go beyond the plasticity of it all, no room to be a bitch, a lover, a sinner, or a saint. The ethos of Barbie overlaps with reality TV in how it presents women at extremes, an indulgent fake fantasy that is ultimately a commodity I’m being pushed to buy or support in some way.
BB: Yes, both Barbie and the Housewives franchise are ultimately marketing something to us. Initially, with Housewives, it was the fantasy of the “Housewife”—a woman who had everything at her fingertips and not a worry in the world. The fantasy now appears to be centered around embracing one’s flaws and repackaging it as a commodity (#girlbossing). In a way, the Barbie movie does the same thing; Barbie reclaims her “humanness” and Mattel makes a killing at the box office.
SWK: Girlbossing for capitalism! Guess that tag line wouldn’t have gone over well on the Barbie posters.
The viewers at home are dying to know…
Out of the Housewives cast members, which one would be:
Restaurateur Barbie: Lisa Vanderpump (comes with a tiny Pomeranian, who does not poop)
Insurance Broker Barbie: The OG Housewife, Vicki Gunvalson
Money Can’t Buy You Class Barbie: Luann de Lesseps
Who Gon’ Check Me, Boo? Barbie: Shereé Whitfield
Clapback Barbie: The one and only NeNe Leakes
Turtle Time/Wine Time Barbie: Ramona Singer
Who is the messiest Barbie?
SWK: It has to be Midge, the perpetually pregnant Barbie married to Alan. She is never having that baby, she will never meet that child. She will forever be trapped in that unflattering smock and that two-braid hairstyle. At least she has Alan, forever.
*Note, through quick internet research I have learned Midge’s stomach is magnetic and comes off, so she can in fact “have the baby.” This fact is perhaps more disturbing and messy than my original assumption of her Barbie life. It’s a real will she, won’t she situation.
BB: I gotta say Rappin’ Rockin’ Barbie. Just watch. Runner-up would have to be Mattel tapping into the patriotic market with George Washington Barbie. They really said “Founding Father? Nay, Founding Mother.”
Steph Wong Ken is a writer based in Tkaronto.
Beth Baines is a musician and writer who lives in Toronto.
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