The Housewives' Guide to Better Living: Promoting Consumption on Bravo's The Real Housewives

Abstract

This article applies feminist political economy to Bravo's hit reality program, The Real Housewives. Research illustrates how the show “sells” consumerism within programming, and how fans utilize Bravo's website to respond to the program's proconsumerist messages. Exploring how fans seek participation in—or rejection of—consumerism, research suggests that fans are actively negotiating the meaning and value of the consumerism propagated by the show. Although online comments illustrate acceptance of consumerism, these comments exist alongside a questioning of the housewives' spending habits and misappropriated values. The ideological functions of designating women as shoppers and perpetuating the notion that spending equals happiness conceal the underlying structural flaws within the patriarchal capitalist market, including the failure to create equal opportunities for wage earning for women.

FromTVPersonality to Fans and Beyond: Indexical Bleaching and the Diffusion of a Media Innovation

“…Bravo's television niche is lifestyle reality programming, frequently showcasing American affluence and elitism (in the sense of Jaworski and Thurlow ; see Copple Smith ; Cox and Proffitt ). Titles of some of its shows are illustrative of this focus, including The Millionaire Matchmaker , Million‐Dollar Listing, Princesses: Long Island, Fashion Queens, Shahs of Sunset , and Top Chef .…”

Banking on Females: Bravo's Commodification of the Female Audience

“…4). As a media outlet that prides itself on being innovative and technologically savvy, this article interrogates two key ways in which Bravo succeeds in commodifying its predominantly female audience (Cox & Proffitt, ): by increasing audience's engagement and interaction online, and in the development of Women@NBCU. In both of these ways, Bravo and parent company, NBC Universal, strategically imbricate women in their own consumption patterns and commodification.…”

“…And while Bravo's use of social media, audience analysis, and original programming has brought the network much attention in mainstream press, female‐oriented programming on Bravo has also emerged as a hot topic of debate in the academic realm (e.g., Copple Smith, ; Cox, ; Cox & Proffitt, ; Sender, ). Scholars have addressed specific Bravo series (e.g., Cohan, ; Cox & Proffitt, ; Sender, ; Velazquez Vargas, ), its cross‐promotional tactics (e.g., Copple Smith, ), and its role in the changing patterns of television ownership and control (e.g., Chris, ). But in all of this, a valuable question that has been overlooked by media and communication scholars is how gender —and, specifically, females—factors into the network's business practices.…”

“…Thus because Bravo is an outlet that attracts predominantly female fans (Bravo Media, ; Cox & Proffitt, ), this article adds to the existing literature as it applies feminist political economy to interrogate the ways that Bravo and NBC‐Comcast target the female audience for commercial gain. While much has been written about Bravo and its marketing tactics (e.g., Copple Smith, ), it is in overlooking the role of gender that the workings of gender, under patriarchal capitalism, remain unquestioned and thereby untouched (e.g., Balka, ).…”

“…Through ideological, interpretive textual analysis of corporate documents, popular press articles, and scholarly publications, the following pages elucidate how Bravo connects with and commodifies its female audience. Importantly, it should also be noted that discussion of the commodity audience is also influenced by race, whereby Bravo—despite its recent efforts at producing more “diverse” programming (Cox, )—still delivers a predominantly White audience, with Bravo's audience composition of “Other” racial and ethnic groups measuring below the national average for both cable and broadcast TV (e.g., Ji, Lin, & Waterman, ). Thus using Bravo as a worthwhile case study (e.g., Copple Smith, ), it is argued that while Bravo banks on its gendered audience through marketing, viewership, and interactivity, both Bravo and NBC‐Comcast do more than just this as they successfully get females to participate in their own commodification.…”