These days, television is overpopulated with reality shows, and about every subject imaginable. From cooking shows, to modeling, to finding ‘love’, it’s everywhere. While they’re all equally addicting (and typically, equally stupid), I have to say, my favorite kind has to be the ones about ‘real’ people and their ‘real’ lives. My favorites of this type would be The Hills (I’m a 21-year old female, naturally I like this show), and the Real Housewives series. Just about every girl I know also likes the Real Housewives shows, and that’s why I started watching. Before this weekend, I’d only seen an episode here or there, and never really got too into it. Since I was home sick the past three days and had nothing better to do, I found myself watching marathons.

The Real Housewives of New Jersey

The Real Housewives series started as a kind of a combination spin-off of the fictional TV shows Desperate Housewives and The OC, with the first show, The Real Housewives of Orange County. Since it’s start in March of 2006, there have been three spin-offs: The Real Housewives of New York City, The RH of New Jersey, and The RH of Atlanta. I’ve seen episodes from all four versions, but the marathons I was watching were on New York and New Jersey.

The point of these shows is to show reality, and see how these women live their lives. However, they’re more of a cross between a middle-school soap opera and a plastic surgery show. The women all prance around with overly-tan bodies comprised of botoxed faces and for the most part, not-so-real chests. They’re constantly complaining about how their chest is too big or too small, about how they need to go shopping for more incredibly overpriced clothing, about how their husbands love them so much because they buy them gifts of plastic surgery and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of jewelry. There is constant drama between these ‘friends.’ Either one of them started a nasty (my guess is probably true) rumor about another one, or someone showed up late to a party, or someone thinks she’s better than the others. Tonight’s episode’s preview shows an excess of drama with one woman flipping the dinner table over while the others are yelling back and forth. For the most part, they don’t really work either, and go on fancy girls-only trips to spas and shop at the best of the best stores.

Now, I know this is how they attract the viewers and suck people in, but I honestly don’t see how this can be  REALity to many people that watch.  Maybe I’m alone here, but I don’t tend to have drawn-out fight-grudges with my actually good friends because they showed up a little late to my party. Nor are we able to randomly go out of town for a few days whenever we feel like it for some relaxation & shopping time. And I definitely do not have a closet full of thousands to millions of dollars of clothing and jewelry.

The ladies of Desperate Housewives

I find the fictional show Desperate Housewives to be a more accurate reality. The women on the show actually work, and have struggles just like real women and housewives do. They go through job losses, one woman survives cancer, another experiences divorce, and they live in nice, but not over the top, houses. Now, I know this show has plenty of drama as well, with neighbors who turn out to be murderers, thieving ex-convict husbands , and all kinds of other stuff that probably isn’t very much of a reality to many women. However, in general, I think this show is far more realistic than The Real Housewives series.

Maybe it’s so captivating because it’s so different from real life, and I think girls as a whole like drama, at least watching it. Having said all of this negative stuff about the shows, it doesn’t make the Real Housewives series any less addicting, and you probably won’t see me stop watching anytime soon.