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?
01:21I reached out to a Real Housewives expert and Andy Cohen's chief of staff
01:25Darren 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. Okay
01:48Bethany Frankel. Not married. Great. Yes. One for one.
01:52Cherie. She is not married. Correct. Not married. Ramona Singer. Ramona Singer is not
01:59married. Correct. Cynthia Bailey. Cynthia Bailey is not married. Correct.
02:03Phaedra Parks. Phaedra Parks is not married. Correct. Theresa Giudice. Good
02:08pronunciation of the last name. Thank you. I'm a fan. She is married. She is married. She is
02:13married. That is correct and that was kind of a trick one cuz jail. I know cuz I thought about
02:17it and I was like
02:17did she divorce him? But no no. She's good. They're strong. Jersey strong. Luanne
02:22De La Salle. My little countess is not married anymore. Dorinda. Where's Dorinda?
02:26She's not married. Vicki Gunvalson. Vicki Gunvalson is not married. Adrienne Maloof.
02:33Oh my god. Is Adrienne Maloof married? She's divorced. She's not married. You're
02:38correct. Yes. Yes. Mimi Leakes. Mimi Leakes is married to Greg Leakes. She is married. Yolanda Hadid.
02:44Yolanda Hadid. Yes. Was foster. Is not married. Correct. Yes. That was so good. You got all of them
02:54right. I'm impressed with myself. I too am impressed. I'm sensing a theme with the
02:57housewives 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
03:06think that's why people love it because Bravo is taking this stereotype of what it
03:11means to be a housewife and spinning it to be completely something different. Yeah.
03:15And that's great. Like we're changing the narrative of what it means to be a
03:17businesswoman but also maybe like a stay-at-home mom who's kicking ass. When
03:20you 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
03:27empowering it for us. The overall divorce rate for the Real Housewives series is
03:3135 percent. The Real Housewives of DC have a 100 percent divorce rate followed by the
03:38Real Housewives of Atlanta with a 60 percent divorce rate. If women aren't
03:43rushing to become wives and even the women on wife-related shows aren't wives
03:47then 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
03:58book about it. Why are there so many shows devoted to wives yet women aren't
04:11actually becoming wives? Marriage numbers are actually declining. People are
04:15getting married in fewer numbers and yet there's this explosion of programs of
04:19television shows of books of movies and it's all about wives. The only way that
04:24popular culture has to understand a woman's life is by calling her a wife.
04:29So what you find in a lot of these stories are actually stories about women.
04:33Many of them aren't even wives. Some of these stories aren't even about marriage.
04:37Any story that we want to tell about women's lives in some strange way we have
04:42to tell it as a story about a wife even if it's a story about something
04:46completely different. Why do you think we need men to negotiate our identities? I love
04:50that question. Part of the reason is because historically women have always
04:55need to negotiate their relationships. Part of that was sort of socio-economic. Men
04:59were the means by which women could like get money, have access to property. So
05:03this is historic on some level. If you tell a story as a wife I think in some
05:08ways it's a lot less threatening because it suggests that a woman's entire
05:12identity is defined in relation to presumably a man. What's so depressing is
05:19that we're just so happy that they're telling women's stories at all. Not to be
05:22Debbie Downer here but we also are continuing to tell the stories of
05:26privileged rich mostly white women's lives and so yes it is a way to tell
05:31women's stories but it's also a way to really only tell certain women's stories
05:34and that's really troubling. What role does race play in this conversation?
05:38Particularly for women of color there has been a long-standing
05:41conversation about the fact that there weren't viable men to marry and there's
05:45been a lot of rhetoric about this kind of scarcity right in these
05:48communities. This scarcity though didn't really appear on popular culture's
05:53radar until it started to affect white women. Then you started getting a lot of
05:57discussion about oh my goodness it's the end of men but really what was the
06:03subtext of that conversation is that there weren't enough economically viable
06:06men left for white women to marry and so white women kind of became the face of all
06:12of this insecurity. White women!
06:17Their problems are the only ones that matter you know. But I think it's really important that we recognize the
06:21economics that are at play here too. Many of the representations of marriage that we
06:26see if we think about it are really representations of wealthy people's
06:29marriages. Marriage is increasingly becoming a luxury item. Well educated middle and
06:35upper-class women are still getting married in pretty stable numbers. People of
06:39lesser financial means are not. There's really good research to show that one of
06:44the best things a woman can do for her financial future is to get married and
06:48stay married but she has to marry somebody who is kind of a viable economic
06:53partner. A lot of people don't feel financially secure enough to get married but
06:59watching you know The Bachelor on television right here is a situation in a
07:04completely fantastical situation where all you get to concentrate on is the
07:08emotions. Are we outsourcing our feelings and our emotions about romance and
07:13partnership to pop culture? I love that idea and I think we are outsourcing our
07:18emotions to pop culture. People don't necessarily have the emotional
07:21bandwidth in their lives right to feel in those ways and develop those
07:25relationships and nurture those relationships so you get to watch them
07:29live vicariously through them without having direct access to it. So I
07:34hope you're not going to tell me that I shouldn't be watching The Real Housewives
07:37or I should feel guilty for watching The Real Housewives because it's
07:39essentially 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
07:49don't have any guilt about watching wives shows because I don't think women
07:53should be made to feel bad for the things that they watch and get pleasure out of
07:56and that's really important to me. This idea that we're outsourcing our
08:00emotions and relationships to popular culture really struck a chord. I mean when
08:06do I watch The Real Housewives? When I've come home from work and I'm totally
08:10exhausted and just need to chill. I'm literally living vicariously through
08:15these women because I don't have the emotional bandwidth to go out or answer a
08:19text. Let's pick it up there next week. Wasn't that deep aren't you proud?
08:22That's time. Do you remember how Hillary Clinton's Twitter bio started with the word
08:26wife up until a few months ago when she changed it only after internet outrage?
08:30You need to leave. She's too threatening without it. Oh dear god.
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