What Reality TV Taught Me About Standing Up for Yourself (And Why I’m Not Sorry About It)
Someone recently asked me what I watch to unwind after a long day of making high stakes decisions.
I told them the truth: Real Housewives… Secret Lives of Mormon Wives… Whatever Bravo is currently airing that involves true broads. They looked at me like I had said something concerning.
Here’s what I wanted to say: I am a pharmacist. I understand dopamine and neurochemical reward pathways. And I am telling you from both personal and professional experience that watching these women go to battle with complete conviction produces a dopamine release unlike almost anything else I have encountered in my adult life. Even tag lines like the following offer a release: “I’m in an enigma, wrapped in a riddle, and cash.”
The Lesson Nobody Talks About
“Some” spend a lot of time talking about what reality TV is… guilty pleasure…mindless trash… something to be “embarrassed” about enjoying.
We spend very little time talking about what reality TV actually teaches us.
Here is what I have learned from years of dedicated viewership: these women stand up for themselves. Relentlessly. Without apology. In front of cameras, in front of their peers, in front of America, and occasionally in front of the President of the United States.
Which brings me to Michaele and Tareq Salahi.
For anyone who missed the singular, legendary, never-to-be-repeated season of The Real Housewives of Washington D.C. — this couple crashed a White House state dinner. A black tie White House event. They were not invited. They shook hands with the President. They smiled for photos. And then they went home.
Now I am not suggesting you crash a White House dinner. That is not the lesson.
The lesson is the audacity. The sheer, unblinking conviction that they belonged in that room. That is the ENERGY I am talking about.
What Women Are Taught
As women we are taught from a very young age to fall in line. Follow the rules. Don’t make a scene. Be agreeable. Accommodate. Shrink.
The women on reality television — for all their drama, for all their chaos, for all their moments that make you cover your eyes and watch through your fingers — do NOT shrink.
They walk into rooms like they own them. They say what they mean. They defend themselves with the kind of conviction that most of us have been trained out of by the time we reach adulthood. They flip tables. Metaphorically. Sometimes literally.
And watching them do it — week after week, reunion after reunion — does something to you. It reminds you that you are allowed to take up space. That your opinion is worth saying out loud. That standing up for yourself is not the same thing as being difficult.
“You’re such a f—ing liar, Camille.”
Kyle Richards said what every person in that room was thinking and she said it on national television without flinching. I think about that more than I should. I think about it at work sometimes. I think about it in meetings. I think what would my broads do.
Secret Lives of Mormon Wives
My current obsession is Secret Lives of Mormon Wives and I will not be taking questions about it.
What I will say is this: these women exist inside a framework of rules and expectations that most of us cannot fully imagine, and they are navigating it with a level of complexity and contradiction that is genuinely fascinating to watch. They are figuring out who they are inside structures that were not built with their full humanity in mind.
Sound familiar? It should. Because that is the story of most women in most rooms.
That is why we watch. Not because it is trashy. Because it is true.
The Dopamine Is Real
I want to say something as a pharmacist that I have never said professionally but that I believe completely: watching women stand up for themselves on television activates something real in your brain. The vicarious thrill of seeing someone say the thing you couldn’t say, hold the line you didn’t hold, refuse to apologize for existing in a way you were taught to apologize for — that is not a guilty pleasure.
That is medicine.
Rich women have big problems. Money cannot buy class. Life should not be taken too seriously. And somewhere out there a woman in a white tie gown is walking into a room she was not invited into with the confidence of someone who belongs everywhere.
Take notes. That is the assignment.
Gizmo watches Real Housewives with me every chance she gets. She has never once told me to change the channel. She is the best viewer and the most supportive presence in my life.
Her dad is still her person though. We don’t make it weird.
