"The Real Housewives of Atlanta" is a hit reality TV series produced by Bravo as a part of "The Real Housewives’" lucrative multi-show franchise. The boisterous yet captivating TV show has featured 12 women as main characters, all sharing a unique sense of inspiring wealth, popular personality, and resonance in black culture. As the third, yet most popular, installment of the franchise, the show has shown itself to stand the test of time over its ten years of running.
Petty dramatics and catcalling tarnish the show’s representation of the idealized successful black woman, but the flair for excess and entertaining wit epitomize what good reality tv is all about. While the dramatized depiction of black women in RHOA projects several stereotypes of black womanhood, the show is based in a glamorized, aggressive, and condescending fantasy of what black womanhood can be. This representation is, in turn, relatable on the basis of racial novelty, yet it promotes a narrow view of what black female success can be.
As said by Kristen J. Warner, “reality television franchises [...] are in part successful because of the performative ratchet-ness of their casts.” This is where RHOA excels as each central character demonstrates excessive amounts of humor, drama, and emotion in their on-screen personas. The show’s longest lasting and most central character is that of NeNe Leakes, whose loud and overpowering personality is often used to be condescending towards the other castmates. Though she has gone as far as pulling off her fellow castmates hair pieces, she is especially known for her dramatic reads, or insulting, of other classmates.
One of her most infamous lines occurred in season 4 where she put her fellow castmate, Sheree Whitfield in check with the line, “I am rich; I don’t need anything from you [...] I am very rich, bitch, you understand, I am very rich.” NeNe Leake’s outstanding character utilizes performative ratchet-ness with a twist of condescending humor to aggressively convey that she is superior in every way to her housewife counterpart. Exchanges such as this one often occur in the show and are usually met with great fanfare in their viewer and social media reception. NeNe’s character has several renowned memes and gifs dedicated to classic punchlines from her many years in the show, yet this is one of the show’s most infamous.
Nene exhibits the perfect cocktail for reality TV with her grandiose style and aggressively condescending personality, which has kept her relevant in every season of the show. Unfortunately, the over-the-top attraction of her personality and its persistence in the show also sends a negative message to the show’s largely black female fan base. Characters in RHOA often undergo these kinds of outbursts that exhibit the “notion of losing control” that is so popular in this sort of reality television. The animalistic emotions in shots that depict this notion “resonate in particular ways with figurations of black femininity, which has historically been aligned with animality and the body in punitive ways." As the show’s most popular characters consistently promote such behavior, they support these narrow stereotypes that plague the representation of black women in television.
The show incorporates a level of realism with its usage of “hand-held cameras that put the viewer in the midst of the action,” that may be somewhat shaky during more tumultuous scenes. Imperfections like this are actually a positive contributor to the show’s image of reality television, yet this aspect of realism is offset by the constant veil of perpetually over the top beauty. The show also heavily promotes its cast members in a most magnificent manner of glamour and excess. They are often depicted wearing full makeup, hair, and clothing, even in their “intimate” one on one sessions.
By keeping the 24/7 facade of perfection, the show upholds unrealistic standards of womanhood in reality. Despite this shortcoming, there are some efforts made to show the importance that glam teams play in the success of RHOA castmates. As hair is a very relatable core element to the shared culture between black women, the show represents it as such by incorporating the ladies’ hairdressers/friends as characters. This leads to a sense of relatability between the show’s audience, especially as “black women are infrequently seen on television,” and different aspects of black female culture, like hair, are often disregarded.
Popular castmates of the show often express a general holier-than-thou attitude to assert their superiority over their castmates. This leads to a general condescending nature that is embedded within the show’s dialogue and character portrayal. One of the show’s most snooty and controversial characters, Phaedra Parks, has an intro scene where she states, “I’m the ultimate southern bell, I always get what I want.” The key word here being “ultimate” communicates the character’s “southern belle status” as the basis for her elevated position. Statements and projected sentiments like this are fantastical depictions of what it is like to be a black woman with success.
These commonplace stereotypes of the show do not communicate an appropriate representation of black womanhood. Kristen J. Warner states that “ stereotyping is a kind of shorthand writers and producers employ to create easily accessible, familiar characters for viewing audiences.” While this may be true and understandable for ease of production, unfortunately, there are not enough representations of black women in television. If shows such as RHOA are dominating the market, we are only receiving content that is of a limited nature and scope. This produces a narrow depiction and representation of black women in television and film. In comparison to the plethora of options white women have to play as the baseline of female normalcy, black female characters are confined within the scope of stereotyping, which relays a fantastical viewing of the black experience.
A show like RHOA has great potential to portray a multi-faceted view of black womanhood in the positively affluent realm of success, yet the show fails to do so. The glamorized, aggressive, and condescending nature of character portrayals in Real Housewives of Atlanta provides a narrow depiction of black female success. With the few areas of popular representation of black women in TV, this depiction proves detrimental to the depth of black female characters overall.
