The Civic Pedagogy of the Real Housewives Fandom
Start Date
August 2025
End Date
August 2025
Location
ALT 306
Abstract
The Real Housewives franchise has been a remarkably successful television series for nearly twenty years. Produced by Bravo, the show regularly garners more than 3 million viewers. While reality TV like The Real Housewives is often derided as low brow or unimportant, the fans have used the show to engage in complex discussions about politics, civics, and society. In this project, we worked on coding episodes of two fan podcasts, Andy’s Girls and Bitch Sesh, looking for common themes regarding civic capacities, ethical listening and political ideology. For this presentation, I’m going to focus on a particular Real Housewives scandal that was discussed in the podcasts. Codes like “representation”, “sexuality,” “scandal” and “conflict” revealed a complex discussion and critique of Bravo’s treatment of two different cast members’ whose LGBTQ+ identities were revealed by one of the parties within the scandal. The fans’ discussion of the scandal between Denise Richards and Brandi Glanville reveals much about the relationship between publicity, celebrity, mental health, and marginalized communities like that of the LGBTQ+.
The Civic Pedagogy of the Real Housewives Fandom
ALT 306
The Real Housewives franchise has been a remarkably successful television series for nearly twenty years. Produced by Bravo, the show regularly garners more than 3 million viewers. While reality TV like The Real Housewives is often derided as low brow or unimportant, the fans have used the show to engage in complex discussions about politics, civics, and society. In this project, we worked on coding episodes of two fan podcasts, Andy’s Girls and Bitch Sesh, looking for common themes regarding civic capacities, ethical listening and political ideology. For this presentation, I’m going to focus on a particular Real Housewives scandal that was discussed in the podcasts. Codes like “representation”, “sexuality,” “scandal” and “conflict” revealed a complex discussion and critique of Bravo’s treatment of two different cast members’ whose LGBTQ+ identities were revealed by one of the parties within the scandal. The fans’ discussion of the scandal between Denise Richards and Brandi Glanville reveals much about the relationship between publicity, celebrity, mental health, and marginalized communities like that of the LGBTQ+.
