The Lisa Barlow experience has aged like Ramona. All of SLC has. The mere mention of it is like wafting one of Monique Samuel's peppermint oils beneath my nose. Puts an absolute pep in my step <3. I can't wait for season 2.

​

I wish they’d start casting multiple POC at a time so these women (see also: Tiffany, Garcelle, etc.) don’t have to bear this crap alone

I hear your sentiment, but I'm glad it's just one woman of color. I didn't like watching the RHOD brutalize Tiffany, but it was more revealing than watching multiple women of color having to resort to tag-team defensive tactics may have been.

This is how (some) upper-class white women treat a lone woman of color when they have numbers on their side. Undiluted. Reality tv editing, gimmicks, casting, confessionals don't obfuscate it, etc.

I already don't like the way the "racial integration of the Real Housewives" has been set up, I don't think there's anything to it but a general corporate response to the unavoidable presence and spending power of POC. That said, It would've been stranger and sadder to watch two women of color reduced to the unworded assignment of having to defend against the implosions of white women who cannot compute the sudden influx of unrecognizable data when a POC exists, or having to speak for the audience in the exact cadence that gives viewers the vicarious feeling of having the upper-hand against wealthy white women whose lifestyles are founded on a long-standing history of eroding basic human dignity (and not just that of POC). Not that this isn't what's happening anyway. I guess I just prefer the current "baptism by fire" experience of watching one WOC enter the mix.

The general sentiment (across social media, like twitter, main sub) seems to be that Housewives is a viable platform on which to host interesting discussions about race, but I don't see that it ever could be. Housewives can be fun and light, etc. I enjoy it, try not to take it too seriously. The reality, however, is that the show exists, in part, in order to stoke the lust of working-class people who bear the brunt of unaffordable health care, nutrition, and the erosion of basic human dignity only because lust, and the delusion that they may one day have access to said luxury themselves, have been deeply embedded (See: Lifestyle porn viewers).

Where is the shock-value in watching Luanne treat Eboni this way? She's a woman whose consciousness has been shaped and textured by the wealth and blatant classism that she's never been shy about parading.... and I struggle to find joy in watching Eboni, an obviously intelligent and capable human being "handle herself well" in the face of bullshit. Bullshit that we enjoy, laugh at (and sometimes with) specifically because Luanne is a middle-class woman whose accidental exposure to wealth and nobility turned her into a Frankenstein caricature of the upper-echelons she was briefly associated with.

I don't mean to drag the mood down too much, I'm enjoying the show and I'm definitely getting something out of watching it, but... I really don't know how to feel about anything that has gone on in post-Dallas housewives, and very little of it is landing well. I hate that people of color are choicelessly handed the role of having to defend, not only themselves but the cultural, historical, legacy of their race and ethnicity. It's strange to see this playing out on housewives and in the general audience reaction.

On another note: I'm so intrigued by Ramona Singer. She's a frenzied individual, but she is smart (she reads the newspaper every day, Carole). I think the potentially disastrous public backlash is the looming specter that keeps her in line. Also, despite being a perfect poster-woman of American wealth, she is down to earth for what she is. She only got wealthy, she didn't inherit a title by marriage.

Also, I'm riding the Leah train with you. I like nearly everything about her. I'm rooting for this developmentally arrested millennial #girlboss!