America’s Doll House: Casting Nora Helmer and other Transgressive Monster-women in Reality Television’s The Real Housewives Series

Abstract

Capitalizing on the frivolous activities of affluent housewives who occupy the million dollar dollhouses of America’s landscape, The Real Housewives reality television series provides a compelling case to chronicle a fabricated world of sexualized excess, where housewives perform within the consumer imperative of media’s libidinal economy. Within these discursive media spaces, female communities are superficially constructed casting personalities similar to Henrik Ibsen’s Nora Helmer—housewives driven by shades of female hysteria. In this essay, I explore the myriad ways The Real Housewives’ media franchise fashions notions of “housewife” and how women subvert and resist this construction for yet another patriarchal construction of sexualized post-feminist consumer. I argue that these artificial performances of sexual desirability and liberatory feminism act as a substitute for gendered justice and political and social transformation. Keywords: Henrik Ibsen, Feminism, Post feminism, Gender Studies, Gender Performativity, American Television, Reality Television.