An Ode To The Death Of The Reality Broad

Running her hands through her disheveled brassy blonde hair, black eyeliner smudged along her waterlines, Dorinda Medley says with a mouthful of carbonara, “Why don’t you stop getting vaginal rejuvenation and put an E-ZPass on that vagina with your Holland Tunnel?” A tense hush falls over the birthday party. Everyone around the table in this Hamptons estate—including Sex & the City author Candace Bushnell—shifts uncomfortably in their chairs. “Because we all know what shit goes down in that townhouse, turnstile and ticket. Turnstile and ticket to get into your townhouse.”

This was a normal mid-main course conversation for the original cast of Real Housewives of New York, which premiered in 2008. With inexpertly applied makeup and outdated designer cocktail dresses dusted off from the depths of their closets, they’d say some of the cruelest shit you’ve ever heard in your life, only to make up before brunch the next day. They were poorly lit and over-bronzed and couldn’t figure out how to apply eyeliner in anything close to a line.

They were widows and divorcées, bitter and drunk but still hopeful. They were broads. They weren’t “girl bosses”—which is who these shows almost exclusively cast now. People who look the part more than they play it. The “part” being a successful ~entrepreneur~ with 72 side hustles and a perfect ass. (When really what we want is an unhinged, un-self-aware woman on the edge of a breakdown, willing to offer cutting commentary on her dearest friends.)