Why Are Gay Men So Obsessed With The Real Housewives?

It’s not an uncommon sight at Low Tea in the Fire Island Pines to see someone wearing a shirt with a Real Housewives slogan like, “Be Cool, Don’t Be All, Like, Uncool,” or “I Cooked, I Decorated, I Made It Nice.” Since the inception of the Bravo franchise 15 years ago, these conspicuously consuming, backstabbing, wine-throwing women and the gay men who love them have gone together like Bloody Marys and brunch, condoms and lube, or taking molly and grinding your teeth to all hell.

While researching my new book The Housewives: The Real Story Behind the Real Housewives, I asked a number of gay fans of the show just what the connection is — and never got a satisfactory answer. Is it that, like the show’s openly gay doyenne Andy Cohen, we all love camp? Is it that gay men are constantly looking up to women who are both glamorous and deeply sad because we identify with them? Is it just because we really like the clothes?

I thought the cast of This American Wife, a new, experimental theater production partly inspired by the Real Housewives, might have a better answer. The show was originally conceived of by Michael Breslin and Patrick Foley when they were at Yale Drama School in 2017. Alongside Fake Friends, the theater collective they co-founded with Catherine María Rodríguez and Ariel Sibert, they revived and updated This American Wife after the critical success of their live-streamed play Circle Jerk, which sparked buzz from critics when it premiered last year. This American Wife was live-streamed this May from a McMansion in Long Island kitted out to be like any of the Real Housewives’ anodyne/luxurious houses as seen on TV, and in the play, Breslin, Foley, and castmate Jakeem Dante Powell swaned around delivering iconic Housewives catchphrases while exploring themes like class, consumerism, confessional culture, the impact of reality TV, and how all of these things intersect with queer culture.

If anyone would have an answer about the union of Real Housewives and gay men, it’s these guys (though none of them would answer my question about how good Grindr is in Great Neck, where the show was filmed). Below, I spoke with Breslin, and Foley, and Powell about what went into the making of their show, the joys and anxieties of the gay community’s obsession with our beloved Housewives, and where the line between consuming reality TV and becoming it might fall.

Brian Moylan: I asked a bunch of queer people this while I was working on my book, and I don't think that I ever got a satisfactory answer. So feel free to not have satisfactory answers, either. But why do gays, particularly gay men, love the Housewives so much?

Jakeem Dante Powell: I can jump in and speak for myself, and the queer Black community that I watch with. I think there's something, for lack of a better word, queer about particularly how the Black women handle themselves on the show. I, a lot of times, liken it to ballroom culture, and I'll liken it to underground queer culture. Kenya Moore is my favorite Housewife, and I'm also big a big fan of Kandi Burruss. And in her after show, Kandi always talks about the shade and the reading. And even that language in itself, and how it originated in our communities... Right? I feel like we're always welcomed into their space as much as they're welcomed in into our living spaces.

Michael Breslin: Personally, I like to watch these women behave badly in public. Watching women behave so aggressively and so poorly, out in the open, I connect with that. I get that. That is my first impulse as a queer person, to just act out in public.

Brian Moylan: And can we have some instances of you acting out badly in public?

Patrick Foley: I mean, there is sort of a joke among the Fake Friends… We've had an incredibly busy year, a really successful professional year. And we did realize halfway through, "Wow. Things are going really well." And then we were like, "Oh, it's because no one's see us at opening night parties in a full calendar year." It's a weird thing that happens when we enter physical spaces together, where... I mean, I think the last opening night party we went to, Michael screamed at a managing director's wife.

Michael Breslin: Yeah. Patrick made out with a woman for two hours at the bar.

Patrick Foley: I made out with a woman.

Brian Moylan: Are you bisexual now?

Patrick Foley: My boyfriend claims that I am. But on the subject of sexuality and the queerness of The Real Housewives, I think it's one of the few major primetime TV spectacles that doesn't concern itself with romance. We always talk about how there's this Bachelor/Real Housewife divide. I think it's because I don't want to watch straight people hook up or pursue love. I don't care. And in The Real Housewives, it's not a concern of anyone. It's used as leverage between Luann [de Lesseps] and Sonja [Morgan of Real Housewives of New York City], but it's no one's A plot. And I think that's really liberating, as a queer person, to not have to graft myself onto a romance that I already don't care about.

Brian Moylan: So, in the initial seasons of The Housewives, we had a lot of queer representation, like Dwight and Derek J in Atlanta and Rosie from New Jersey. And a lot of those queer people have disappeared. Why do you think that is, and how do you feel about that?

Michael Breslin: Well, we can't erase certain queer activities currently happening on the shows. [Ed. note: Like the Atlanta women hooking up with each other at a debauched bachelorette party.]

Brian Moylan: Fair. Fair.

Michael Breslin: Sonja, I believe, is a queer woman. But to answer the question seriously, I personally don't need gay or queer representation on The Housewives in terms of characters. The behavior of the women is already queerness. I do find it interesting when the editors go out of their way to edit gay people out. This happens. I see it on [the Bravo show] Summer House a lot. Whenever they have parties, it's like all gay men at the parties. They're in the back of some shots, and completely edited out. And I'm like, "That's so weird that they would go out of their way."

Brian Moylan: So, at the very beginning of your play, it's like you're all speaking Housewives quotes. And then you're at the front door, and someone goes, "Are you gay?" How do you feel like the coded language of gay people relates to the coded language of Housewives fans?

Patrick Foley: Well, there's certainly a lot of public shame in certain circles around being a Housewife fan. And that is something that we've definitely come up against, sort of as theater makers with This American Wife and the quote-unquote “critical establishment.” We've noticed a lot that there's a weird sort of badge of pride when a reviewer will start a review by saying like, "I hate reality TV. I don't watch The Real Housewives." A, that's not something to be proud of. And B, it's boring. And C, it is very common, and so I think there is something in that, that it's almost, in certain circles, can feel like what I imagine to be like being gay in the '40s, which is to say you drop a line. You drop a reference. You drop it, and then you wait to see who picks it up. And then you sort of mosey over in that direction.

Jakeem Dante Powell: It's so liberating, though, when that happens. It's deeper than, "Are you a friend of Dorothy?" I mean, I was at dinner recently with two gentlemen. They were friends of a friend. And he dropped a NeNe Leakes quote in the middle of the dinner, and literally my entire body [turned in their direction]. We occupied the next 45 minutes with anecdotes and a full-on TED Talk podcast dissecting the Real Housewives of Atlanta from Season 4 to Season 12. You know what I mean?

I think that there is sort of that idea like, "I wouldn't watch that. That's low-brow. That's trash.” But at the end of the day, why? Why? It's about the pleasure principle. There's something deeply pleasurable about it. If we allow ourselves, as a collective, to dig deeper into our own pleasure principles, I think that the coded language becomes a little less coded.

Brian Moylan: So, in the play, I feel like it argues that gay men are sort of aping the Housewives, and then at some point they become the Housewives or take on their personalities. Do you see that as a good thing or a bad thing?

Michael Breslin: I don't see it as either good or bad. I certainly have friends in my life who are so obsessed with The Housewives that I've had interactions where I can't tell what level of reality we're fighting on. And we’re too far into it, I'm like, "Oh, I thought we were joking, and all of a sudden, you're screaming and crying." There is this sort of obsession with the compulsive viewing. How can you not sort of internalize some of the patterns of logic, which often can be quite clever and quite real? The way that certain Housewives think and throw argument around can be quite intoxicating. But other times, it can be very confusing, with someone like Vicki Gunvalson, where you're like, "Oh, you've internalized Vicki in a way that's really dangerous" — honestly, because it's easy to laugh at that woman, but she's also quite terrifying as an immoral agent in this world.

Brian Moylan: So, do we think that there is a little bit of Housewives in all of us that the show brings out? Or do you think the show is entirely conditioning us to start behaving like Real Housewives? What's the chicken? What's the egg?

Patrick Foley: Oh, gosh, that's really hard, because I will also say, maybe even to Michael's point, I have noticed in some of my friends that they sort of start to behave like Real Housewives to me because they know that I'm a fan of The Real Housewives. So they start to get nasty, and catty, and petty. And I'm like, "Okay, well, wait. That's just a fun show I like to turn on. We don't need to always do that." But I do think that certain tactics that are really successful for the Wives, like self-victimization is a huge one that we talk about all the time, which is to totally not take culpability, and actually recontextualize the event in a way that makes you the victim. That is a basic tactic that everyone does, and that in a lot of ways we see on a global geopolitical scale, like right now, at this moment, certain things I won't go into.

But that's a tactic that is being used constantly, and that, for me, at least, I think being a superfan of The Housewives has taught me to better identify.

Brian Moylan: I found in my research about The Real Housewives that everything that is about the show eventually turns into Real Housewives. So it's like Facebook groups start talking about The Real Housewives, and then they end up sniping at each other and having drama. So I'm just wondering, since this show is about The Real Housewives, did it become Real Housewives backstage?

Patrick Foley: When we first worked on this show, I think there was an element of method acting that snuck into a part of the performance. And I'll leave it at that. Because a lot of the moments are unscripted, and because part of the game that we're playing, even now, is to coax out a personal revelation and then sort of leave the person hanging dry. That's a part of the game that we're playing as performers in these more improvisatory parts. But I will say, in this most recent iteration, I'm very proud of us, because I think we've really approached these improvised moments of intimacy, where we really are talking about our lives — we approach them with a lot of sensitivity and the kind of language that I've heard coming from intimacy coordinators on film sets, where there's a safe word. There's a like, "I don't want to go there today." There's an acknowledgement that a fact that could have been shared last week, and was totally game, might not be game today for reasons that I don't know.

Michael Breslin: Patrick and I have been doing the show for four years now. And that final scene, the confessional, has constantly adapted to where our friendship is at at the time. So I will say there are versions, in the past, where it's been very combative, and it's been very difficult. But in this version, it's combative for a different reason. It's almost like The Housewives, where we've been cast members for so long now, we know how to fight on-camera and be totally fine off-camera.

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