Real Housewives of New Jersey

Have you ever watched Real Housewives of New Jersey?  These women are out of control, and crazy yet I love watching them because there is still an element of suspense.  Drama is never a surprise but to what extent the ladies will take it is never predicted.  The Genre of reality t.v. has many conventions, which are followed in this series.  Besides drama the ladies also have personal dialogue with the camera, real- life settings, fighting, and stereotypes.  The real- life settings consist of footage in their homes, towns, and cities in which they live and travel.  In fact the camera's even go on vacation to Italy with the families giving you an inside look at how other families spend their leisure time.  Except this real life for middle class people may not be the same.  These women spend high amount of money on purses, home decor, clothes, shoes, cars, and vacations.  The women have expense pets and accessories even for the animals.  This upper class take on life helps reinsure the middle class gaze.  The luxuries of expense materials are reinforced and yet the middle class gaze may also see that the upper class women are not role models.  The women fight physically as well as verbally with each other and even go as far as to insult people's children.  These women do not behave as adults.  Stereotypes are reinforced because the women do act as the traditional rich housewife media has created. For example the drama, extreme spending on materials, large houses yet never are cleaning or videoed without makeup or their hair done.  The women attend private catered parties and one episode the ladies even paid five hundred dollars just for a ticket to the party. The gender roles of the women are traditional because the women cook dinner and take care of the children.  The roles are also a stereotype of rich housewives because you never see the women cleaning their gigantic homes therefore you assume they also have a cleaning person or team.  The men are portrayed as working hard long hours and then coming home to relax.  The men are videoed playing poker, drinking alcohol, and almost never watching the children.  The men also set the rules or are pictured as stern italian men.  Also the Italian men are implied to be quiet yet scary and these men follow that stereotype. The women lead the household as far a tpical gender roles as well as the men.  This show lets the camera's in and creates identification as if you are apart of these familes.  The one on one camera scences imply feelings of vulnerability and the women boast opinions of their own so you feel as if they are letting you in as a friend.  The women's obscene behaviors reinforce the middle class gaze.