Why women shouldn’t be permitted to vote, part XXI

From National Review (of all places):


I was feeling pretty desperate Sunday night because my new favorite TV show Desperate Housewives was preempted by the American Music Awards. (Boo!) Housewives has already become part of my (and millions of other women’s) Sunday-night ritual. And don’t we all have end-of-the-weekend, start-of-the-work-week Sunday-night rituals?

After the dishes are done, the kids are in bed, and the house is quiet, I know that women all over the country collapse on the couch for a fix of gloriously entertaining chick-TV. And who cares if it’s shallow, retro, and anti-feminist? All the women on Desperate Housewives are, after all, “just housewives.” And that’s a major part of its charm.

Last week the show had 22.32 million viewers, its highest rating yet. I would guess roughly 21 million of those tuned in were female, and that the rest were guys whose favorite character is the hunky teenage gardener who is up to no good with Gabrielle….

But what is most winning about the show is the relationships the women have with one another. And that’s why you like the housewives, even straying Gabrielle and obsessive-compulsive Bree. In the soap operas of the ’80s women were rivals, circling each other and trying to outwit each other to gain the attention of the men who were in the starring roles. But in this show and in the chick-lit books that are now so popular, women care about each other. The men on Wisteria Lane most often tend to be irritating problems, not solutions…. Are these desperate housewives a reflection of American women? Not really, of course, but they’re close enough so that viewers are entertained by them and not offended by their flaws.

I have not seen this show, but it sure sounds like exactly the sort of behavior affirmation that most women, housewives and otherwise, don’t need. The thing I find incredibly bizarre about this is the way women love to publicly identify themselves with characters from shows like this and Sex in the City, (its obvious spiritual predecessor). And yet, if men were to make a point of identifying themselves with equally fictional characters such as James Bond or Conan – and start imitating their behavior and sartorial style, no less – women would think they were not only crazy, but more than a little bit pathetic.

Glad I am that Space Bunny doesn’t watch this nonsense, much less take it seriously.