The women of the Real Housewives have a number of passions. They love goblets of white wine, dinner parties for the sake of dinner parties, and mocking each other in talking head interviews. Yet, over the last few weeks, the many Housewives franchises have proven these ladies love slut shaming each other more than anything else.
First everyone dragged Erika Jayne and her panty-free self for a season of The Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills. Then, Real Housewives of New York’s Ramona Singer bizarrely brought up a twenty-something-year-old B-movie to shame Bethenny Frankel for a topless sex scene. And in the latest RHONY season 9 installment, Dorinda Medley verbally attacked Sonja Morgan for her sexuality in a disturbingly aggressive manner.
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Dorinda had every reason to be upset with Tinsley Mortimer’s new benefactress, since she had proof Sonja had been dragging her to friends and in the press. But the way Dorinda went about retaliating against this relentless shading couldn’t have been worse.
“Let’s take the elephant out of the room right now. Shut your mouth. Stop talking poorly about me,” Dorinda tells Sonja at Ramona’s dinner party. This is perfect — if only it’s where Dorinda stops. Instead, what follows is a 10-minute tirade against her RHONY enemy.
“You know what? Why don’t you stop getting vaginal rejuvenation and put an E-ZPass on that vagina with your Holland Tunnel” the Dorinda snaps in front of at least 10 people. “Because we all know what shit goes down in that townhouse of yours. Turnstile and ticket. Turnstile and ticket to get into your townhouse.”
Dorinda then brings up a silly picture of a fully-clothed Sonja lying below a stripper at LuAnn De Lesseps’s bridal shower. “Did you enjoy the stripper, when you were doggystyling him?” she interrogates. For her part, Sonja replies with the perfect answer, saying, “Yes. I did,” and giving everyone a baffled look.
That didn’t stop Dorinda from later saying Sonja is “disgusting” and needs to “go get a bag of cucumbers and bananas and continue on, honey.” You know, because cucumbers and bananas are the closest produce we have to penises, eggplant emoji notwithstanding. Carole Radziwill correctly attempts to remind Dorinda her barbs are “beneath” her, since her feelings are legitimate, but her way of expressing them are awful.
Of course Dorinda has every right to call Sonja out for allegedly bashing her in every way possible and then pretending everything is fine at a dinner party. But there’s never, ever, a reason to pull a woman’s sexual history into an argument. How does claiming Sonja invites lovers to her townhouse or once found herself below a male entertainer actually make Dorinda's case? It doesn’t and it’s misogynistic. In fact, Dorinda ends up losing an argument she should have easily won because she attacked Sonja about a topic that couldn’t be further from her actual grievances.
Let's hope we make it thought next week without a single slut shaming incident on the Real Housewives franchises. We can celebrate with dirty martinis and pinot grigio for all.