Atlanta Housewives Debut on Bravo

by Sarah

The “Real Housewives of Atlanta” premieres on Bravo tonight at 9/8c. It’s the third take on the “Real Housewives” idea—Orange County and New York were the first and second respectively. The shows follow the lives of wealthy women and their families; according to Bravo, the Atlanta version will feature five “glamorous Southern belles” who “balance motherhood, demanding careers and a fast-paced social calendar.”

The similarities between the three shows are myriad: all feature family drama, conspicuous consumption, class consciousness and aging women trying to preserve their youth through clothing and surgery. The way these narratives play out varies with the setting.

The original OC housewives lived in a gated community and showed off their wealth through fake boobs and orange (county) tans. In the series’ first season only one woman worked, although more have entered the working world in the subsequent seasons.

The New York women were more professional than their OC counterparts—four out of five had jobs—and generally younger than the California wives. They spending focused on New York society—charities and vacationing in the Hamptons.

From the Bravo website the Atlanta ladies appear more involved in city life than the OCers, more obnoxious than the NYCers. But the main difference is that on tonight’s show four of the five women are black (none of the women in the first  two seasons were non-white) and the one white woman says she feels like “a black woman trapped in a white woman’s body.”