The XX Factor: What women really think.

Real Talk for Real Housewives

 Torie, I agree that last night's Housewives trainwreck was difficult to watch.However, I object to your characterization of Gretchen as so very helpless. Yes, she's going through a rough time with her fiance in the hospital, but you're not allowing her any agency in this situation. While Tamra et al. were certainly encouraging Gretchen's drunkenness, as you point out, Gretchen is a grown-ass woman. She's ultimately responsible for her own intake, and while Tamra's behavior was completely deplorable, Gretchen doesn't need our hand-wringing because she was three sheets to the wind on camera.

I am sympathetic to Gretchen's current situation, as it's crap to see a loved one sick. However, she could have dropped out of the filming at any time, and yet has chosen not to. But yeah—it's definitely trash TV, and I'm probably losing multiple brain cells every time I tune in to watch their orange-hued antics. While Bravo's editors are masters at getting their viewers to empathize with these frivolous ladies, we need to remember that they're not being shoved in our faces against their will. Gretchen, Tamra, and the entire bleached-blond crew is getting well-compensated for their televised trials.

Mean-Woman Syndrome

The more a reality-TV show makes my jaw drop and leads me to ask, "What must his/her parents be thinking right now?" the more I relish it. But today, I've got a wicked guilty-pleasure hangover. On last night's episode of The Real Housewives of Orange County, a cast member, Tamra, who was hosting a party, set out to get her younger blond rival, Gretchen, drunk—"naked wasted," as Tamra put it. Usually, I relish drunken reality-TV shenanigans, but last night, I wanted to change the channel when I saw the way Tamra's twentysomething son pawed at the blitzed Gretchen, whose much-older fiance was hospitalized and dying of cancer at the time of filming. I couldn't bring myself to turn it off, alas. (Watch some of the lowlights here, thanks to Jezebel.)

Usually, the reality-TV stars I laugh at are my age or younger—part of the "everyone is famous," social-networking, watched-Survivor-during-my-formative-years generation. The Real Housewives of Orange County may be neither real nor housewives, but they are all older than 30; all but one are over the age of 40. They should know better than to a) maliciously get someone drunk; b) continue to encourage her to take shots when it's readily apparent that she's drunk; and c) commit the crimes of (a) and (b) in front of cameras—while giggling behind their hands about it. Mean-girl behavior in fully grown women is stomach-turning. Real Housewives used to be fun fare to watch while unwinding after work. Now, I find myself wondering how much farther up the generation chain the look-how-badly-I-behave genre can climb. A reality show about catty nursing-home residents squaring off in their separate cliques, perhaps?

I wish I could promise I won't watch anymore, but I can't: The episode ended on a cliff-hanger, and I'm dying to know what will happen.