Ladies Who Lunch for a Living

In March 2006, the Bravo network premiered the reality show The Real Housewives of Orange County . Since then, Housewives has gone on to six other American cities and four international locations, totaling 90 cast members and 40 seasons for the series and its spin-offs. But many of the "housewives" are actually hard-working businesswomen who have used the series as a launch pad for their careers. Five decades after Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963), Bravo has reframed the image of the American housewife and addressed "the problem that has no name". These women are neither bored nor restless; they are entrepreneurs promoting their own beauty products, books, music and clothing lines. This collection of new essays with one reprinted classic explores what these new housewives mean in terms of televised constructs of identity, consumerism and the ever-emerging reality TV genre.