what's cooking?

A new “friend” from one of my favorite social sites jokingly wrote me that “I have to tell you... anytime you send me something from the OC Register... the thought runs through my mind... wonder if Carine knows any of the REAL Housewives of Orange County! LOL. That show is SOMETHING else! Living in Oklahoma, I have to say that we hard working blue collar people watch the Real Housewives series, no matter if in CA, NJ, or GA, and think... these women have entirely TOO much time on their hands! :-) But it is entertaining. And makes us believe that money certainly isn't everything... or even something I want if it makes you behave like that!”

I replied, “Believe me; I have never even been in the realm of these women! And yes, they have way too much time on their hands. Instead of doing what they do and behaving that way-they should use that time and money and help out a shelter, neglected kids, abused animals and shelters there, find a disease to work on behalf of-anything but what they do. Most of us, we're so busy trying to make ends meet-we don't even know when it's on! I know it's on Bravo and that my friend in Las Vegas (who's a writer from OC as well), loves to watch it.”

I’m not sure if I’ve ever written about reality shows, but I have to say-unless they have something to do with either the world of dance or food-I find them so UNREAL.

Really and seriously-I don’t want to sound like a snob, but there is just nothing real about many of these people. I haven’t watched the Bachelor or the Bachelorette, but my husband has-made him DVR it and watch it when I went to bed. I asked him, “Why do you watch these things?”

His answer, pretty much the same as my new found cvber-friend in the great state of Oklahoma, “because it’s entertaining.”

Entertaining to watch either women or men vying for “real love” amongst a couple of dozen others for a person they haven’t met? Or watching full grown and overly pampered women behave like snippy high schoolers?

My daughter once explained her attraction to these shows like this: “Mom, these people act in ways that are so make-believe that it makes whatever any real person goes through seem not so bad!”

Okay, entertaining and it makes you feel better about your merely dysfunctional life-I suppose I get it. But I do tend to feel rather embarrassed for these folks who deliberately hold themselves up to public humiliation ON PURPOSE!

On a magazine forum I moderate there was a question from a contributor who asked “does anyone know the real you?”

Several people answered the typical: my husband, my sister, my mom, etc…

I wrote-“Everyone knows the real me-what you read, what you see, it’s all what I am.”

There will always be someone out there who disagrees with my analysis, but my reasoning for laying it all out there is this-I don’t have to remember what I said to whom about what. It is what it is and nothing more.

So yes, I get it-the Real Housewives of OC, NJ or NYC like the attention and those watching them enjoy the entertainment value. But they aren’t the REAL housewives.

Me-I think I’ll stick to dancing and who Gordon Ramsey will yell at this week and leave it at that.