Core Post #3: Post-Feminism and Vanderpump Rules

Insistently on my mind while reading McRobbie and Banet-Weiser's pieces were the women of Vanderpump Rules. While I haven't been able to stomach watching this most recent season, it remains my favorite of the Bravo properties (save for the true classics Gallery Girls and NYC Prep) and, I want to argue, offers a compelling and sometimes nuanced portrait in the forms of commodity feminisms rooted in an ambivalent female individualism discussed by both authors.

In earlier seasons of the show, feminist politics are openly and actively disavowed by certain female cast members, acting as a kind of political bad word to disassociate from, even if actions are, arguably "feminist" in scope. In a heated workplace environment that bleeds heavily into messy social relations and romances, characters become individually responsible for their own actions, pitted against one another, shamed for their body images and sexual activity, their happiness ultimately tied to the many shifting heterosexual couplings that permeate the show. Presiding over all is the professional matriarch Lisa Vanderpump, whose personal success and business acumen are offered as strong evidence of what McRobbie describes as the "spent force" (255) of feminism, having over three decades of beating the boys at their own game, a shockingly apolitical but no less gendered model of exceptionalism and aspiration - capitalism for the win, if you will. To offer a sense of the show's politics: when DJ James Kennedy refers to SUR (Sexy Unique Restaurant) hostess Lala Kent as a "basic bitch," her sometimes-nemesis and co-worker Scheana comes to her defense, decrying Kennedy's words while noting that she is "so not a feminist." Feminism in this image, is no longer needed, something Lisa may have contended with in the past.

The character of Lala poses an interesting  challenge to these representational politics in that she is the first character on the show (perhaps other than Ariana) to explicitly take up the title of feminist. Her politics follow a legible combination of sex positivity ("pussy power," et al) and female enfranchisement through access to individual wealth and power. The results of this turn is fascinating, with characters taking turns to judge and question Lala's feminism while putting into perspective the struggle Banet-Weiser names in the "context [of] as politics of contradiction and ambivalence" (210) that contour contemporary feminisms. Suddenly, everyone has an opinion on what feminism ought to be. In the Season 6 reunion, for example, Lisa actively disavows Lala's feminism, arguing that "some feminists" from previous generations might take issue with her approach, while explicitly not naming the historical grounds for why this might be. Feminism remains an individual ethic here, with star cast member Stassi stating that her own "brand" of feminism might not be exactly aligned with that of Kent. Much like Banet-Weiser argues, here feminism is reduced to "a style, an aesthetic, a hip way of being" (205) that might be taken up at will, rather than larger movement or mode of relation. Feminism circulates within the show as it is explicitly named, avowed, or disavowed by characters, male and female alike, often squabbling over what feminism is and isn't and over the question of who makes a "real" feminist. The irony isn't lost that cast members have used such tactics to sell their books, Chardonnay brands, and t-shirt lines, embodying the forms of "postmodern cynicism" (211) and targetted marketing niches so readily named by Banet-Weiser.