Sunday, August 23, 2009, 9:47 AM
Celebrities, Atlanta, In the News, Stop the Presses
By Kevin Moreau

Casting call for an ATL housewife

I believe that being a consumer of our popular culture means taking the good with the bad: “The Reader” with “The Bachelorette.” That’s why The Sunday Paper continues to pay attention to “The Real Housewives of Atlanta,” despite my own personal weariness with the show’s unlikeable personalities and manufactured controversy. It’s both the beauty and the curse of a free-market democracy that the Gosselins, the various “Real Housewives” and the casts of “Big Brother,” et al., can continue to live lives of unquiet desperation for fame as long as audiences and advertisers are willing to be their enablers.

That said, I think it’s time for a correction. As long as the VH1s and Bravos of the world are willing to profit from the contrived melodrama and relentless narcissism of shows that place unreal people in unreal situations, it’d be nice if they’d use some of that revenue to train a spotlight on some real people in real situations.

How about a series that follows a group of actual “real housewives”—Atlanta women forced to juggle child care and household maintenance with mounting bills, laid-off husbands, indifferent school officials and exploding adjustable-rate mortgages? Women whose lives aren’t filled with catfights at fancy restaurants, but instead punctuated by part-time jobs, past-due notices and the threat of foreclosure? Women who don’t float from party to party, but live from paycheck to paycheck?

That kind of show would be an antidote to the hysterical and artificial theatrics of much of current reality TV, but I’m not suggesting it would have to go down like a spoonful of castor oil. With a little discretion (something admittedly not in abundant supply in the genre), editors could tastefully employ the same hyperkinetic, tension-building techniques that they apply to such far less urgent fare as, say, “My Antonio,”
creating appointment television just as riveting as any trash-TV staple—if not more enthralling, since it would have the added bonus of taking the air quotes off of the “reality” in “reality TV.”

But I’m not going to sit around holding my breath waiting for the TV gods to green-light such a show. Instead, I’m going to create my own—or at least the Sunday Paper equivalent. If you’re an Atlanta-area woman like the kind mentioned above—a real housewife—interested in sharing your story with our readers, write to me at kevinmoreau@sundaypaper.com.

If enough of you respond (and I think you will), we’ll select four or five of you to profile in an upcoming feature or series of features.

Who knows? You might even become famous.