Desperate Househusbands
For the last few years of secondary school, regardless of what homework needed to be completed or what sandwiches required preparing for the next day’s lunch, Tuesday evenings were sacred in our house, because, for 60 minutes, starting at 10pm, Desperate Housewives was on. With 5 out of the 6 of us getting hooked from about Season 3 onwards, it became an unspoken ritual in our home to gather around the TV set each Tuesday and watch in suspense as RTÉ2 delivered the latest instalments in these glamorous women’s lives. Now almost a decade has passed since that time and I decided to rewatch the series with my parents, only viewing it this time through a far more educated and nuanced lens, and, while I still love it and find it entertaining, boy do I see some stuff that makes me mad, the highlights of which I will momentarily flesh out for you here. First and foremost, I absolutely refuse to apologise for any spoilers you are about to read: Desperate Housewives originally aired between 2004 and 2012, and you have had the guts of 12 months in lockdown to watch it back on Amazon Prime, so take your “but I was just about to start it and you ruined it” elsewhere plz.
The main thing that strikes me about the series is how easily the male characters’ levels of self-esteem just crumble the second their wives or girlfriends, and in some cases, ex-wives and -girlfriends, establish a life or experience success that is independent of them. Fragile masculinity is a recurring theme in the series (according to me btw) and the term itself refers to anxiety men feel when they believe they are falling short of cultural standards of manhood (the feminist in me must state here that this goes to show just how harmful patriarchal systems are to men as well as women). Almost every straight male character in this series has a crisis of masculinity at some point or another, often career- or money-related, and it is almost always made out (by the male character, not necessarily the producers) to be the wife’s or girlfriend's fault. Having done a lot of reading around self-esteem in the last 12 months (shoutout to Nathaniel Branden's life-changing writings), it baffles me that the main thing keeping these men's senses of equilibrium fro shattering is the subordination and dependence of their partners on them, which in truth is not real happiness.
There’s the career envy, the “I-can’t-believe-she’s-making-her-way-in-the-world-without-me” exasperation. We saw it when Bree was rocketing to national fame with her cookbook and catering company in Season 5, looked upon enviously by her husband Orson, unable to continue practicing as a dentist due to the jail time he did for running over another character. Orson, rather than be Bree’s employee in the company, insisted on being her business partner because he basically couldn’t stomach the idea of working under her. Also cue his kleptomania phase where he admittedly steals from others as it is something Bree “cannot control”. Throughout the series we are witnesses to the constant battle between Tom and Lynette about who is ‘in charge’. Tom couldn’t deal with his wife being his boss in Season 2 (“you’re the boss at home and at work”) *eye roll* I try to be as objective as I can when it comes to these two but honestly it’s usually Tom who’s out of order. He is whiny, entitled, and is babied by his mother even in adulthood, so it’s no wonder he has this old-school view of the role of the woman, which is kind of hilarious because Lynette isn’t conventional in the slightest. We also saw money-related tension between Mike and Susan in Season 6, where Mike refused to accept Susan’s money to pay off his debts, because he wanted to “be the kind of guy that provides for his family”. Like??? Okay so renting out your home, moving your wife and son to a shitty apartment and then sentencing yourself to a 6-month job in the back-of-beyonds of Alaska until your financial situation improves is a better call, rather than just accepting your wife’s teaching-job money?? Oh right okay cool.
Fragile masculinity also rears its ugly head in the way that some of the male characters act as if their wives or girlfriends belong to them. Throwback to the early days where Carlos would deck a guy if he thought they were checking out Gabby, and the guy didn’t even need to be actually guilty of the offence btw, Carlos just thought they had to be. (Die-hards will point out to me at this stage that Carlos may have had every reason to be distrustful of Gabby due to her infidelity with her gardener, but Carlos was slamming other guys well before he found out about John.) Some adversity later on life proceeds to mellow Carlos out and see him and Gabby cultivate what seems like a genuinely loving and reciprocal relationship, but not before time.
Quibbles about the patriarchy aside, this rewatching of Desperate Housewives has taught me a lot about sacrifice in relationships, particularly in marriage. Obviously married life is never easy all the time (saying that as an outsider looking in), but the feminist in me is inclined to say that women usually end up sacrificing more, or at least that is how it appeared most of the time on the series. Take, for example, Gabby and Carlos. In order to marry Carlos and live the life he wanted, she gave up her modelling career in New York and in turn he funded her life, paying for her designer clothes and shoes and beauty appointments. Not for all the Prada or Gucci in the world would I accede to being dependent on another person for my financials. Such a lifestyle would actually make me feel like a disempowered child, and there is no escape or backup if things go wrong in the relationship. No woman should ever feel she needs to give up her career for a man, even if she ‘wanted to’ at the time. Women as a group have been disenfranchised for long enough.
While this post has been peopled by fictional characters and my summations of their behaviour, they nonetheless hold up a mirror to the human race. So many of people’s issues in adulthood almost always relate back to their childhood, and I saw this at multiple points throughout my rewatching of Desperate Housewives: Lynette’s need for control due to an unpredictable childhood where she could not rely on her mother; the absence of Mike’s dad in his teens which fostered in him a need to be a father and husband who supports his family, and so on. Going to therapy has made me realise too that the family is the first social group or society of which we are a part, where we learn what is normal, where we are assigned roles. I know these are fictional characters, and storylines are thought through in advance and therefore not as susceptible to the nuance that accompanies real-life events, but it’s food for thought all the same.
On a final note, I find the name ‘Desperate Housewives’ to be rather misleading. On reflection, it’s the men in it who are desperate: in desperate need of therapy to deal with that low self-esteem, and in desperate need of a wake-up call that women are not made to serve them. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
There’s the career envy, the “I-can’t-believe-she’s-making-her-way-in-the-world-without-me” exasperation. We saw it when Bree was rocketing to national fame with her cookbook and catering company in Season 5, looked upon enviously by her husband Orson, unable to continue practicing as a dentist due to the jail time he did for running over another character. Orson, rather than be Bree’s employee in the company, insisted on being her business partner because he basically couldn’t stomach the idea of working under her. Also cue his kleptomania phase where he admittedly steals from others as it is something Bree “cannot control”. Throughout the series we are witnesses to the constant battle between Tom and Lynette about who is ‘in charge’. Tom couldn’t deal with his wife being his boss in Season 2 (“you’re the boss at home and at work”) *eye roll* I try to be as objective as I can when it comes to these two but honestly it’s usually Tom who’s out of order. He is whiny, entitled, and is babied by his mother even in adulthood, so it’s no wonder he has this old-school view of the role of the woman, which is kind of hilarious because Lynette isn’t conventional in the slightest. We also saw money-related tension between Mike and Susan in Season 6, where Mike refused to accept Susan’s money to pay off his debts, because he wanted to “be the kind of guy that provides for his family”. Like??? Okay so renting out your home, moving your wife and son to a shitty apartment and then sentencing yourself to a 6-month job in the back-of-beyonds of Alaska until your financial situation improves is a better call, rather than just accepting your wife’s teaching-job money?? Oh right okay cool.
Fragile masculinity also rears its ugly head in the way that some of the male characters act as if their wives or girlfriends belong to them. Throwback to the early days where Carlos would deck a guy if he thought they were checking out Gabby, and the guy didn’t even need to be actually guilty of the offence btw, Carlos just thought they had to be. (Die-hards will point out to me at this stage that Carlos may have had every reason to be distrustful of Gabby due to her infidelity with her gardener, but Carlos was slamming other guys well before he found out about John.) Some adversity later on life proceeds to mellow Carlos out and see him and Gabby cultivate what seems like a genuinely loving and reciprocal relationship, but not before time.
Quibbles about the patriarchy aside, this rewatching of Desperate Housewives has taught me a lot about sacrifice in relationships, particularly in marriage. Obviously married life is never easy all the time (saying that as an outsider looking in), but the feminist in me is inclined to say that women usually end up sacrificing more, or at least that is how it appeared most of the time on the series. Take, for example, Gabby and Carlos. In order to marry Carlos and live the life he wanted, she gave up her modelling career in New York and in turn he funded her life, paying for her designer clothes and shoes and beauty appointments. Not for all the Prada or Gucci in the world would I accede to being dependent on another person for my financials. Such a lifestyle would actually make me feel like a disempowered child, and there is no escape or backup if things go wrong in the relationship. No woman should ever feel she needs to give up her career for a man, even if she ‘wanted to’ at the time. Women as a group have been disenfranchised for long enough.
While this post has been peopled by fictional characters and my summations of their behaviour, they nonetheless hold up a mirror to the human race. So many of people’s issues in adulthood almost always relate back to their childhood, and I saw this at multiple points throughout my rewatching of Desperate Housewives: Lynette’s need for control due to an unpredictable childhood where she could not rely on her mother; the absence of Mike’s dad in his teens which fostered in him a need to be a father and husband who supports his family, and so on. Going to therapy has made me realise too that the family is the first social group or society of which we are a part, where we learn what is normal, where we are assigned roles. I know these are fictional characters, and storylines are thought through in advance and therefore not as susceptible to the nuance that accompanies real-life events, but it’s food for thought all the same.
On a final note, I find the name ‘Desperate Housewives’ to be rather misleading. On reflection, it’s the men in it who are desperate: in desperate need of therapy to deal with that low self-esteem, and in desperate need of a wake-up call that women are not made to serve them. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
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