I'M feeling hard done by. This week during an idle moment between making dinner and folding washing, I found myself on the couch watching a reality show that I should have starred in. The Real Housewives of Auckland was, after all, only a few hours' drive away from my own suburban housewife life, right?
Except as the first episode unravelled (in so many, many ways) I couldn't help feeling the absence of a Rolls Royce, art-buying sojourns and rambling country estates in my own life as a housewife.
In fact, as the hour played out in ever-expanding circles of conspicuous consumption, I began to wonder what possible shred of DNA I shared with the show's "stars" and I was frankly quite relieved at the end to concede there was very little.
Real Housewives is about as real as some of the physical attributes of its characters. And before you start calling me out for showing my claws, in my defence I am simply getting into the spirit of the show.
What became evident very early on is that in a small enclave of the most lofty echelons of society there are women whose whole lives revolve around the spending of other people's money, and the demonstration of that. As the show's expensively sculpted centrepieces were brought together and introduced, it was extraordinary to observe how women whose lives revolve around the pursuit of personal beauty can render themselves so ugly simply by opening their mouths.