Let’s begin with an arguable premise: plenty of straight men wouldn’t be caught dead watching the Housewives go at it tooth and nail, or any show geared to women that offers a glimpse into the social lives of reality TV stars.
I considered that gospel until my wife handed me the New York Times Sunday Styles section and pointed to Alisha Haridasani Gupta’s article “‘Summer House’ Is Turning Men into Reality TV Fans,” which got me thinking: what’s behind the turning tide?
Women’s superior social-reading abilities
Many reality shows are designed to appeal to women who, as a group, possess a keener social sense than men. Some might object to that claim, but scientific evidence suggests that women and men, over eons, developed different cognitive skills as a result of the division of labor in hunter-gatherer villages.
Hunting taught male villagers the art of physical coordination—matching their moves with those of others to bring home the bacon—which readied them to toss about the pigskin a million years hence. In the meantime, female villagers were learning about social cooperation and the art of establishing and maintaining coalitions: female collectives that shared resources, gathered crops, prepared food, and helped one another with childcare. “It takes a village.” Being successful at group participation hinged on a woman’s ability to track alliances, detect betrayal, and know who can and can’t be trusted. A woman ejected from her coalition in an ancestral environment was at a distinct disadvantage.
It behooved the village’s women to keep their ears to the ground—to listen for gossip that might help them decide who can be trusted, who might stab you in the back, and whose next move is worth anticipating—which is why shows like Survivor thrive. That show’s sports-like competitiveness draws in male viewers, though viewership is still 60 percent female. Estimates peg the Housewives’ female viewership at 75 percent, comparable to the readership of People magazine, which satisfies the same female interest.
Taking gossip seriously
Gossip gets a bad reputation. We associate it with pettiness, idle chatter, the stuff of hair salons and back fences. In fact, social scientists have been arguing for decades that gossip is something far more fundamental. It is not a character flaw; it’s a mechanism that helps sustain social life. However necessary gossip might be, it is a flawed to the extent rumor is capable of seriously damaging another’s reputation.
At its most basic, gossip is the exchange of social information about absent third parties. Who did what to whom, who violated the group’s norms, who is sleeping with whose partner. This may sound like drivel, but it’s more important than most think.
Studies consistently find that men and women gossip at roughly equal rates—both sexes spend around two-thirds of conversation time on social topics—though men don’t label what they do as gossiping. (Figures, doesn’t it?) According to social anthropologist Robin Dunbar, women’s gossip tends to focus on relationships and others’ personal lives, whereas men’s skews toward status, achievement, and outgroups. Either way, gossiping serves an important societal function in that it promotes bonding.
Gossip theory
Three anthropologists have contributed to the development of gossip theory. Writing in the same 1963 issue of Current Anthropology, Max Gluckman focused on gossip’s society-promoting function, while Robert Paine emphasized how gossip benefits the gossiping individual. Three decades later, Robin Dunbar addressed the extent to which gossip serves both group and individual needs.
Gluckman enumerated gossip’s benefits. It promotes group cohesion, polices members’ behavior, and defines the group by detailing who does and does not belong. Only insiders know the ins and outs of group life. Outsiders cannot gossip credibly, since they aren’t truly in the know; if they try to join in and gossip along, they are exposed as being outside “the in-crowd.” Gossip also disciplines conduct: knowing one will be talked about enforces prosocial behavior without resorting to laying down and enforcing rules and involving authorities.
Paine took a different tack, seeing gossip as chiefly benefiting individuals who collect dirt on others for their own sake. You know the type. They operate like gossip columnists, getting the scoop on others and then using it as currency—tradable information that positions them above those less in the know, who can be shamed for being insufficiently informed.
Dunbar takes an “it’s a bit of both” approach, with gossip serving the group and individuals equally. He also sees it functioning as a reputation-tracking system, answering the nagging, perennial question: where do I fit in, and what is the relative status of those I’m aligned with?
How gossip theory informs our understanding of reality TV
Gluckman’s group-promoting theory applies to reality TV audiences to the extent that reality TV turns strangers into a gossip community. Fans of the same show share enough knowledge about the cast to gossip with each other—at work, on social media, with friends. The show is a shared text around which a genuine in-group forms. This is why fandoms develop such fierce loyalty, and why Andy Cohen’s show Watch What Happens Live works as a format: it ritualizes the communal gossip session, with Cohen moderating the collective processing of what happened, who was wrong, who was right.
Paine’s individual-strategy theory suggests the value that accrues to the viewer who knows the most about past seasons and remembers every detail of who did what to whom. Becoming the one who is most up on the drama positions that individual to be able to one-up other group members, which confers social status. In this way, one can demonstrate cultural literacy, wit, and insider knowledge, all of which are individually advantageous.
Dunbar’s reputation-tracking system applies to the extent that viewers identify with a particular character or group. One declares oneself to be on “Team Ciara,” vicariously linking one’s fate with the successes or failures of whomever one is rooting for.
As viewers watch, they vicariously track a complex of social networks—alliances, betrayals, loyalties, reputations—without being in the group themselves. It’s the same relationship-tracking work the brain evolved to do, just with a cast of characters on screen. The emotions triggered—outrage when someone is betrayed, satisfaction when a villain gets his or her comeuppance—are the social cognition system running as it was designed.
The bottom line: reality TV didn’t invent something new—it industrialized a behavior that is ancient, universal, and deeply functional—and found a way to run it at scale.
Summer House
This brings us back to Gupta’s article about the way Summer House was turning men into reality TV fans. For those like me who are unfamiliar with the show, Gupta outlines its premise: every summer a group of friends share a house in the Hamptons, where their lives unfold as the audience watches voyeuristically—the essence of reality TV.
The show is now in its tenth season, and faithful viewers not only know the cast intimately but have an emotional stake in the game. This isn’t to say viewers can’t be caught by surprise by the antics of certain characters, which can leave them infuriated, particularly when betrayal enters the scene—as it did this season when Amanda Batula became involved with West Wilson, an affront to her once-friend Ciara Miller, who had dated West a few seasons back. Every viewer had an opinion, largely not in West’s favor. Most viewers were on Ciara’s side and adopted a “how dare she” stance.
Unlike the Housewives of . . . you name it, which cast husbands in the shadows, Summer House puts the lives and alliances of men front and center, on par with those of the female cast, which draws men in. Its popularity with men is reflected in the growing number of male listeners who tune in to the BravBros podcast, hosted by Steel Russell and Sean Morrison. Russell describes the stigma that comes with a guy watching what he considers a “girls’ TV show.” But when teams like the Cleveland Browns and the New York Giants are TikToking about the show, you sense a line has been crossed, making it okay for real men to tune in shamelessly.
The stigma is cracking
For men, reality TV has long carried a stigma rooted in widely held beliefs about what should and should not appeal to men. Reality TV focuses on how people relate emotionally—who said what, who betrayed whom, what someone really meant. These matters primarily interest women, which isn’t to say men aren’t curious, though admitting as much doesn’t come easy for many men.
Following such shows requires that the viewer, first, be interested in such matters and, second, possess a keen enough social sense to enjoy imagining characters’ motives and anticipating their next moves—skills that women are better at than men. Which isn’t to say men can’t adapt and learn.
An unanticipated benefit
Beyond providing entertainment and a sense of belonging to an engaged and enthusiastic viewing community, shows like Summer House are educational insofar as they represent a laboratory where strangers participate in a social experiment—a Petri dish that grows who knows what. Watching such shows teaches viewers about human nature, motivation, and personality types. It’s as elementary as Sesame Street, at least for men, who are provided an opportunity to hone their rudimentary people-reading skills. The social sense of men in general isn’t nearly as well developed as women’s, so these shows offer men a chance to catch up.
Bravo, Andy Cohen, who originated and shepherded an entire genre that provides men a real service. Perhaps this is precisely what men collectively need as an antidote to the most toxic aspects of masculinity. If so, this might be a tale of male redemption. Let’s watch and see. Stay tuned.