Real Housewives of Atlanta (RHOA) Virtual Reunion

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    I'm Team Nene. The Real Housewives of Atlanta did not become a regular part of my audio-visual diet until the season the cast took a trip to South Africa. When the show aired in Atlanta, it was the talk amongst my co-workers, friends, and my family. And stories about this woman named Nene dominated all other details about the series. However, I didn't own a television (still don't), and the iPhone hadn't yet evolved to its current web-viewing functionality. As a result, I didn't see the show on a regular basis.
    My impression of Nene from the few episodes and clips I viewed was she's ghetto, proudly perpetuating the angry, ratchet Black woman stereotype for money. When I tuned into Season 4, I waited for the loudmouth trouble-making Nene, the one who justified all this hate, to appear. But that Nene did not surface that season or any subsequent season. But this image of Nene remained firm in my mind, although I saw no evidence of this behavior. Instead, what I saw in Nene was an around the way girl from Georiga, the life of the party type who makes everyone laugh just by the way she delivers an "okay" at the right time and in the right tone. So what's the hate about?
    Nene is the type of Black woman whom we've been conditioned to believe SHOULD NOT have it all. Physically, she's tall and dark-skinned, not model skinny like Cynthia Bailey or Porsha thick. She didn't graduate college, and she's a former stripper who had children by two different men. Unlike Eva, with whom Nene has a lot in common, she doesn't have White-adjacent features or valley girl disposition, that enables Eva to escape the ratchet Black woman box, that people (including Eva) put Nene in. This is why she's a target.
    When people see a woman like Nene at the top, there's a feeling of imbalance. Scroll through tweets or YouTube, and you'll see comments like "Kandi is a grammy-award winning singer and songwriter," "Kenya was Miss USA," and "Cynthia was a model." The implication is these are the types of women who deserve or who have rightfully earned success—not a woman like Nene, who is the only cast member whom fans regularly refer to as an animal, "a moose," to be exact. 
    Production is hip to this larger sentiment and seemingly creates a storyline that maligns Nene to restore balance. The sad thing is her castmates, also Black women, are happily complicit. Many commentators have dismissed Nene Leakes's claim that production suggested that she not wear white to the Season 12 reunion because two of her castmates selected the color for their wardrobe. As a result, when Nene arrived at the virtual reunion, she was the only castmate wearing Black, while everyone else was in white. Her husband, Greg, and her friend rightly advised her to change her ensemble because she would appear as the black sheep. The Real Housewives of Atlanta is not a video diary. We are watching a professionally produced product, a TV series. Bravo is in the business of marketing a storyline. But they face a conundrum: their star, the one who brings in the eyeballs (viewers) is not "congenial" by dominant standards, so they position ( a marketing term) Nene as a villain. And Cynthia is usually constructed by the show as the target of Nene's bullying.  Now, why Cynthia? Cynthia is a model. She knows how to sell a product. However, she cannot draw eyeballs, so to attract advertisers, the series creates this good/bad Black woman dynamic. Nene has frequently stated she doesn't know why Bravo conceals Cynthia's more shady behaviors.  But the reasons become more apparent as seasons progress. 
    Now, I've grown to respect Nene and applaud her for walking out of the reunion. It's her job to deal with shade from castmembers, but she should not tolerate what she considers to be shade or mistreatment from production. A Google search of Nene's name will return a slew of negative stories from various entertainment sites. This type of skewed imaging has the potential to impact her brand. Hopefully, Black women will see some of Nene in ourselves and stand with her. We are not all model-valley girl types, and we shouldn't be vilified for being from around the way.

*The views in this blog represent the opinions of the writer, who makes no claims of being privy to insider information.