Pitch: The Real Singles Of [Insert City]

You’ll watch it.

Photo by the author.

There are 11 versions of The Real Housewives based in the United States, and 21 versions internationally. I don’t know y’all I think we have enough? In society’s seemingly endless appetite for pageantry, drama, and upended furniture, I get it—I get why there are so many. It’s the same reason people slow down to stare at car crashes, just with more jewelry. My point though? In an ocean of television content centering on people’s roles as “housewives,” maybe singles can have…one show?

And hear me clearly: I am NOT talking about another goddamned dating show. This asinine marriage (pun obviously intended) of single people and dating in the television space is one of the reasons I cancelled my access to live TV in 2013 and never looked back. Not one, not one show has focused on the lives of single people since the early days of The Real World when they had actual jobs instead of booze and hot tubs and I’m incensed.

Our value extends beyond our desire for love. I’ll repeat that: Our value extends beyond our desire for love.

Overlooking us in franchises like these tells me a few things: Obviously no one cares about single people unless we’re about to marry a stranger on live television, but also I’m hearing that the world only finds us interesting as we relate to “the search”, and even then only if those experiences are messy, cringey, or hindered in some way like we’re all on a big blind date in a dark silent room and we have to pair ourselves together using nothing but our sense of smell and these wits. And while the search for partnership often is messy and cringey, it’s a lot more than that. We are a lot more than that. But if all you ever know of us is what the television gods chose to make into entertainment, you have no idea who the fuck we are. But yes, by all means, lets group together another pile of rich married women and see what happens.

You want drama? Watch a single woman confront her best friend about the $3500 she’s spending to attend her destination wedding as a bridesmaid and this bitch has the audacity to tell her a seat at dinner for a plus one is too expensive. You want chaos? Observe as a single woman disowns her family for assuming she’d “be fine” sleeping on an air mattress in the kitchen during a week-long trip to…