from the NY Post
Talk about a reality check.
"The Real Housewives of New York City," a Bravo TV show featuring six Botox-happy women feasting on their 15 minutes of fame, promised to offer a through-the-keyhole look at the lives of Manhattan's most stylish and privileged.
But since the second season began airing in February, each character has been bitch-slapped by personal misfortune and public embarrassment.
Call it the "Curse of the Real Housewives," because these housewives are looking more desperate by the day.
Kelly Bensimon, whose boyfriend Nick Stefanov accused her of assault on March 5, has since been dragged through an unseemly court hearing to meet the charges.
On Friday, the SAKS department-store chain confirmed that the 40-year-old model had been dropped from one of its upcoming campaigns.
Three days earlier it emerged that 'Countess LuAnn De Lesseps’ husband of 16 years, Count Alexandre de Lesseps, had left her for an Ethiopian woman in Geneva. Now the soon-to-be ex-aristocrat is facing divorce while promoting her unfortunately titled book "Class with the Countess”.
Bombastic blonde Ramona Singer, 52, meanwhile, is reportedly being shunned by the well-heeled mothers at her daughter Avery's private school. And career woman Alex McCord, 35, lost her job as a graphic designer for Victoria's Secret in February.
On camera, Bethenny Frankel, the skinny singleton "housewife," has endured awkward dates to no avail. Her last boyfriend, Jason Colodne, was fired from his Wall Street job for appearing on the first series, and the relationship ended shortly thereafter.
Even Long Island-born Jill Zarin, 45, once seen as the most down-to-earth of the group, is now facing a backlash, having spent most of this season snatching up couture gowns and luxury furnishings like a modern-day Marie Antoinette, while the nation's worst economic crisis in a generation grinds on.
Having seen their reputations plummet even as the show's ratings soar (figures are up 50 percent over last year's averages, says a Bravo spokesperson), you'd think these ladies might regret having appeared on the show. You'd be wrong.
Bensimon said that the program, and the attending focus on her personal life, has been a "really fun" wild ride. "If it's a roller coaster," she said, "then I am front and center in the first car."
Declining to speak about her legal case, she said instead, "The only thing I do regret is that you have to give up a lot of privacy on TV."
What's more, she said, "People don't want to see [the real] Kelly. They don't care about some shy girl that falls off horses, or hangs out with her kids, or loves doing cartwheels. They want to see girls in miniskirts kicking it, you know, the catfights."
Frankel, a celebrity chef turned diet book author -- and Bensimon's adversary on the show -- admitted that dating while filming has been hard.
"Look," she said, "my book ["Naturally Thin"] just hit No. 3 on The New York Times' Best-Seller List -- it's very overwhelming for [a man] if I say I have this book and I'm on TV."
The newly unemployed McCord, meanwhile, is also relishing the spotlight. She insisted that losing her job was unrelated to her role on the show. "One thing had nothing to do with another."
Being judged or ridiculed, said McCord, is part of being in the public eye.
"Prior to doing this show, I had a 10-year career as an actor. I kind of knew, well yes, people are going to write about you and your husband and your children," McCord said. "I always intended to be in a profession where being written about was part of the territory."
Singer declined to speak about the controversy at her daughter's school, stating: "I don't talk about my daughter," but she hasn't regretted doing the series "for a second."
They say success comes with a price. But for the housewives of New York, it's apparently one worth paying.
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