{"id":97693,"date":"2016-05-04T11:58:26","date_gmt":"2016-05-04T15:58:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=97693"},"modified":"2016-05-04T13:31:27","modified_gmt":"2016-05-04T17:31:27","slug":"ownership-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/05\/04\/ownership-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"Ownership Culture"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

The Real Housewives, owning it\u2014or at least dwelling in it.<\/p><\/div>\n

Those of you who were spared the three chapters of the saga that was The<\/em>\u00a0Real Housewives of Beverly Hills<\/em>\u00a0\u201cReunion\u201d\u00a0<\/em>missed something. Well, you missed a lot of things\u2014mainly people accusing Lisa Vanderpump of various machinations involving the rumors of Yolanda Foster having Munchausen syndrome. The last installment centered primarily on whether or not Lisa had said, on the way out of somewhere, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you involve Kyle?\u201d and whether this constituted throwing Kyle under the bus, and how long Kyle had known this information, and what it meant if it was true, and if Kyle is Lisa Vanderpump\u2019s toady, and whether or not Lisa Vanderpump has a hard time apologizing, generally. It would be a good exercise in language proficiency to have to translate this entire situation to the proverbial extraterrestrial. Even by the standards of the Real Housewives<\/em> franchise it was petty to the point of inscrutability\u2014idiotic and exhausting. It combined the moral rectitude of the Weimar Republic with the elegant good taste of a Trump building.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There\u2019s one thing the housewives are very given to saying: \u201cOwn it!\u201d And variations thereon: \u201cOwn your shit\u201d is popular, also, \u201cOwn it and move on,\u201d and, of course, \u201cI own that.\u201d In a world of naked acquisition, \u201cowning\u201d something is tantamount to social absolution. There is nothing so powerful as owning\u2014owning your shit, owning your truth, owning your power. The show didn\u2019t even need the montage of the women riding through a gilded Dubai mall in a bejeweled golf cart. Its fixation on ownership is no more grotesquely obvious than any other aspect of the show, which is not even funny anymore, unless you think Punch and Judy shows are hilarious. But it\u2019s sort of interesting. I asked an economist friend about this, and she agreed that it was something. She obviously doesn\u2019t watch the show.<\/p>\n

Lisa Rinna, a daytime TV fixture with an unwavering belief in fame, is particularly fond of \u201cowning\u201d things. \u201cOWN IT!\u201d she screeches. And it\u2019s true, anything but full ownership would not have the same landing power. \u201cLease it!\u201d \u201cRent it!\u201d \u201cBorrow it!\u201d \u201cLet producers buy it for you on camera and then return it!\u201d just don\u2019t sound as\u00a0rich<\/em>. Even if it would be more appropriate to the situation in just about every sense.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sadie Stein is contributing editor of <\/em>The Paris Review, and the <\/em>Daily\u2019s correspondent.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Those of you who were spared the three chapters of the saga that was The\u00a0Real Housewives of Beverly Hills\u00a0\u201cReunion\u201d\u00a0missed something. Well, you missed a lot of things\u2014mainly people accusing Lisa Vanderpump of various machinations involving the rumors of Yolanda Foster having Munchausen syndrome. The last installment centered primarily on whether or not Lisa had said, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[15519,687,22198,22197,22193,22194,22195,22196,54],"class_list":["post-97693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-dubai","tag-language","tag-lisa-rinna","tag-lisa-vanderpump","tag-ownership","tag-owning","tag-possession","tag-real-housewives-of-beverly-hills","tag-television"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\u201cOwn It!\u201d: The Most Grating Phrase of the Moment<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In a world of naked acquisition, \u201cowning\u201d something is tantamount to social absolution.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/05\/04\/ownership-culture\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ownership Culture by Sadie Stein\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"May 4, 2016 \u2013 Those of you who were spared the three chapters of the saga that was The\u00a0Real Housewives of Beverly Hills\u00a0\u201cReunion\u201d\u00a0missed something. 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