Loyal readers know that the zeitgeist-y conversation of reality television of late has been the making of reality shows and how the genre has changed in recent years, specifically post-Scandoval and post-The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City season four, because those two shows broke the fourth wall in new, surprising ways. There’s also been talk about what exactly belongs on reality shows, content-wise. Was Mary Cosby’s story about her experience caring for her son amidst his drug addiction too dark? Is it okay that Kyle Richards is hiding so much of her divorce from cameras? And why are we beating the dead horse that is John Janssen by letting his new girlfriend and certified fame junkie, Alexis Bellino, back on the show to torture Shannon Beador?
Somewhere within these debates, The Real Housewives of New York City was back for its second season with a new cast. Last season, Brynn Whitfield established herself as the happy-go-lucky good-time girl. Her tagline for her first season was, “I love to laugh, but make me mad and I’ll date your dad.” She was flirty and unserious but still had depth; she opened up about her childhood and her struggles as a mixed-race woman who passes for white. That combination of fun and profundity is what endeared her to viewers.
This season, though, Brynn was so obsessed with fertility and starting a family that she took it out on her unsuspecting castmates. Behind her back, the women were sympathetic because almost all of them are mothers. All of them except for Ubah Hassan.
The very thing that endears Brynn to viewers—her fun and flirtatious nature—for some reason rubs Ubah the wrong way. That’s why, when they were fighting while on a cast trip to Puerto Rico, Ubah insinuated that Brynn might be the kind of person who slept with people to get a job. Specifically, this job. Of being a Housewife.
This is, of course, a reckless and damaging comment and Brynn was rightfully horrified and offended. The rest of the day/episode was thus taken up by the argument about the comment, culminating in Brynn’s tearful confession to some of the other women that she had been the victim of a sexual assault and that Ubah was aware of this. In light of that information, Ubah’s insult isn’t just offensive but malicious—as if she was weaponizing Brynn’s sexuality and how that might have been taken advantage of against her.
This was not the first we’d ever heard of Brynn’s assault; earlier in the season she filmed a scene in which she talked about it with her brother. This was, however, the first time anyone else on the cast had heard of it, and they had the expected reaction of sympathy and sadness for her. It could have and should have ended there. Ubah would have found out at the reunion that Brynn accused her of using her assault against her, which would have been dark enough, but a resolution could have, I think, been achieved. Both women could have defended themselves in front of everyone.
Instead, cameras went down, mics went off, and Jessel Taank went to Ubah to tell her what Brynn said. From the hotel security camera and whatever stand-by cameras were still operational, Ubah’s screams of distress could be heard coming from her room. What happened next was pieced together from residual footage and confessional explanations from the other women: Ubah ran to them and screamed in their faces that she didn’t know about Brynn’s assault, that she would never have said what she said if she did, that she swears on everything she believes in and holds dear that Brynn is lying. Brynn comes out into the hallway, Ubah confronts her, then producers send everyone back to their rooms, but Ubah is so upset that she and Jessel leave for another hotel. After that, according to the rest of the cast, they all went into Jenna Lyons’s room to console Brynn, where she said, “Now that I think about it, maybe she didn’t clock it.” When Brynn was making this confession to Ubah, it was over the phone, and she was already hysterical about the death of a friend, so maybe in the chaos of that conversation, Ubah didn’t understand what she was saying.
“It’s not right to assume that everyone remembers everything that you say all the time and then hold them accountable for that. I know for a fact that I said it, but when someone’s screaming into the phone, the other person might not necessarily hear them,” Brynn has since told Rolling Stone.
The next morning, Brynn left. When Ubah and Jessel returned, the rest of the women were extremely apologetic to Ubah, and the consensus was that everyone wholeheartedly believed that Brynn was assaulted, but felt lied to and manipulated about the rest.
Everyone looks bad in this scenario; both Ubah and Brynn made irresponsible allegations about each other. But here’s the thing: the crux of this conflict is a sexual assault. That’s the wrong thing. That’s the problem. A woman was assaulted. There could have been an effective story in there somewhere about surviving sexual assault, but instead, no matter how much everyone involved says they believe her story, the survivor in question is now being doubted.
In the world and country we live in right now, there is simply no place for any story, no matter how complex, that makes room for even a little bit of doubt about women reporting sexual assault and rape. Forget darkness, forget realness, forget fourth walls or fifth or sixth walls—I would have rather had a disappointing ending to a boring reality show then have given a story about doubting survivors any airtime at all.