Alice Coster: Reality TV can teach us some big life lessons

Anyone who has binged their fair share of reality TV, like a dirty secret while no one else is watching, knows haters gonna hate — but they also know it offers pearls of wisdom for life.

Reality TV can offer us some pearls of wisdom to live by.

Who needs a therapist when you have friends?

This pearl of wisdom came from the reality kween herself, Kim Kardashian.

Out with her girlfriends celebrating her 43rd birthday, with the camera crews of course in tow and the “glam” full throttle, The Kardashian star gushed about hitting the jackpot in the friends department with her “lifer” girl gang.

Having just hung up from the best friend, for the fourth time that day (it was five minutes past midday), I was picking up what Kim was putting down.

Kim’s birthday speech about her inner circle being the gatekeepers to all her life’s secrets and sins, her support valve at any given moment, and how she was never in need of a therapist because of them couldn’t ring more true for practically every woman out there.

Because we all need our give or take handful of friends, or in Kardashian-speak our “ride-or-dies”, to rely on when the going gets tough.

Most of the time it’s just as a great leveller to co-regulate, vent and whinge about the day’s routines. Mundane, repetitive, day-to-day stuff. Work deadlines. Parents. If it was a good (or particularly bad) morning before school drop-off. How sleep now hurts. The ex. How to change an inappropriate Fortnite username (it takes two weeks). The price of eggs. Picking up towels. What show to watch.

Sometimes it’s the big stuff.

Don’t dismiss the value in reality TV.

Priced out of Melbourne, a husband wanting to uproot the family to the country as costs continue to cripple and a fear of isolation and losing oneself creeps in. A lump. Loneliness. A fractured fallout between siblings. Trying to refrain from tropes like “it will get better” even though you know it will, as your friend sheds tears in the throes of a gut-smacking separation. Sickness. Parents. Holding the phone to the agonised sound of another baby lost, counselling them there is still hope, when it seems all but wrenched.

Kim’s sentiment got me thinking about all the life lessons we can learn from reality television.

Now before you cruelly curl your lip and look down your highbrow nose. Before you snort about reality television being pure trash, rotting your brain and that there are SO many better ways to spend your time. Just hear me out.

Besides you would have stopped reading at the mere utterance of Kim Kardashian if you were a real hater.

Because anyone who has binged their fair share of reality TV like a dirty secret while no one else is watching, knows in the immortal words of Kim Kardashian’s arch enemy Taylor Swift: haters gonna hate.

I know because I was once a hater, too.

Turns out the Housewives franchise is a gateway drug into Bravo TV. Picture: AFP

Watching BritBox on repeat, I’d sneer at anything Scandoval-related. I’d tune out at Captain Sandy’s power plays between deck and interiors, or if Beverly Hill’s Housewife Kyle Richards new tattoos were a telltale sign of imminent separation.

But there are only so many female corpses getting dredged out of swampy marshes in BBC crime dramas one can take. No longer could I muster watching another missing child found by an on-the-spectrum male detective inspector at the bottom of a cliff’s edge in a sleepy coastal UK town.

So the remote found its way flicking to all things Housewives. Turns out the franchise (from blinged up Beverly Hills to Salt Lake City Mormon housewives, c’mon, the pure heaven of it all!) is a gateway drug into Bravo TV. Suddenly the remote is like a crackhead, bingeing on back seasons of Below Deck, which led to Winter House, only to find a whole new fix of cracky-castmates at Southern Charm and now the new Holy Grail, Summer House.

Pure escapism at its best, it turns out the sisterhood is alive and well in the Hamptons beach house where rich 20ish-somethings with dubious job titles skol Loverboy party-in-the-cans and hook up on the weekend. But who knew last week’s reunion with Bravo king Andy Cohen was the group therapy session we all needed.

Bingeing on back seasons of Below Deck is pure heaven. Picture: Bravo TV

The stare, the glare, the total take-down of hero-to-zero f-boy West Wilson from my new favourite TV girl crush Paige DeSorbo. It was powerful women coming at an entitled man in all its reality cringe glory best. As they say in the Bravo classics, Paige ate.

So if you still can’t fathom submerging into the reality TV world crack den, here are some quick takeaways to live by.

BE LOYAL. Don’t cheat, lie or hook up with your bestie’s boyfriend. It will always, repeat always, bring bad juju and the girls will always have your back long after the boy who is bad in bed has gone.

SPEAK YOUR TRUTH. This is a big one in Housewife land. Beliefs need to be in line with actions and holding on to a lie takes an immense amount of energy to live without being congruent and eventually leads to being sick.

DON’T LIVE IN THE COMMENTS SECTION. Put simply, don’t tailor your behaviour so that others will like you more.

And most importantly, DO THE TEQUILA SHOT and live life!

Alice Coster is a Herald Sun columnist