Sliding Into the 'Cool' Nerds Table!

At one point during my chat with Dr. Wendy Osefo, PhD of Real Housewives of Potomac and “four degrees” fame, we repeated the iconic line that happened between Nene Leakes and Kandi Burress during one of the many, many reunions they sat through for The Real Housewives of Atlanta.

“We see each other!”

And we do.

From the moment I reconnected with Wendy (we both ran in overlapping circles back when I was living in Washington, D.C.), it was a meeting of mutuality. The high school nerd girl struggle is real, whether you were a cool nerd like Wendy or just a struggling, tragic extrovert/emotional nerd like myself, and it continues to be a struggle if you’re engaging in a world that doesn’t always respect the things a nerd — cool or not — brings to a platform like Real Housewives.

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In my latest for HuffPost, I sat down with Wendy to chat about this season of Potomac and the DRAMA of the show. It’s my first published piece for 2024, a year where I’m hoping to write more.

For you non-writers, there are two types of writers — ones who keep everything short and struggle to elaborate, and ones who are famously long-winded and have to kill many of their “darlings,” aka the meaty paragraphs that serve nothing, but read nicely! This should shock NO ONE who knows me, but I’m an overwriter. I write too damn much, child.

So here, for your amusement are the top four sections I had to cut from my Wendy Osefo profile:

ON HIGH SCHOOL AND HOUSEWIVES: While I’ve been told that Gen Z is less, um, ridiculous about the high school drama (thank the Lord), there are no Gen Z Housewives. This is a game played by women in their mid-30s and up, so it’s predominantly the territory of Gen Xers and Millennials who all bear the battle scars from the tyranny of the popular girl clique and either being in it or NOT in it as a young adult. Therefore, the Real Housewives franchise is unmoved and unchanged by how passe this all plays out during a time when most women work; where looks are still important, but are supposed to be secondary; where most women feel they have to go to college just to survive, forget thrive; and most women have accepted that this may or may not come with a man or any kind of partner. But at the end of the day (a common phrase on reality TV), it’s all reduced down to man/clothes/house on Bravo, and Osefo has an adoring man, wears nice clothes, and lives in a lovely home with said man and her three children. Yet, if the mess stopped there, we could just crown her queen of the ‘wives and move on, but it’s not that simple.

ON MY HOUSEWIVES HABIT: I consider myself a student of all this, obsessed with it in fact, due to my own traumatizing experience with childhood bullying. I was a nerd and tragically “uncool,” despite my many, many pointless efforts at being cool. For me, watching old episodes of Bad Girls Club or Real Housewives of Potomac is my way of exercising the demons that once plagued me by finding out what happened to all the so-called “prettiest” and “most popular” girls in college and high school who thought this currency would extend into the real world. Basically, for huge swaths of these former debutantes, it is a wasteland of cheating allegations, broken engagements, divorce, and struggle until Housewives creator Andy Cohen came along and offered up the chance of a lifetime to start a clothing/makeup/liquor/three-wick candle business on the side while exercising their own personal demons on national television for our amusement.

ON MY EXCITEMENT/BEFUDDLEMENT OF SEEING A FELLOW NERD ON HOUSEWIVES: So I say all this to say (another reality cliche), I was always surprised that Osefo even wanted to join the circus considering she’s not from this former group of Housewives desperately clamoring for a second-act after the first blew up in their faces. No, Osefo is actually from the latter, smaller group of women who actually seem to LIKE their significant others (or being single), and have “real careers” that actually translate into the power and influence others are trying to get by joining Housewives. Think Jenna Lyons, legendary fashion impresario, who seems befuddled as to how she ended up on Real Housewives of New York, or Dr. Nicole Martin, a successful anesthesiologist, who also, at times, seems flustered over how ridiculous things can get on the very unserious Real Housewives of Miami. They seem to exist on these shows for no other reason than … I guess they like to fight on the quippiest, funniest, most high-stakes level? Perhaps as an exercise in extroversion for introverts on the spectrum? They really don’t need this! As in, Osefo doesn't quite need this either. She has four degrees! She’s a professor at John Hopkins! She’s on MSNBC! She likes her husband! Girl, why are you here? 

Or to put it another way by quoting Housewives icon, Nene Leakes, where is your scooter?

“People didn't understand how I could occupy the space of a professor, but also get plastic surgery,” said Osefo. “Like, no, professors don't dress like you. Professors don't look like you. Professors don't get their nails done. And the truth is, I am a multi-hyphenate not just in my career, but in who Wendy is. I occupy different spaces. And it's okay to be like that.”

AND THIS BIT OF SHADE: It’s no knock to those using this as a platform to de-platform a man, as I am a fan who loves all Housewives, even the terrible ones. But the reality is some housewives need Housewives and others are just there for the lulz. I don’t need to point out who’s who. The whole point of “shade” (the no. 1 verbal gymnastic competition ‘wives engage in) is you already know what I know and we all know to be true. Don’t get mad at me for pointing it out!

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