Book Review: Branded Women in U.S. Television: When People Become Corporations, by Peter BjelskouBranded Women in U.S. Television: When People Become Corporations. BjelskouPeter. New York, New York: Lexington Books, 2015. 146 pp. $75 hbk.

Branded Women in U.S. Television: When People Become Corporations. Peter Bjelskou. New York, New York: Lexington Books, 2015. 146 pp. $75 hbk.The "empirical nucleus" of Bjelskou's study is Bravo TV's Real Housewives of New York City (RHONY), one iteration of the reality show franchise that began in Orange County, California, in 2006, and spread to six other cities. Bravo, a leader in cable TV's lifestyle showcasing, is an apt forum for the author's meditations on the conflation of product promotion and entertainment.Viewers of the show will be well familiar with its wealthy "housewife" protagonists. Bjelskou explores the development of the women's brands, emphasizing the focus on their bodies as the vehicles they discipline and control to achieve financial success and fame. Skinnygirl Bethenny Frankel is the poster woman for reality TV success with her empire of books, talk show, skincare line, and more. Non-viewers will nonetheless find this textual analysis provides insightful commentary on reality TV and contemporary media culture.By investigating individual personalities from the show-and the particular circumstances that presumably ushered the way to their brands-Bjelskou describes how each presents herself and how her behavior fits into the larger category of branding at work in the media universe. These women have joined a swarm of "Bravolebrities" and, clearly, the "housewives" are not traditional iterations of the term. Celebrity is a major subject here, especially its current run of democratization, engendering, the author posits, unrealistic expectations, and entitlements. Wealthy lifestyles are implied to be attainable via the array of commodities presented, so that reality TV is complicit in "the neoliberal Promised Land," as Bjelskou writes in his introduction, "where wealth and fame are available to all who desire them." Race and class-in RHONY's case, quite pronouncedly, White and monied-dominate these narratives.TV is increasingly fictionalized, as the author notes, but whereas a drama like the 1980s' Dynasty is aspirational perhaps but more pointedly escapist, RHONY and its reality ilk are self-referential to an equally extreme degree. Because we see the process of these women making successes of themselves-whereas the Dynasty's Carringtons were offered up as an already completed project-the desired message delivered by the housewives is that it is possible for the viewer to emulate them, approximating the manner of a self-help program. It is reminiscent of that other guidebook from the 1995 bestseller, The Rules: Time-Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right, which also inundated women with behavior directives, that is, "Do this and you will be successful like me." Both resources are strongly and purposefully biased and easily become a target of vitriol or comedy. With regard to extremes, Bjelskou also spends some warranted attention on levels and uses of camp in RHONY. In so doing, he compares its aesthetic values with other shows like Sex and the City, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (an early RHONY progenitor on Bravo), and Desperate Housewives (of which RHONY is an "ironic comment"). …