Frances

OMG -- that makes me insane! I've seen Carole shame critics on Twitter for tiny things that could be typos. Her writing is full of spelling and grammar errors.

I remember her schtick around food resembled what I know of eating disorder therapy, which has a lot to do with eliminating cycles of restriction of "forbidden" foods and binge/emotional eating. I seem to remember her saying that there were no rules against certain kinds of foods (e.g., French fries) and the only rules are things like "no food noise" (obsessive, anxious worrying about food and exercise) and no binging. The theory behind that approach in the eating disorder landscape is that your body will just reach a natural "set point" -- someplace that is neither overweight nor underweight for your particular body. I think that's actually what Bethenny is referring to by "Naturally Thin," but she branded it in a different way. I'm not sure how I feel about her use of the words "thin" or "skinny," but understand that it was a marketing choice at the time. The correct term is "fat shaming," not "skinny shaming," although I have never thought that Bethenny's brand really was fat shaming (it might have been a little tone deaf). But even if it was, Carole doesn't know the correct term, which suggests to me that she doesn't really know or care much about the relevant issues around fatness and body image. She was just using a term (incorrectly) as a way to get at Bethenny. On a not unrelated note, I don't think Carole understands what "age shaming" or "ageism" mean to people who are really concerned about those issues. Just like she doesn't understand what the term "bullying" means to people who are concerned about bullying. And she doesn't understand what being "tone deaf" around race and ethnicity and culture means to people who are actually concerned about those issues. She just appropriates and misuses a lot of phrases she thinks have something to do with being politically righteous.

I completely agree with this!!! I actually don't think Bethenny ever made that big of a deal of Carole and Tinsley's closeness. She said exactly one time that they were "BFFs" and "thick as thieves," and she appeared vulnerable and sensitive to the relationship in Cartagena -- even jealous. So what? From watching the show, I didn't feel like she was spinning a huge story about Carole so much as she was just processing her own feelings and perception of the situation. That's what everyone does is situations where they're being ghosted, or faded out, or just experiencing a shift in a relationship. They come up with speculative theories about what was happening. Whether those theories are true or not doesn't matter. There was nothing even remotely defamatory in what Bethenny said. Carole is the one who repeated the terms "BFF" and "thick as thieves" over and over and over and over. It didn't need to matter. Now her story is that she and Bethenny were never that close, and she just got focussed on other stuff and wanted more space to focus on herself. What's the difference? That's a comparable explanation to the idea that she became closer friends with Tinsley. Neither explanation is better or worse. Why focus so much on the accuracy? Carole seems obsessed with defining the level of closeness of all her relationships -- letting everyone know that she is simultaneously so cool that she won't define anything, but also that she's super #rideordie. Teenagers sometimes present themselves that way, because they tend to have idealized understandings of their own identities. Adults know that it's okay to be vulnerable and crave intimacy, and also that none of us can be loyal all the time. I think Carole is mainly angry that Bethenny undermined Carole's "cool girl" autobiography, and the main problem with that is it just wasn't cool to begin with.

I think you are dead on! I have also always noticed that Carole has a very distinctive way of emphasizing the word "girl" in self-narration. The other women often refer to the whole group in terms of "the girls." But Carole is constantly talking about "the kind of girl" she is, and she has a tendency to paint pejorative pictures of a generic type of woman and follow up by saying "I'm not that girl." Carole claims to be less self-involved than someone like Bethenny who is so focussed on personal drama and her brand. But, for me Carole seems constantly to be doing autobiography, and that often involves distinguishing herself from (and implicitly saying she is superior to) caricatures she draws of types of women. I think her use of the word "girl" is a big part of that.

Never gets old. Just saw an interview with Carole. I think her favourite way to avoid taking responsibility is to describe herself, and then say "I'm not that girl."

Thank you, Anna! This is so amazing!!

Jovani, indeed! This is pretty much my favourite post ever. I especially appreciate the incisive comments on Carole's comments about "Indian." I could not believe how offensive and just plain stupid that was!

I think she should have done some more of them, or just stuck with shorter distances. She just didn't look prepared for that marathon.

I really noticed how terrible her form is, too! She looked so uncomfortable, and in the footage I saw she was mostly walking...and then having trouble even walking. It would have been much better for her to start with something like a half-marathon, or even just a 10K, and try to learn to be more comfortable in her body. I agree that the marathon probably messed up her body.

I am beginning to believe that Carole actually believes her own bullshit -- as in, she does lie sometimes, but often she's not so much lying as she's become very, very, very sane, as in the intensity and attention have gotten into her head, and she's just living in some alternate reality she and her puppets have constructed. Kind of like her pal POTUS 45.

When I saw that post, I cringed with embarrassment for her. Bragging about being ahead of the game fashion-wise? It's so juvenile, I can't even... Bethenny made a couple of modest comments about how Carole had become pretty oriented to superficial things like her appearance. I'd like someone to count the number of comments, because I did not hear her repeating this stuff even a fraction as much as Carole repeated it. And Carole went apeshit about Bethenny's false narration and lying. But Carole is the one doing the things that make her look vain and superficial (and juvenile). How she cannot see that is beyond me. I actually think Carole draws attention to her fashion sense and how sexy her body is more than most of the other housewives. Ramona is pretty vain and superficial too, though she would never try to deny that. Carole doesn't like being compared with girly girl Tinsley. Tinsley did the glam squad thing in Cartagena and she seems to have some obsession about having her hair done. But other than that, I don't see her constantly saying "look at how cool and sexy my clothes are...look at how hot my body is..." the way Carole does.

I agree it's desperate. And hypocritical, but no surprises there. She knows a lot of people will assume that she landed a new job, so she's trying to create a narrative by implication. Signing with an agency suggests she's looking for new projects. Kind of wondering about two possible scenarios: One is that she just signed up with the new agency so she could make a big announcement and keep the drama going. The second is that she knew she was at loose-ends career-wise all along, and just constructed this huge drama with Bethenny to get her name in the media spotlight (and she doesn't actually mind that the press she's getting is negative).

Ha-- that's so awesome. Thank you. "You get the face you deserve!"

Oh...someone must have forgot to give us the memo that she was holding Bethenny "accountable." That's not what I thought accountability means, but I am not the kind of girl who is very, very, very sane and has a huge hippocampus. I just remembered Teddi Mellencamp and her accountability coach business. Can't stop thinking Carole should send in her stellar resume. Or maybe she already did and the reunion was like an audition.

YES! Let's set a couple of things aside. First, it's not bashing and bullying to say that someone needs to have a best friend. It's not bashing and bullying to create a narrative that someone needs to have a best friend, even if that narrative is false. It's also not bashing and bullying to use that narrative as an explanation of why your friend started to distance themselves from you. Second, sometimes people just make up explanations for why things happened in the moment to explain it to themselves. The BFF comment might have been a bit exaggerated, but who cares? Children take labels like "best friend" super seriously -- it's like an occupation. Adults kind of throw that language around a bit more casually. All Bethenny seemed to mean was that there was something different about her relationship with Carole, and Carole seemed to be hanging out with Tinsley a lot. Carole latched on to this "BFF" and "thick as thieves" language and blew it up into something it didn't need to be. But let's say Carole is right, and I'm wrong about the above. Let's say Bethenny actually slandered her by creating a narrative that "Carole's the kind of person who needs to have a best friend." Why on god's green earth is Carole going out of her way to prove Bethenny right? Carole makes no sense.

I love it too. Please let this become a meme.

Most hilarious to me is that, if Carole wants to suggest that wearing lingerie as outerwear is her job, or the thing she's most outstandingly good at -- what metier actually means -- she is either making herself look more pathetic about this career thing, or proving that her "tongue-in-cheek" humour is just kind of stupid. Maybe a bit of both.

Metier?! My puny hippocampus can't process how funny/clever that is. Maybe Carole could give a Twitter seminar to explain it, if she can ever find the time in her cool schedule.

I was a bit disappointed too...but, I will say that, by my count, Bethenny has put out exactly two tweets to egg Carole on, and to me, it seemed each one was timed just-so and crafted to hit just where it would hurt. Bethenny does go low, but when she does, she doesn't mess around. Carole on the other hand looks (to me) like she's tripping over her own feet with her pseudo-smart bullshit. I saw some Tweet within the past couple of weeks -- can't find it in her mountain of word salad -- that "corrected" someone's observation that one of her self-narratives (last good summer, maybe?) was pathetic or something to that effect. She schooled them by letting them know something like that it was tongue-in-cheek and therefore clever. Is there any clearer sign that you're not funny and clever than explaining that you are?

I've always kind of thought this myself, but not wanted to comment on it. She constantly drinks diet coke, and even though she always talked about a junk-food diet before the marathon, it sort of seemed like she was just not "into" food -- so she probably did eat junk food, but not very much of it. I have spent my fair share of time in contexts where dieting is considered a bit gauche and uncool, but all the women are rail thin by some amazing stroke of metabolism. A pretty common approach to food is not being interested in it, along with coffee and diet coke. I remember that vodka, cucumbers, and butter joke, because that really, honestly sounded like the kind of combination someone with an eating disorder would think up. I know someone who was anorexic who used to get a huge kick out of having nothing but gin and olives in her kitchen. (I've also spent a lot of time around women with eating disorders.) ETA: I am not saying Carole has an eating disorder. I just suspect that she works at her weight.

Was it really a half-marathon? Wow. When I watched the episode, I noticed she had pretty awkward running form and was mostly walking -- not crimes at all. I feel like something about exercising for the first time and doing a race got into her head. Those things are awesome. But she kind of lost sight of the fact that amateur running is the most boring thing in the world to everyone except the people doing it. I am the most mediocre of runners, and have done a few half marathons. I've had someone close to me meet me at the finish line -- as in arrived fifteen minutes before my estimated completion time, and then we went to lunch and mostly talked about something else. I was so honoured! If all my friends showed up and decided to throw me a party, I'd wonder if something was wrong. What would happen if Carole took up cross-fit? ETA: I see above that it really was the full marathon. Okay. Kudos for that, Carole -- that's a long, long race. I still stand by saying amateur running is boring. I mean, let's be honest, running is boring unless you're being chased.

Thanks for pointing out the Bethenny to Dorinda exchange! (It's always interesting to me how the whole season gives an impression, but I can't always really remember the details.) I agree with what you say about journalism being teamwork. I still don't feel comfortable judging the quality of someone's work or their skill on the basis of awards, especially ones from a long time ago, where I don't know much about the context. It's not that we should discount awards, but they don't give the most well-rounded picture. I'll also admit that I just really, really don't like Carole's writing, and I know others would disagree with me on that. And I'm suspicious of her abilities as a journalist because she seems to me to suffer from tunnel-vision and to be a poor fact checker.

I have not read Carole's books (and have no interest), but find the writing in her blogs and even her Tweeting shockingly bad for someone who claims to be a writer. It's full of spelling and grammar mistakes and malapropisms, but that's not even the issue. For me, it's just so bombastic, and in an almost embarrassingly amateurish way. A lot of the writing on this forum puts Carole's blog writing to shame. Bravo's target audience is urban, upwardly mobile, educated women. The whole brand is elevated trash television -- guilty pleasures for the literate. So, I'm willing to agree that my opinion that Carole's writing is bad is just an opinion. But she's not producing highbrow literature, and, even if she were, the people who watch Bravo could handle it.

I remember Bethenny first saying that Carole didn't have a career in one of the TH -- as part of a list of things Carole has in common with Tinsley. I didn't think she repeated it again until the reunion, in response to Carole's repeatedly saying she had been bashed and having arguably bashed back (taking shots at Bethenny's career) on her blog. I could be missing something, but I don't remember Bethenny being repetitive about the career thing outside the confrontation at the reunion. I have seen and continue to see Carole being repetitive about the career thing (and a lot of other things) over a longer stretch of time and all over the internet. Bethenny kind of wants to say the career comment was a neutral fact, not bashing. Okay..I think it was a bit of a dig, and that Bethenny knows this. But a little dig is not the same thing as bashing or bullying or slander. And the dig exploits the fact that Carole's whole persona from the very beginning was boho writer girl who doesn't understand deadlines and contracts, and leads a fancy-free life: "No work and all play makes me a happy girl." So Carole is stuck with having already suggested that she's fine with being known as a slacker. I actually think the slacker persona is contrived. All the journalists and writers I know (I work in publishing) are workaholics -- you have to be to stay relevant. Carole says in her bio on her website that at least part of the reason she took the RHONY job was the paycheque, and, I mean, she's hawking used clothes on the internet. I think the other (unstated) reason she took the job was to try to make herself relevant in media again after a long work hiatus. And that that's the reason she's so angry about Bethenny saying she doesn't have a career. But just a theory. I would never say Carole never had a career, or one that she couldn't be proud of. But I also think the prestige of her career is greatly exaggerated, and the fact that most of her accomplishments are so dated helps to hide that -- we can't see her journalistic work right in front of us. I think the awards are for group projects, which we don't have in front of us to see, and we don't know what role Carole played. The main piece of work we have to judge her by is her memoir. Some great writers have written about themselves, including in memoirs, but I don't know any career writer whose main accomplishment is limited to one mostly autobiographical narrative.

I think Carole's goal is to convince the audience that Bethenny is a liar and a bad person, and that and Carole is a truth-teller and a good person. And part of this is combating the implication that because she and Tinsley were BFFs, she didn't have time to be a friend to Bethenny anymore. My problem is that she can't accept that it's not working. To me, proving that the reason for the shift in friendship wasn't Tinsley does nothing to prove that Bethenny is a liar or a bad person. Maybe Bethenny just misinterpreted the situation -- that doesn't make her a liar. I actually don't think the issue of how close Tinsley and Carole were is black-and-white (Tinsley sure seems to have perceived it differently). I also don't think how much or little the T&C friendship had to do with Carole's shift with Bethenny is black-and-white. So, for me, Carole is arguing about a point that can't be proved one way or the other. But let's just say, for argument's sake, that Bethenny exaggerated or misrepresented what she was seeing. Rejection hurts, and most normal people deal with it by telling stories that makes themselves feel better, sometimes stretching imagination. (That's exactly what Carole seems to be doing with her narrative about Adam.) Doing that doesn't make anyone a liar or a bad person -- it just reflects that humans do weird shit to protect the psyche from pain. For me, the really dumb part of this is that Carole imagines that this is a good and evil story that hinges on who is responsible for the shift in her friendship with Bethenny. I don't think that's what matters. What matters is how each person has handled the shift in friendship. Both have behaved poorly, and Carole looks especially bad because she won't stop beating dead horses that expose her hubris and hypocrisy. Also, Carole is not only humiliating Tinsley, she's making herself look like a total asshole in the process. And people are telling her, but she won't stop. That seems pathological.