Quotes & Sayings About Housewives

'Desperate Housewives' was a good experience, though, as I got to play the bad guy for once. My only complaint was they had me in a lot of sweaters. — John Barrowman

By now, legions of tireless essayists and op-ed columnists have dressed feminists down for making such a fuss about entering the professions and earning equal pay that everyone's attention has been distracted from the important contributions of mothers working at home. This judgment presumes, of course, that prior to the resurgence of feminism in the '70s, housewives and mothers enjoyed wide recognition and honor. This was not exactly the case. — Mary Blakely

Priests always had much attention lavished on them by their starstruck fans,those devout housewives and wealthy congregants who treated them as if they were guardians of the velvet rope blocking entrance into that ever so exclusive nightclub, Heaven. — Viet Thanh Nguyen

Well, at least she doesn't have to be a housewife the rest of her life," she said. "What in the hell do you have against housewives?" I said. "I was raised by one," Savannah said. "And it almost ruined my life." "I got knocked around by a shrimper when I was a kid," said Luke, "but I never blamed the shrimp. — Pat Conroy

It's funny because I want my teeth to be, like, neon 'Real Housewives' white, but mine have stopped taking to teeth whitening. When I talk to my dentist, I'm like, 'They can be that white,' and he's like, 'Veneers can be that white.' — Christine Teigen

Because I'm shooting 'The New Normal' and 'Real Housewives of Atlanta' at the same time, so my schedule is double. I leave one show and go and shoot the other. The cameras are with me for, like, every day of my life. So I'm extremely tired. — NeNe Leakes

Play on lively, diversified sidewalks differs from virtually all other daily incidental play offered American children today: It is play not conducted in a matriarchy.
Most city architectural designers and planners are men. Curiously, they design and plan to exclude men as part of normal, daytime life wherever people live. In planning residential life, they aim at filling the presumed daily needs of impossibly vacuous housewives and preschool tots. They plan, in short, strictly for matriarchal societies. — Jane Jacobs

Leda, Lula and Rochelle had not been women like Lucy, or his Aunt Joan; they had not taken every reasonable precaution against violence or chance; they had not tethered themselves to life with mortgages and voluntary work, safe husbands and clean-faced dependants: their deaths, therefore, were not classed as "tragic," in the same way as those of staid and respectable housewives. — Robert Galbraith

I watch every 'Real Housewives' franchise there is. — Shanola Hampton

I have terrible taste in things: music, movies, TV shows. I love all the guilty pleasures: Bravo, 'Real Housewives.' — Grace Helbig

The housewife is an unpaid worker in her husband's house in return for the security of being a permanent employee: hers is the reductio ad absurdum of the employee who accepts a lower wage in return for permanence of his employment. But the lowest paid employees can be and are laid off, and so are wives. They have no savings, no skills which they can bargain with elsewhere, and they must bear the stigma of having been sacked. — Germaine Greer

Housewives of the 1950s were supposed to create show-stopping meals every night for their hard-working husbands. — Caroline Leavitt

Women who 'adjust' as housewives, who grow up wanting to be 'just a housewife,' are in as much danger as the millions who walked to their own death in the concentration camps ... they ate suffering a slow death of mind and spirit. — Betty Friedan

You have to have competent people evaluating the athlete, not the housewives! — Bela Karolyi

When we wake up and see reality as it is, a lot of people blame feminism. They twist everything around and claim that the feminist vision creates demands which are too high and contradictory, demands that break overworked women down with stress. They claim that everything was so much easier when women were housewives without the demands of work and career. Motherhood and a clean home were a woman's self-realization. Today most women work two jobs, one outside and one inside the home. Yet if we lived equally and men took just as much responsibility for the children and the home, women would not be broken down by the stress. Perhaps it is only possible to accept the difficulties if you see feminism as a resistance movement, and the only path to possible freedom. Because resistance almost always involves pain. — Maria Sveland

Hot dogs and Communion at the Hope Rescue Mission. I will always think of the body of Christ now with this scene in mind. Doctors and housewives and professors in nice shoes and brightly colored sweaters shuffling to the table together with men and women who hadn't changed clothes for days or weeks. The sophisticated smell of after-shave mixed with the sharp scent of dirty socks and stale smoke. People whose lives seemed all together sharing the same loaf with people whose lives were broken and tattered. We were all one body, for we all ate from the same loaf. — Leonard J. Vander Zee

In March and in April from morning till night In sowing and seeding good housewives delight. — Thomas Tusser

Housewives spend more money than their husbands make, so that other people think their husbands earn more money than they really do. — Danny Kaye

I worked in a grocery store my whole life, Honey-girl. I know what lonely housewives think of this."
"I meant the baby, Jerk."
"Attached to me."
"You think you're cute, don't you?"
"Are you honestly asking me this? I know you're not debating it. — Pella Grace

Well, if this place is going down, I'll just go home. I have hours of Real Housewives DVRed that I have to catch up on." Holli sounded almost bored at the idea of the top fashion magazine in the country going into a tailspin. Probably because no matter what happened, she would be fine. Holli didn't have an ego about her job, and would just as happily do cleaning product commercials as high-fashion shoots. I often used her somewhat lackadaisical approach to her career to get some perspective on my own. — Abigail Barnette

I just - I like the saccharin and the gooeyness of 'Bachelor,' and how just gross and like falsely romantic it is. Whereas, like, the 'Real Housewives' is just raw, and it's just - it's the fights that get me. It's just very uncomfortable for me. — Ken Marino

In spite of lip service paid to domestic duties, in 1881 the Census excluded women's household chores from the category of productive work and, for the first time, housewives were classified as unoccupied. — Gabrielle Palmer

In East Germany it was very normal for a woman to go out and work even if she had children. A few weeks after giving birth women would return to their normal working life. We never had housewives in East Germany. — Christian Schwochow

Thank you ... 'Real Housewives of Atlanta,' for demonstrating a universal truth: Idiots like me will always watch idiots like you fight on TV. You will forever be in my TiVo. — Jimmy Fallon

I'm very obsessed with 'The Real Housewives' franchise. It's a bad obsession. — Vanessa Marano

Ultimately, it's not my job to judge the 'Housewives' - we don't editorialize on the show; we really leave it to the audience. We have a certain wink, which is the Bravo wink. We may linger on a shot or we may let something play out longer, but we leave it to you. — Andy Cohen

I had to start watching [The Real Housewives of New Jersey] every week because, well, my IQ was just too high. I mean seriously up there. What can I tell you? After watching every episode, I am now officially as dumb as that brown, particle-like stuff you find outside and don't want to track inside the house. Rhymes with "wirt", I think. — Celia Rivenbark

Those women with collagen lips just look like frogs - 'muffin mouths,' I call them. There's not a line on their brows, and all the emotion gone from their faces, like all those actresses in 'Desperate Housewives.' — Barry Humphries

The politicians in Ireland speak Gaelic the way the Real Housewives of Orange County speak French. — Michael Lewis

American housewives have not had their brains shot away, nor are they schizophrenic in the clinical sense. But if ... the fundamental human drive is not the urge for pleasure or the satisfaction of biological needs, but the need to grow and to realize one's full potential, their comfortable, empty, purposeless days are indeed cause for a nameless terror. — Betty Friedan

And onto the screen pops a couple of housewives who start having a poop fit when they see how clean their new dish soap got the dinner plates — David James Duncan

Away from home. Young children stray from their parents and are never seen again. Housewives reach the end of their tether and take the grocery money and a taxi to the station. International financiers change their names and vanish — Diana Gabaldon

While I was doing 'Desperate Housewives,' I actually watched it from the beginning. — Daniela Bobadilla

I once used the word OBSOLETE in a headline, only to discover that 43 per cent of housewives had no idea what it meant. In another headline, I used the word INEFFABLE, only to discover that I didn't know what it meant myself. — David Ogilvy

I love the 'Housewives.' I don't watch 'American Idol' or 'X Factor.' I guess I don't like network reality: I like my Bravo; I like documentary programming - I love 'Intervention' and some things on TLC more than others - but the 'Real Housewives' to me are really revolutionary, in terms of giving camera time to women of a certain age. — Julie Klausner

The thing that's fun about the 'Housewives' is talking to your friends about it. — Andy Cohen

A sampler of England's hottest 'chefs' would include a mostly hairless young blond lad named Jamie Oliver, who is referred to as the Naked Chef. As best as I can comprehend, he's a really rich guy who pretends he scoots around on a Vespa, hangs out in some East End cold-water flat, and cooks green curry for his 'mates'. He's a TV chef, so few actually eat his food. I've never seen him naked. I believe the 'Naked' refers to his 'simple, straightforward, unadorned' food; though I gather that a great number of matronly housewives would like to believe otherwise. Every time I watch his show, I want to go back in time and bully him at school. — Anthony Bourdain

I was on 'Desperate Housewives' and that was my crash course on being on national television topless. Also, I do what I can in between scenes: push-ups, a little free weights. I knew going in it would be a big part of the show. — Josh Henderson

Prostitutes don't sell their bodies, they rent their bodies. Housewives sell their bodies when they get married ... — Florynce Kennedy

No one has a corner on depression, but housewives are working on it. — Gabrielle Burton

Oh, fine then. Let the Patron Saint of Desperate Housewives bestow upon us the blessings of his company. — Tracy Brogan

Until the middle of the twentieth century, men earned most of the income for the family, while women, as "traditional housewives," were responsible for providing services to family members and converting money into status.54 This was seen most clearly in the value placed on neatness, cleanliness, decorations, and entertaining as lavishly as budgets would allow. — Murray Milner Jr.

Women who were housewives, who were pretty miserable ... felt inspired by her book and their life changed. They didn't become megastars, but they became a librarian or something. I've heard women say again and again when the subject of Germaine comes up: 'Well, her book changed my life for the better.' And they'll be modest women living pretty ordinary lives, but better lives. — Germaine Greer

I am the Wizard of Oz of housewives (in that I am both "Great and Terrible" and because I sometimes hide behind the curtains — Jenny Lawson

What the housewives of Australia need to understand as they do the ironing is that if they get it done commercially it's going to go up in price and their own power bills when they switch the iron on are going to go up. — Tony Abbott

As for the military advantage of such a bombardment, I simply cannot grasp it. I have seen housewives disemboweled, children mutilated; I have seen the old itinerant market crone sponge from her treasure the brains with which they were spattered. I have seen a janitor's wife come out of her cellar and douse the sullied pavement with a bucket of water, and I am still unable to understand what part these humble slaughterhouse accidents play in warfare. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

I love a smart, well-written show, and '30 Rock,' well, you can't get any better than that. Tina Fey poos funny. There's nothing that she does that isn't funny. That show is an example of how brilliant she is. It's so smart. They've done some brilliant commentary about the 'Housewives' with 'Queen of Jordan,' their show-within-the-show. — Andy Cohen

There were, of course, other heroes, little ones who did little things to help people get through: merchants who let profits disappear rather than lay off clerks, store owners who accepted teachers' scrip at face value not knowing if the state would ever redeem it, churches that set up soup kitchens, landlords who let tenants stay on the place while other owners turned to cattle, housewives who set out plates of cold food (biscuits and sweet potatoes seemed the fare of choice) so transients could eat without begging, railroad "bulls" who turned the other way when hoboes slipped on and off the trains, affluent families that carefully wrapped leftover food because they knew that residents of "Hooverville" down by the dump would be scavenging their garbage for their next meal, and more, an more. But they were not enough, could not have been enough, so when the government stepped in to help, those needing help we're thankful. — Harvey H. Jackson

Perhaps all artists were, in a sense, housewives: tenders of the earth household. — Erica Jong

I'm pretty obsessed with 'The Real Housewives of New Jersey.' I usually watch it on the bus after a show with my husband Jimi. As much as he will deny it, he loves the show as much as I do. — Karen Fairchild

I would love to be on a Real Housewives from somewhere reality show. Then I could show all those women how the rest of our society gets to do it. — Heather Chapple

New Rule: Stop putting all those pillows on the bed. Attention, interior designers, hotel maids, and real housewives of New Jersey: It's a bed, not an obstacle course. I'm sorry, baby, I'd like to make sweet love to you all night long, but by the time I get all that crap off your bed, I'm exhausted. A bed needs only two pillows: one to put my head on, and one to cuddle with and pretend it's Robert Pattinson. — Bill Maher

Sometimes I want to be on 'The Real Housewives of New York.' I want to remind them to figure out how to get along and support each other. — Candace Bushnell

We broke through the feminine mystique and women who were wives, mothers and housewives began to find themselves as people. That didn't mean they stopped, or had to stop, being mothers, wives or even liking their homes. — Betty Friedan

There was a period of time in America where the advertising world actually went to the housewives of America and had them write jingles that would appeal to them. It was actually brilliant marketing. — Julianne Moore

I'm a black male, over 40, with no kids, living in the suburbs - they wanted to put me in a museum. Why did I move to the suburbs? I started watching Desperate Housewives. If comedy didn't work out I can always try gardening. — Alonzo Bodden

The opening line of her last column was: You know you really don't fit in with the other housewives you meet when the only way you can contribute to a discussion about babies is by saying, "Yes, that's what my mother used to do." It went on to talk about how a woman could climb Everest, teach schoolchildren in Cambodia and win the Booker Prize but some people would still think she had good news only when she produced progeny. — Shweta Ganesh Kumar

It was hidden inside another book. One Valentine was unlikely to ever open." Magnus smiled crookedly. "Simple Recipes for Housewives. No one can say your mother didn't have a sense of humor. — Cassandra Clare

Dear God, master of the universe, compassionate and merciful: we who are steeped in sin, kneel in supplication before your throne and beseech you to recall from this world Saadat Hasan Manto, son of Ghulam Hasan Manto, who was a man of great piety. Take him away, Lord, for he runs away from fragrance and chases after filth. He hates the bright sun, preferring dark labyrinths. He has nothing but contempt for modesty but is fascinated by the naked and the shameless. He hates sweetness, but will give his life to taste bitter fruit. He will not so much as look at housewives but is in seventh heaven in the company of whores. He will not go near running waters, but loves to wade through filth. Where others weep, he laughs; and where others laugh, he weeps. Faces blackened by evil, he loves to wash with tender care to make visible their real features. He never thinks about you but follows Satan everywhere, the same fallen angel who once disobeyed you. — Saadat Hasan Manto

The verb 'to darn' is explained in my pocket dictionary as follows: 'To mend by imitating the texture of the stuff, with thread and needle.' But this definition does not correspond to the work accomplished by good Chinese housewives. When they mend a sock, they do not try 'to imitate the texture of the stuff'. Their art makes no attempt at concealment: it even takes a certain pride in revealing itself. — Daniele Vare

I don't think I have a demographic. I was at Comic-Con in San Diego recently, and I was doing a signing, and my line was all military guys, young girls, housewives and guys in wheelchairs. There was just everybody all over the place. — Pamela Adlon

What was she doing here? Private detectives were for insecure housewives, parents of troubled teens, bent old ladies who'd forgotten where they parked. She was none of the above. She was a sane, stable, capable adult. Yet here she was.
Desperate times, and all that. — Laura Oliva

When 'Desperate Housewives' ends, I think my girls will be about the kindergarten age. I will be so happy to be there for them through that huge transition. — Marcia Cross

Most sexism is down to men being accustomed to us being the losers. That's what the problem is. We just have bad status. Man are accustomed to us being runners-up or being disqualified entirely. For men born pre-feminism, this is what they were raised on: second-class citizen mothers; sisters who need to be married off; female schoolmates going to secretarial school, then becoming housewives. Women who disengaged. Disappeared. — Caitlin Moran

My grandma has never been impressed with the TV show [Desperate Housewives]. She was so angry because I was on television kissing a boy naked; she's very traditional. She said: "If I ever see you kissing that boy again ... ". — Eva Longoria

I'd only watch the Kardashians and the Real Housewives if they were in a Hunger Games-style death match. Sitting — Brenda Rothert

television's sole function these days is to drive permanent wedges between people with different philosophies in such a way that an insatiable furor keeps us coming back to confirm our biases and condemn our opponents. Reasonable discourse doesn't sell commercial time. Intellectual inflammation rules the airwaves. That and reality shows about repugnant housewives yearning to be famous. — Doug Philips

Reality Tv had become the preferred drug of choice for the George Clooney obsessed housewives strung out on empty promises and splintered dreams — Saira Viola

'Desperate Housewives' is an ensemble cast, where I played a tertiary character. I made a lot of great friends, but that show didn't keep me very busy. — Nathan Fillion

I loved my kids. And I loved my house, and I loved a lot of things about my life in the 1950s. But there were a lot like me in that era, very overeducated housewives. — Betty Friedan

You know, it's such a peculiar thing
our idea of mankind in general. We all have a sort of vague, glowing picture when we say that, something solemn, big and important. But actually all we know of it is the people we meet in our lifetime. Look at them. Do you know any you'd feel big and solemn about? There's nothing but housewives haggling at pushcarts, drooling brats who write dirty words on the sidewalks, and drunken debutantes. Or their spiritual equivalent. As a matter of fact, one can feel some respect for people when they suffer. They have a certain dignity. But have you ever looked at them when they're enjoying themselves? That's when you see the truth. Look at those who spend the money they've slaved for
at amusement parks and side shows. Look at those who're rich and have the whole world open to them. Observe what they pick out for enjoyment. Watch them in the smarter speak-easies. That's your mankind in general. I don't want to touch it. — Ayn Rand

Bravo's 'Real Housewives' series isn't just entertainment for devoted fans like me - it's an entire all-absorbing universe of pride and passion. — Camille Paglia

Housewives are dependent creatures who are still children ... parasites. — Gloria Steinem

I don't want to be a rock star all my life.
I couldn't bear to end up like Elvis Presley in Las Vegas with all those housewives and old ladies coming in with their handbags — Mick Jagger

In spite of her vapourish airs (as the housewives of Yonville called them), Emma, all the same, never seemed gay, and usually she had at the corners of her mouth that immobile contraction that puckers the faces of old maids, and those of men whose ambition has failed. — Gustave Flaubert

That's what she was, Joanna felt suddenly. That's what they all were, all the Stepford wives: actresses in commercials, pleased with detergents and floor wax, with cleansers, shampoos, and deodorants. Pretty actresses, big in the bosom but small in the talent, playing housewives unconvincingly, too nicey-nice to be real. — Ira Levin

The overture began. God! Strings! Oboes! Timpani! Are you fucking kidding me? Why, when we know what human beings are capable of doing, do we not turn our collective heads in shame at the sight of rich housewives screaming at each other on television? — Meg Howrey

I actually thought 'Desperate Housewives' finished very well. I just think there's still stories to be told. I feel like I get that from fans that they weren't done watching those people's lives. — Teri Hatcher

In any East Asian culture, you will find that women have a very tangible power within the household. This is often rejcted by non-Asian feminists who argue that it is not real power, but.. Japanese women look at the low status attributed to the domestic labor of housewives in North America and feel that this amounts to a denigration of a fundamental social role - whether it is performed by a man or a woman. — Sandra Buckley

Bigotry is one of the oldest and ugliest of trends, so persistent it only counts as a fad because the target keeps changing: Huguenots, Koreans, homosexuals, Muslims, Tutsis, Jews, Quakers, wolves, Serbs, Salem housewives. Nearly every group, so long as it's small and different, has had a turn, and the pattern never changes - disapproval, isolation, demonization, persecution. Which was one of the reasons it'd be nice to find the switch that turned fads on. I'd like to turn that one off for good. — Connie Willis

Look at Neil Diamond. Was he the cool guy? No, he was the housewives' guy. He didn't try to be what he wasn't. He just did what he did - made great music, was a good entertainer, nice-enough guy. — Michael Buble

Italians in particular are seen as either benign and child-like (the sweet old nonna with her meatballs), menacing mobsters, or hyper-sexualized housewives and gigolos; the kind of nourishment I'm looking for doesn't lie in any of these stereotypes. — Christopher Castellani

When snooty high school bitches grow up, their meanness is distilled into its purest, most lethal form," Emmie whispered fearfully. "Don't you watch Real Housewives? — Jayne Denker

But she realized that modern homemaking could be creatively fulfilling in a way she'd never imagined. Unlike previous generations of housewives, who Erika imagines were bored and dissatisfied, Erika says women her age treat the duties of the home as outlets for their creativity. — Emily Matchar

I am obsessed with trash TV. I watch all reality shows. I watch all the 'Housewives.' I am a huge fan of 'New Jersey.' — NeNe Leakes

What would happen if most people tried to act intelligently on their own behalf? Anarchy. ( ... ) So what can we do with this intelligence we don't need and can't use? Stupefy it. Valium for housewives, glue-sniffing for schoolkids, hash for adolescents, rotgut South African wine for the unemployed, beer for the workers, spirits for me and the crowd I left downstairs fifteen minutes ago. — Alasdair Gray

I remember in second grade, everybody in the class had to come up with adjectives for each other, and I got shy. In a way, I force myself to perform, because if I didn't, I'd stay home rolled up in a ball watching 'The Real Housewives of Orange County' all day. — June Diane Raphael

I'd like to think, that were he alive today, Warhol would be painting the Housewives. — Andy Cohen

I feel like I'm a stay-at-home mom, which I was for the five years before this. She's absolutely been my focus. That's the choice I made. Desperate Housewives is perfect for me. I get to go back to work and still be able to take my daughter to school and pick her up. — Teri Hatcher

At first, feminists were assumed to be only discontented suburban housewives; then a small bunch of women's "libbers", bra burners, and radicals; then women on welfare; then briefcase carrying imitations of male executives; then unfulfilled women who forgot to have children; then women voters ... that really could decide elections. That last was too dangerous, so suddenly we were told we were in a "postfeminist" age ... — Gloria Steinem

Some women choose to stay at home and be housewives. If they are happy with it, then it's a wonderful choice. But I know I couldn't do that. I couldn't be a housewife. — May-Britt Moser

Poetry is a popular genre in Afghanistan. If you turned on the radio, there would be a poetry program that would be as popular as The Real Housewives. — Eliza Griswold

You watch stuff like 'The Real Housewives' and you start to think, 'We're all so vacuous! Is there any nobility to any of these people?' But then you look out into the world, and there are people who are doing cool stuff with their lives. — Mike White

I don't like reality shows and have never watched them, but I'm addicted to 'Real Housewives' because it's authentic old-time soap opera reborn! — Camille Paglia

VI. If you were coming in the fall, I'd brush the summer by With half a smile and half a spurn, As housewives do a fly. If I could see you in a year, I'd wind the months in balls, And put them each in separate drawers, Until their time befalls. If only centuries delayed, I'd count them on my hand, Subtracting till my fingers dropped Into Van Diemen's land. If certain, when this life was out, That yours and mine should be, I'd toss it yonder like a rind, And taste eternity. But now, all ignorant of the length Of time's uncertain wing, It goads me, like the goblin bee, That will not state its sting. — Emily Dickinson

The Playtex Secrets survey truly uncovered some thought-provoking and provocative secrets of real American housewives. In fact, many of the findings would make great fodder for a storyline on the show! — Alfre Woodard

We're seeking out such grossness in human behavior and want such mindless entertainment. 'The Real Housewives of Atlanta' and some of these other shows are more racist. Or '16 and Pregnant.' Getting rewarded for being pregnant when you're a teenager? Are you serious? — Chelsea Handler

I wanted to tell a dream-come-true story about going from a closeted gay kid who loved pop culture to an out adult man making pop culture. I went from being told when I was 21 that I should never go on TV because of my crossed eyes to winding up being a 'Housewives' whisperer and talk-show host. — Andy Cohen

Every year, there is a new diet that all the celebs or housewives are trying. We all want the perfect diet or the perfect pill. If we surveyed a million women, and they could choose to learn the truth about God or the foolproof diet, I guarantee more women would pick the miracle diet over the miracle of life. — Marissa Jaret Winokur

From the time I was wee big, my mother was one of the first members of Mary Kay Cosmetics. Women going door-to-door and letting housewives have their own business - that was really a breakthrough. It was huge. — Robin Wright