The longer you’re on reality TV the more awkward it gets. Just look at Bethenny Frankel, who began her Bravo career as a frustrated woman trying to fill her emotional voids with vegan cupcakes, but would later let the cameras film the side of her bare ass on the toilet while taking a pregnancy test, and after that let them film her getting her pregnant belly waxed. Maybe fellow Bravo star Rachel Zoe doesn’t want to have babies because she likes being on reality TV, which seems to have been good for her, and she fears that as soon as she has a kid, everything sexy about it will vanish. And after rumors surfaced two years ago that Rachel was uninvited from the Met Gala (perhaps because she had called herself more influential than the evening’s hostess, Anna Wintour), she found herself able to go this year as a guest of Marc Jacobs. So now might not be the best time to screw up her image — or any future chances to wear velvet ballgowns in unexpected condiment colors on the same red carpet as Anne Hathaway. So will Rachel have a kid and risk unknown sacrifices to her glam fashion life? She says so, but that was hardly the biggest lesson to take away from last night’s season finale of The Rachel Zoe Project.
Things We Learned About Life:
• No matter how much jewelry or how many beach cover-ups she has, Rachel will never be able to vacation for more than four days. “I often have my moments,” she tells the cameras away from Rodger, “where you’ve had that fantasy of sitting on a beach somewhere in the south of France wearing caftans and tons of jewelry and just not working, and then I realize I would be bored out of my skull and probably last about four days.” This is obviously a huge problem, because Rodger said last week he wants to take her to Hawaii for five days, presumably so they can get to making the baby that Rachel doesn’t really want.
• Rachel, if Rodger’s theory is correct, only gets gratification from work and nothing else. This isn’t entirely true, because although this creepily prompts the thought that Rachel gets no gratification from the sex Rodger frequently wants to have with her, Rachel does have orgasms when she goes shopping with Brad.
• If employees don’t get breaks, they get bitchy and stop taking orders. Brad is distressed because he feels like he hasn’t had a break in over a year and is afraid it’s going to turn him into Taylor. Suddenly, playing with clothes and celebrities all day isn’t so fun for him when Rachel asks him and Jordan to move the clothing rack they so impressively assembled themselves into what looks like a chicken coop on the set of the Love magazine shoot. Brad and Jordan may have gone to the trouble to assemble the rack and wheel it awkwardly into the courtyard, but don’t want to bother to lift it and put it in the shed, to which there is no ramp. This really pisses off Rachel, who feels like they’re going against her, and says, “I give them a lot of their own opportunities, so when they’re on my jobs they need to act like my team.” But Brad tells the camera everyone on Team Zoe is sick of Zoe. This becomes even more understandable when Rachel has to carry a few coats without help and whines to Brad about how she hurt her elbow, and it’s his fault since he didn’t rush to her aid and act as her Chanel mule.
• The best quotes in life are the ironic ones, such as when Rachel says she’s afraid losing her career will make her empty. Hahahahahaha.
• If you have marital needs, tell your partner! Rodger keeps whining to America that he has needs in his marriage that aren’t being met (a baby and a wife who wants one or two), but does he ever really tell Rachel? He pressures her to have his child, but does he sit her down like a good communicator who knows the power of an “I” statement, and say, “Honey, I have needs in this relationship. Let’s go to couple’s counseling and talk about them”? No. He combs his hair over his eyebrows in angst and continues on his unhappy way.
• If you know your husband is “so over” something, don’t drag him through it. Rachel knows Rodger doesn’t care about what she has to do for the Met Gala, but she makes him listen to all her dress jabber anyway. Fine, maybe he has to travel with her because he’s the president of her company or something, but can’t she let him go to the bar and drink his beer so he can unload his estrogen on a lone bartender and feel manlier? She pays so many gay men to hang around her and listen to her talk about this stuff already.
• When your husband wants nothing to do with you, turn to your gay husband. Brad is Rachel’s, so she prances down to his room and demands an “in-bed meeting” with him in the same baby voice she uses to try to be cute with Rodger. Brad is just waking up and looks like he wants to teleport to the moon when Rachel rattles off the list of everything they need to worry about (tulle for this girl, jewels for that girl, shoes for everyone, blah blah). “Like, is this really normal?” Brad says away from Rachel. He really is WAKING UP.
• Something might be off when your hairdresser is more intimately involved in your marital problems than your sister or friends who don’t collect a paycheck for you. Joey tells Rachel’s sister that Rachel is “more chaotic and crazy than she was four years ago” and thinks she needs to stop dying for work and start living life. And he just does her hair!
• Anne Hathaway seems like a genuinely lovely, warm person. (We’ve interviewed her briefly and she seemed that way, too.) It was so nice of her to go on Bravo to support her stylist and talk about how she feels like the luckiest girl in the world to have the red-carpet moments she has thanks to Rachel.
• Anne and Rachel don’t have as much in common as Anne and Brad. While Brad bonded with Anne over musicals and plays and “all things that relate to homosexuals,” Rachel says Anne will ask her if she’s read a book, and Rachel replies, “I’m like, ‘Why are you asking me if I’ve read a book?’” Ugh, yeah — reading is OUT.
• Being late to the ball is rude, Rachel says. But wait — has that ever really stopped her before? Or is this just because it’s Anna’s ball and she doesn’t want to be on her bad side again?
• When you know someone really well, it’s possible to listen to them talk, to engage in conversation, and have no idea what either of you is talking about. This is how Rodger tolerates Rachel’s incessant chatter about dresses and other things he doesn’t care about.
• If you want to make a man excited to go to the gynecologist with you, put off seriously considering having kids he wants until you’re in your late 30s. Rachel secretly schedules the appointment, and then asks Rodger casually if he wants to come, and he reacts with the same enthusiasm of a child having just been told they can spend the week at Six Flags eating ice cream instead of going to school.
• If you don’t really want kids, put off every little step of the process for as long as possible. Rachel refuses to get a blood test at the doctor when she’s already there, frustrating Rodger, who thinks this means she’s not serious about kids, which seems like an accurate assessment.
• Rachel accuses Rodger of wanting to stick needles in her, which is kind of silly. But Rodger’s reaction is worse. “Don’t be an idiot,” he says, which is the same thing as calling her an idiot, and something one should never say to his wife.
• Rachel closes the season by saying, “We are meant to be parents and I want to do it. Not totally sure how yet, but we’re going to be. Period. The end.” Soooo … anyone looking for temp work as a surrogate?
Things We Learned About Fashion:
• When you’re shooting a model as Brigitte Bardot for Love magazine, style her opposite yourself. “Obviously she’s better with less clothes,” Rachel says.
• Rachel: “I think every woman should have leopard, but not every woman will wear leopard. You have to have courage to wear leopard.” Or maybe you’re the kind of woman who keeps parrots in a solarium. Either or.
• Stylists have to see beyond their own tastes. Gray is Rachel’s least favorite color, but she knows it will look good in the Love shoot, so she allows some furry gray things in front of the camera.
• Eye bags come in designer. Rachel: “I have like a whole thing of Louis Vuitton luggage under my eyes.” Good thing Rodger wasn’t around when she told her sister this, otherwise he might have had to run away with her to bed immediately.
• Don’t just call a baggy bust a baggy bust. Get creative, like Rachel, who tells Brad of the Marc Jacobs option that doesn’t fit, “I could fit a sea boobie in here. My seventies disco titties? Not so cute. I feel like you could jump in the top of this.” Wow. There are no better words to end the season on than seventies disco titties.
