The protagonists were four white, upper-middle-class young women (aged 18–21) who referred to themselves as "future housewives." The video opens with one girl ironing a shirt while another dusts a piano that has never been played. The dialogue is not scripted comedy; it is a monologue delivered directly to the camera.
If you were actively scrolling through Facebook, Tumblr, or early YouTube in the summer of 2010, there is a high probability you encountered a grainy, sepia-toned video clip that seemed to break the internet before "breaking the internet" was a cliché. The video, known colloquially as the "Housewives Girls" video, did not feature cooking tips or parenting hacks. Instead, it featured a group of young women—barely out of high school—dressed in silk robes and pearls, lip-syncing to a misogynistic rant about the "lazy" generation of women who wanted careers instead of husbands. The video, known colloquially as the "Housewives Girls"
Note: If you find the original video today, watch it with the sound off. Look at their eyes. They are not powerful. They are not trad wives. They are just scared kids performing for a camera, unaware that the entire world is about to answer back. Have a memory of the 2010 "Housewives Girls" video? Share your thoughts below (respectfully), or join the discussion on our social media channels. Look at their eyes
While the original upload may have been deleted or archived, the social media firestorm it ignited remains a textbook case study in pre-#MeToo rhetoric, the birth of the "cringe compilation," and the gendered double standards of viral infamy. the birth of the "cringe compilation