Nonverbal Communication – A “Real Housewives of Orange County” Investigation

 

 

 

The Protagonists

 

 

As I was surfing the TV this morning in search of a show I am not familiar with, I stopped on Bravo where the show “Real Housewives of Orange County” had just started. Since I had tried to watch an episode a couple of years ago and could not stand more than a few minutes, I thought I would try again and see what I could understand from only looking at the women’s body language. After the second commercial break, the topic of the episode became clear and the bachelorette party started. Obviously, this episode presents some inappropriateness that I will omit in the narrative since they do not add meaning.

Although I am not familiar with this TV series, I know that the protagonists are neighbors (I think) who have become friends or somewhat involved in each other’s lives. When I switched to Bravo, I knew that the two women conversing on the beach were friends or at least close acquaintances. As one woman was talking and sobbing at times, the other woman would show her empathy and comfort her by patting her friend’s hand, face and hair. However, not much warmth radiated from this friendship touch which made me think that they operated from a formal dimension perspective (O’Hair, & Wiemann, 2012).  The crying woman was wearing a sash across her shoulder exhibiting the word Bachelorette. Had she broken up with her fiancé?

After the first commercial break, the scene opens in a restaurant where a man and a woman are having dinner (I could not tell you if the woman was the bachelorette). The man was the more expressive of the two, rolling his eyes (disagreement), shaking his head (denial), smirking (contempt), laughing (affiliation), and sighing (hopelessness). Could it be that the situational context of their conversation prevented the man from exploding (O’Hair, & Wiemann, 2012)? On the other side of the table, the woman is doing the talking, speaking fast and at one point reinforcing her message by raising her hands in sign of resignation (O’Hair, & Wiemann, 2012).

When the episode resumed after the second commercial, six women had gathered around a well-dressed table. Right after the chef served the first course, one of the women left the table and returned with a present that she gave the bachelorette who readily opened it. What followed was a series of gaping mouths expressing disbelief at each new gift, hands covering the eyes, laughter, and hands clapping.  

Then, I turned on the sound and watched from the beginning. To my surprise, what made the woman cry was the story of a friend who had committed suicide. This is the only time in the short while I watched that the nonverbal communication felt genuine and expressed “spontaneous feelings” (O’Hair, & Wiemann, 2012).

            If I were watching that TV series on a regular basis, I would probably have made another assumptions since I would have been familiar with the plot and the story of each of the characters. Had I been watching one of my favorite shows, my assumptions would have been more correct since I would be much more familiar with each character’s personality, M. O.s, modus operandi, and nonverbal communication behaviors such as body language and facial expressions.

This interesting exercise shattered my belief that body language and facial expressions add meaning to a conversation. Watching less than 15 minutes of “Real Housewives of Orange County” made it clear that the characters’ facial expressions and hand gestures were emphasizing feelings that they were trying hard to experience such as surprise and happiness. In O’Hair and Wiemann’s Real Communication (2012), students learned that nonverbal communication is often spontaneous and unintentional. When I watched the silent show, affect displays appeared fake, intentional, and not spontaneous. However, in “Real Housewives of OC” the affect displays are intentional and not spontaneous, almost looking like masking or “expression that shows an appropriate feeling for a given interaction (O’Hair, & Wiemann, 2012).  

References

Dunlop, S. (Program Creator).  (2006). Dirty Dancing in Mexico [Real Housewives of Orange County series episode]. In Ross, D., Stewart, G., French, K., Lee, K., Dunlop, S. (Executive Producers), Real Housewives of Orange County. California: Bravo, Original Channel.

O'- Hair, D., & Wiemann, M. (2012). Real communication. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's.