Lala normally annoys me but…
…when she put Danny in his place with Nia, she really embodied a perfect model of modern feminism.
Danny is steeped in patriarchal, macho evangelical culture but his 5’5” ass must’ve been blessed by *someone* to luck out in finding a gorgeous tradwife people-pleaser like Nia. She’s been playing the perfect, sweet, agreeable wife for so long that Danny thinks he’s *entitled* to boss her around like a petty tyrant—if she’s going to let him, isn’t that because God loves him and he deserves it? (My theory is that Nia’s shitty childhood made her feel worthless at an impressionable age; she got together with him cuz she has low self-esteem and he made her feel valued in a traditional/stereotypical way. He didn’t even know he’d punched above his weight cuz he thought *he* was the hot impressive one in their relationship…lmao.)
Now Nia’s starting to realize that she’s not ok with this role she’s been playing. She wants more respect and equality from/with her husband. His ego feels threatened and afraid cuz the one person in the world he can always feel superior to (even when he admits his aspirations to macting fame clearly expired long ago) is suddenly acting like they’re equals. He’s afraid that he’s not even better than his stupid wife anymore, dammit!
Enter Lauren from Utah: accidental feminist boner killer (complimentary). I’ve often found Lala tedious with all her neck rolling and blaccents and sticking her nose in other people’s business. But you know what? One thing Lala *will* do is cuss a bitch out when she’s mad. Whether she’s wrong or right, Lala does not back down from intimidation; in fact if you try, it’s 50/50 whether she actually *doubles down* on her verbal aggression. She could be 6 feet down in the hole she dug for herself and if you piss her off or try to scare her, you better watch your face cuz those stupid long acrylics will be snapping in your face in no time.
Danny does not know how to respond to anger from a woman like Lala. Nia has primed him to think that when he gets mad, women will immediately back down and defer to him/his opinions cuz that’s the “proper role” for men and women: man gets upset, woman drops all of her own feelings to protect his ego and make him feel better. Lala does the complete opposite! When a man talks down to Lala, she doesn’t protect his feelings in any way. In fact, she often takes it as a cue to actively *attack* his feelings. Her unapologetic anger startled Danny so much that he clearly had no idea how to defend himself against an opponent who fights back rather than caving to him right away.
Isn’t the freedom to feel your “bad” emotions as much as a man does a feminist goal? Women get just as mad as men do (sometimes irrationally), but most societies socially punish women for expressing those kinds of stereotypically “masculine” emotions. Lala is just living her emotions to the fullest (sometimes irrationally) and refusing to be embarrassed about it, which I hope all women can do to some extent one day.
Anyway I still don’t really like Lala but… God bless that mouthy bitch for putting Danny in his place 👏
Thank you for reading my thesis at the Housewives Institute of Reality Arts & Sciences. Please discuss.