NEXT LEVEL BASIC: THE DEFINITIVE BASIC BITCH HANDBOOK - STASSI SHROEDER

Last time I was in NC I became interested in the reality TV show VANDERPUMP RULES. I’m not sure entirely why, partly on the recommendation of the writer Molly Lambert, partly because I’m drawn to pop-reality TV when I’m back in North Carolina, dealing with the family. Either way, I got hooked and started watching the show here in Seattle, where it fits very nicely with the current Pandemic. I’m an essential worker with a stressful job, I don’t live the life of the people on this show but I do find watching them engaging. Almost hypnotic. The show itself is about the pathologies embedded within heterosexuality. It follows this group of aspiring famous people who happen to work at RHoBH star Lisa Vanderpump’s many WeHo restaurants (she is constantly saying she’s opened 33 restaurants in her life).  They all profess to want to be famous models/actors/musicians/dj’s but it’s clear that, like most people involved in the periphery of Hollywood, they don’t really care what form their fame takes. The show follows them as they fight with each other and sleep with one another’s partners. Typical reality TV fare though the location, in West Hollywood, lends the proceedings some interesting depth. WeHo is an affluent city (Hollywood is a neighborhood in the City of Los Angeles, West Hollywood is a separate city with its own mayor and everything, located to the west of LA proper) famous for its gay nightlife. Because of this the men on the show are trading on their looks and youth and hotness in a way that is stereotypically female. So the show is about women, Stassi first among them, trying to marry and have babies with these aging bartender hunks who are slowly realizing they won’t be able to trade on their looks for too much longer. They want their men to be hot and desired and work in this super sexualized field (bar tending at these Hollywood hot spots) but never to desire anyone but them. They want to move to the suburbs and have babies despite the economics of this being impossible. Or so it seems at first, but slowly the cast starts making real money from the show itself, allowing them to finance the types of lives that could only be aspiration as bartenders, a weird sort of extra-textual feedback that’s endemic to reality TV. The men are forever getting sad and/or full of despair, angst and alcohol then sleep with a rando to feel potent. The women are forever accusing one another of being sluts or (this comes up alot) sleeping with married men. Especially since this show is set in a very gay milieu (Pride gets its own episode each season), heterosexuality ends up looking insane. And despite the constant “Love is Love” “We’re so inclusive at Pump” etc. the only major LGBT (tho, we eventually find out a main character is bi) cast member (a trans woman) is treated badly and basically bullied off the show. All fascinating stuff. Stassi is billed as the main character early on (she does the intro voice over at the beginning of S1E1 that introduces everyone in relation to her) tho, this centrality fades over time. She’s the most maniacal about having a boyfriend and being in charge of her friend group. 

Her book, sadly, is a letdown. I did not expect too much from it. It was gifted to me by my partner, who also follows the show (but loves it less than I) and I would say my suspicions about a Stassi book were confirmed. She doesn’t understand what’s interesting about her. She thinks I want advice on being a basic bitch, which I don’t. She defines “basic” as opposed to pretentious and quality I did not find a lot of in LA but she’s obsessed with. 90% of the book is about why she shouldn’t be shamed for liking ranch dressing. What I want is autobiography stuff and stuff about the show. For instance, we do find out that when she first moved to LA, her and Jax, as 2 young hot models, got recruited by Scientology. Classic LA tale. But we get so little of this. Stassi’s dad is like a character from a Faulkner novel. He’s from New Orleans, like Stassi he sneaks liquor into restaurants in LA. He, however, smuggles his booze in a flask with a picture of his YT daughter held onto the flask with a rubber band. The Flask itself has a relief of a pistol on the side. He rails, without prompting against liberals and democrats. Her mom comes off as a real supportive attention-hungry asshole on TV but they’re hardly featured in the book. Which is a shame because it is very clear after seeing her parents on TV for about 3 minutes, why Stassi is fucked up the way she is. All of the Vanderpump cast members have nightmare parents (unsurprising) but Stassi’s come off the worst. Since I don’t keep track of the extended Vanderpump universe (twitter, interviews, Summer House, etc) I didn’t realize that Stassi’s podcast had been boycotted when she posted an Instagram with #nazichic because she owns lots of “SS” monogrammed clothing. She literally puts this in the last 3 pages of the book and just said she should be more careful and people should be nicer. A missed opportunity. 88 ranch fountains.