It’s Not About the Cookies
by Laurie Woolever
There are 182,000 members of the Reddit community, r/vanderpumprules, a subreddit I have been really digging into since I started watching all eleven seasons, in order, of Vanderpump Rules, a reality show about the antics of a group of ill-behaved, sex-crazed young people who work in any of the three (real) West Hollywood restaurants owned and operated by Real Housewives of Beverly Hills alum Lisa Vanderpump, including one called SUR, an acronym for “Sexy Unique Restaurant.”
Institutions are unraveling, the temperatures of the discourse and the planet are too high, and people are losing their shit, as you know. I’m trying to stay informed but avoid despondency, and so lately I’ve been chasing the news with a dose of the utterly insane Vanderpump Rules, and discussing the players and their games with willing friends, one of whom happens to work for a blood bank, which is in a constant state of need. Giving blood regularly is one of the most concretely useful and immediately satisfying ways in which I’ve been participating in democracy.
In Vanderpump Rules, everything has to be full of hype and sexy, and absurd, and so this strategy naturally informs our conversation.
How can we make it cool and sexy to donate blood? I texted her, as I watched Tom Sandoval endure a painful tattoo laser removal on his ass cheek, as his friend Tom Schwartz looks on:
Keep us breathing fire!
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