During the final episode of Wife Swap: The Real Housewives Edition, viewers met Althea Shapiro. Althea swapped lives with Dr. Wendy Osefo. Wendy runs a very tight ship at home. Althea used to move similarly with her children. But when she relocated from NYC to Florida, she did so with the hopes of finding a slower rhythm for her household.
However, once her low-demand parenting episode aired, Althea felt horrified. In her opinion, Bravo made her parenting style look awful, thanks to their reported use of “selective editing.”
Alethea Shapiro from Wife Swap: Real Housewives Edition felt Bravo “erased” her AuDHD diagnosis
After jokingly providing proof of life outside the laundry room for her husband, Craig, Althea “set [her] record straight” on Instagram. According to Althea, Bravo chose to erase her “Autistic and ADHD identity.” Their “selective editing” decision felt “harmful,” because it erased her “why, the context of who I am, why I parent the way I do, and the deeper reasoning behind my burnout.”
She continued, “Not connecting low-demand parenting to neurodivergence was also harmful and ableist, leaving a huge hole in the story and removing the heart of what makes our family dynamic so intentional. Both omissions perpetuated an ableist narrative that turned humor, authenticity, and kindness into mockery,” Althea explained. In turn, viewers saw an edit that painted Althea “as lazy and checked out instead of what I actually am, a woman rebuilding her life after years of traumatic burnout from activism, toxic environments, and the challenges of living with a disability in a world made for neurotypical brains.”
“Reducing me from a complex, intelligent, multifaceted woman into a caricature and a clown was a gross mischaracterization,” Althea stressed. However, she has no regrets about filming for Wife Swap. “We genuinely had fun filming, and our watch party with friends and family was full of laughter,” she said.
Wife Swap: The Real Housewives Edition is streaming on Peacock. The show streams on Hayu in Canada, the UK and Ireland.
TELL US – DID YOU WATCH ALTHEA’S EPISODE OF WIFE SWAP? WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT HER “SELECTIVE EDITING” CLAIMS?
This story originally appeared on Realitytea
