“That’s just my smile, though. That’s just how I smile!”
“Here’s the thing, Natalie.” Cassidy gave me a cloying wince.
“I think what Ashley Ann is saying, here, is that it looks like you’re pretending.”
I laughed again, though it sounded more like a cough. “Isn’t everyone?”
Caro Claire Burke, Yesteryear
On June 15th, the evil was defeated: it was confirmed West Wilson was not returning to Summer House. I wrote about Summer House a few years ago, and noted how it was a crash course in the politics of heterosexuality— the dos, the don’ts, the nevers.
For the very uninitiated, Summer House is a show about deeply boring people renting a house in the Hamptons for eight to twelve weeks and sexually terrorizing each other. Summer House exploded in popularity this season after we learned that the long-suffering Amanda Batula, whose courtship we had watched all 10 years of on-screen, was finally leaving her ne’er-do-well DJ/canned cocktail company owner husband, Kyle Cooke. Two months later a number of New York City underworld rumors proved to be true when we learned that Amanda was dating West—her close friend, Ciara Miller’s— ex.
This post is not about Summer House, but I was fascinated by every detail of this brouhaha, as many were. As we learned more and more about West, it became exceedingly clear that this was a man who was living a completely different life off-camera than he was on-camera.
For the first seven seasons of the show, Summer House cycled through software salespeople and middle managers, eventually turning four of its lead stars into influencers on their own. Only one of them ever truly had the personality to be a Reality Star, capital R, capital S, and that is, of course, my queen, Lindsay Hubbard.
During its eighth season, Summer House brought on Wilson and Jesse Solomon, a doofy finance bro (who was immediately fired for going on reality TV and is now attempting a singing career). The show suddenly felt fresh and new again. Wilson, a sports journalist for Complex (and if I said a white man working at Complex was not to be trusted, would I be the bad guy?) began a flirtation/relationship with Ciara Miller, and the details of their crash and burn have been playing out on and off camera for the last three years.
Revisiting the details, though, a clear pattern emerges: on-camera, West is caring, gentle, and sweet. He asks Ciara about her family, about her estranged father, about her difficult relationship with her mother. He makes her feel special and important. Off-camera, the facade of the perfect camera cracks a bit. They began a relationship. He brought her to a family wedding, cavorted around New York City with her, and made promises of exclusivity.
Or, so we thought.
By the time the show aired, it was clear their romance was dead and buried. Emerging as the breakout star of the season, he gave interviews to the New York Times and other publications. Slowly cracks started to emerge in his public image, and it became clear that this was a man for whom fame was more important than anything else in his life.
At the reunion, he didn’t deny accusations that he was more interested in pursuing relationships/ casual sexual encounters with the women watching Summer House than an actual real relationship with Ciara. Which is fair! We’re not litigating whether he’s allowed to dump someone. The issue was that he never said this to her. He dumped her with an excuse about not being ready for a relationship as soon as he started getting famous, then emerged as a star, DMs overflowing with young women ready for him to terrorize.
Things only got worse the following year when he and Ciara fought about his now ruined public perception. Unfortunately, Bravo fans have a short memory. It was obvious to everyone that he would be forgiven— and in short order, he was. I was attacked when I said that he was slimy, sleazy, and a bad guy, and it was obvious that he was only apologizing to people to continue his reign of terror.
The real issue is that West never respected the architecture of reality TV. For him, summers in the Hamptons were just a chance for him to show off how cool he was, how he listened to rap and was able to drink all day without passing out. Others are sharing their true, real lives: Lindsay got dumped by her fiancé on camera. Amanda has been fighting her husband on camera for 10 years. Every single cast member continues to share their reality. But for West? Summer House was only ever another party.
The full extent of his misdeeds became clear this season when he once again: began a flirtation with Ciara as a manipulation tactic in order to get her to forgive him, began a flirtation with the married Amanda, and began dating Amanda after she became separated from Kyle, all while having a girlfriend in Philadelphia.
Asked about his relationship with Meija, he said, “She behaved as if we were exclusive and I led her to believe that we were exclusive, yes but I was not exclusive with her.” Okay? He was openly cheating on her! Cheating on her with Ciara, having an emotional affair with Amanda, and continuing to sleep with girls both in the Hamptons and in his DMs. When confronted about all of this, West continued to stonewall the camera and give nothing at the reunion. It was clear he believed that if he said nothing he could never be held accountable, a commonly held strategy for thousands of weak, spineless men.
Reality television works because everyone involved invests in a shared reality. If only one of us is buying into the narrative being created or spun, it doesn’t work. It becomes artificial. Many believe that reality TV is already artificial, but this sheen of believability, this shared project, is a little bit sacred to those who watch. That’s why we care so much about The Fourth Wall— and why Fourth Wall breaks are so sacrosanct amongst dedicated and devoted lovers of the genre.
When thinking about West, a man who wanted to have his cake and eat it too, destroyed by his appetites and an inability to maintain his mask, I thought of Tiger Woods.
As a refresher: the dismantling of Tiger Woods began with a car crash.
In 2009, Tiger Woods was on top of the world. He won six championships, earned ten million dollars, and met the president. For a time, he was the most decorated athlete in the world.
On Thanksgiving morning, Woods crashed into a fire hydrant outside of his home. Reportedly, his wife, Swedish model Elin (pronounced E-lynn, not Ellen) Nordegren, helped him out of the car by smashing in his windows with a golf club. What began as a shocking story quickly turned sour— neighbors reported that Elin actually chased Woods out of the house with said golf club, and that the couple were screaming at each other for hours beforehand.
Two days before the incident, The National Inquirer reported that Woods was having an affair with Rachel Uchitel, a New York nightlife staple who lost her fiancé on 9/11 (this is part of her lore and must always be brought up when introducing her).
(As an aside to an aside, the New York Post was randomly obsessed with Uchitel. The story of her fiance leaving her, her affair with Buffy and Bones actor David Boreanaz, and then the Tiger Woods affair were all covered breathlessly by them in an era where we had bigger fish to fry!)
Uchitel reportedly checked into the same hotel as Woods and was overheard telling people he was leaving Nordegren for her, and they were going to be together once the divorce was announced. According to court records, gossip, and The Daily Beast, Nordegren went through Woods’s phone and spoke with Uchitel and another woman, Jamie Grubbs. Woods insisted nothing was happening, and Nordegren placated him long enough to disarm him. On Thanksgiving, Woods took an Ambien and went to bed, and Nordegren began texting Uchitel as Woods, learning that they were indeed in contact. All hell, as they say, broke loose.
Famously, this is when she chased him out of the house. As details began to emerge, Jamie Grubbs did a sit-down with Us Weekly, confirming her affair with Woods. After this, the floodgates opened. Between 14 and 15 women came forward with proof— text messages and pictures— that they were sleeping with Woods. Over 100 claimed to have also had affairs with Woods. One hundred women. One hundred women!!! Woods was dropped by a number of major advertisers and went to rehab for sex addiction, but the damage to his career, reputation, and marriage were done. He released a statement in December and was divorced by August.
The construction of Woods as a public figure— the mask— was interesting to me back then, and fascinating to me now. Golf is a deeply white sport, and no doubt there was a sort of racialized glee at being able to take down a Black man who had an… let’s say outré personal life. Due to the conservative nature of the sport, Woods put forth an image of himself as a perfect family man, ever smiling, ever serious, ever focused. His childhood, covered in the documentary Tiger, was spent golfing. His father trained him to be perfect, to regulate his emotions and sublimate his desires. He lacked regular outlets in both childhood and adolescence. Any therapist worth their salt will tell you that a childhood spent in psychological rigor mortis will lead to chaos elsewhere.
In February 2010, three months after the scandal broke and six months before the divorce, Woods apologized to his wife. He stated:
“I thought I could get away with whatever I wanted to, I felt that I had worked hard my entire life and deserved to enjoy all the temptations around me. I felt I was entitled. Thanks to money and fame, I didn’t have to go far to find them. I was wrong. I was foolish.”
I’m not making excuses for either one of these men. Both wanted to sell the public a vision of themselves, and were in turn destroyed by their own desires. Of course, the scale is vastly different— Woods was an international superstar who lost his wife and hundreds of millions of dollars due to the scale and scope of his appetites. For three years, Wilson was a reality star who was hoisted by the twin petards of dishonesty and infidelity. But both presented images of themselves to their audiences that were wildly inconsistent with who they ultimately were. It’s a tale as old as time: smiling, slimy men who, when presented with a bounty before them, decided: do you know what, actually? I’d like more.
I know I already have a reputation as the cheating police but I have grown! If Tiger Woods had fallen in love with someone else or life got crazy and he had a girlfriend somewhere it’d be a vastly, vastly different situation than having one hundred women come forward and say they hooked up. One hundred!!! There’s no defending that, I’m so sorry!
Also, I left this out, but it’s clear that something else is going on with Tiger. He had that crash in 2009, a crash in 2017, rolled his car in 2021, and just crashed his car again in 2026. I wish him well in his battle against the thing he seems unable to name just quite yet.
I’m still dealing with nerve pain but going to the doctor this week to check it out. Here’s what I’ve been reading:
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