Kenya Moore’s secret wedding to Marc Daly was supposed to be the start of a happy marriage.
But remember when we said that Kenya might get fired from The Real Housewives of Atlanta over her camera-shy husband? It looks like we were more right than we realized, and now Kenya is being faced with an impossible choice.
And there’s a medical twist to this story that makes the stakes so much higher than anyone realized.
The Real Housewives of Atlanta producers want Kenya Moore’s husband Marc Daly to be on the show, and if he isn’t then they won’t give Kenya any screentime.
Now, most people who marry reality stars don’t have a problem with being on reality television.
But Marc Daly apparently has a problem, very specifically, with how RHOA portrays black men — though TMZ‘s report doesn’t say what exactly that is.
(We’ll get to that in a moment)
Reportedly, Kenya’s fighting their insistence that the show get to document her life with Marc.
After all, the show hired her, not Marc.
For obvious reasons, Marc wasn’t mentioned in her contract.
If she caves to producers and tries to pressure Marc to sign up for the show, she feels that she’ll be putting her relationship in jeopardy.
So, basically, she’s being asked (well, forced) to choose between her relationship and her career.
It sounds like Kenya’s stuck between a rock and a hard place.
And then there’s that medical concern — but we’ll get to that in a moment, because we need to talk about Marc’s issue with the show.
Now, let me be clear that I’m no scholar on racial coding by any means.
But, before we get to the health issue that complicates this whole story, I’m going to take a stab at what Marc Daly’s issue may be.
All that we know, per TMZ, is that Marc takes issue with the portrayal of black men on The Real Housewives of Atlanta.
The portrayal of black women on reality television has been a huge topic of discussion over the past several years.
(Spoiler alert in case you’ve missed those talks and also all reality shows — that portrayal is aggressively negative)
But it’s been argued, very specifically, that black men as portrayed on The Real Housewives of Atlanta are portrayed as “inadequate” when compared to white men, who are shown as providers, good partners, and desirable husbands to both white and black women.
Before anyone chimes in with a racist argument about it being a reality show, remember that reality shows are controlled through casting and also through editing.
So Marc Daly may have a point — you can read some really thorough arguments about this specific topic through the wonders of the internet.
It might be unfair of Marc to effectively ask Kenya to give up her career over his stance.
It would also be unfair of Kenya to ask Marc to appear on a show that he morally opposes.
But right now, we have to talk about Kenya’s medical issue.
Now that Kenya Moore is married to the love of her life, she wants to get pregnant.
To that end, she’s undergoing IVF treatment.
Care to guess what’s a huge obstacle to conceiving, even with in-vitro fertilization?
Stress.
Stress like choosing between your job and your husband because your job likes your husband but the feeling isn’t mutual.
Add that onto the stresses of being a newly married reality star, the stresses of trying to conceive while you’re in your 40s, and just the stresses of being a person who exists in this bonkers world … and that’s a genuine concern.
This wildly stressful conundrum is the exact opposite of what Kenya needs right now.
It doesn’t sound like there’s a scenario here where everybody wins.
The only proposed compromise that we can come up with that might work for everyone is if Marc appears on the show but gets some sort of control over his portrayal.
It might be seen as an endorsement of the series and its problematic elements.
But we wonder if Marc’s considered that he could be a positive representation of black men on the show.
And, through showing his marriage to Kenya, he might be able to repair some of the social damage that he believes that RHOA has done to viewers.
Just a thought.
