Property TV: Financialized Femininity and New Forms of Domestic Labour

This article argues that melodrama plays an important role in shaping the ambivalent narratives of property TV. Using the HGTV Canada show Buy Herself as a case study, the article considers the rise of what amounts to a new women’s genre as an attempt to frame and contain gendered experiences of the financialization of the domestic sphere. Positioning the show within neoliberalism’s faux feminism and superficial discourse of diversity, the article posits that the focus on the melodramatic struggles of real estate buyers in the reality genre of property TV brings to the fore anxieties and contradictions incited by the neoliberal imperatives to reframe the domestic sphere as real estate investment and normalize debt