Crafting the perfect “Real Housewives” tagline is an art. The best ones are pithy and humorous, maybe a touch shady, definitely a little boastful, and convey a unique point of view with only a phrase or two. The ladies of Beverly Hills have turned out some of the best (and the worst) taglines in the entire franchise. So, ahead of the Season 8 premiere, let’s take a look back at the ones deserve our praise, and the ones that are best left forgotten.
52. Kyle Richards (Season 6): “In Beverly Hills you can be anything, but it’s most important to be yourself” Kyle is one of the longest-serving Housewives in the franchise, and that run has included some real groaner taglines. Her hollow “be yourself” message from Season 6 was by far the worst.
51. Kim Richards (Season 3): “Life is a journey, and I’m finding myself every day” The Housewives often go for the setup-punchline structure in their taglines, which occasionally leads to some head-scratching non-sequiturs like this one.
50. Kathryn Edwards (Season 6): “Don’t hate the game, just marry a player” Everything about Kathryn’s one-season turn on the show was this dull and unmemorable.
49. Kyle Richards (Season 5): “Planes and yachts are nice, but my happiness starts at home” Coming a season after affair rumors about her husband served as one of the show’s primary storylines, one can hardly blame Kyle for trying to paint her home-life as rainbows and butterflies. But that doesn’t mean it’s not boring.
48. Dorit Kemsley (Season 7): “When you’ve traveled the world, you can speak in any accent you want” No, Dorit. That’s not how accents work.
47. Kim Richards (Season 2): “People try to figure me out, but I’m one of a kind” You can see where she was going with this one, but it still feels like it could have used a couple more drafts.
46. Kyle Richards (Season 2): “I’m not the richest girl in Beverly Hills, but I am the luckiest” Optimism is boring, and it runs entirely counter to the spirit of the franchise.
45. Kyle Richards (Season 8): “In this town, fame and money come and go, but friends should not” Oh, Kyle.
44. Lisa Rinna (Season 7): “My advice to you: Don’t hustle the hustler” From any other Housewife this would be a decent tagline, but by her third season on the show, Rinna was clearly being hustled more than any of her cast mates.
43. Kim Richards (Season 1): “I was a child star, but now my most important role is being a mother” Given that the Richards sisters’ dynamic is the most consistent source of the show’s drama, you’d think someone at Bravo would stop letting them use these ho-hum taglines.
42. Teddi Mellencamp Arroyave (Season 8): “Having the best isn’t important to me, but being my best is” Given that their tagline is typically their first introduction to the audience, new cast members typically tend toward the sane/reasonable. Hopefully Teddi’s actual performance on the show is more interesting than this.
41. Lisa Rinna (Season 6): “My lips were made for talkin’ and that’s just what they’ll do” Two seasons in a row, Rinna opted for a sly joke about her lips. It wasn’t as cute the second time.
40. Taylor Armstrong (Season 3): “I fought too hard for this zip code to go home now” Good for Taylor for bouncing back after an exceptionally rough season, and I don’t think she intended this to sound as shallow and materialistic as it does.
39. Camille Grammer (Season 1): “It’s time for me to come out of my husband’s shadow and shine” The entire hook for Camille being on the show was that she was married to Kelsey Grammer, and her entire back-half of the season storyline was the dissolution of that marriage. Points for irony, I guess?
38. Eileen Davidson (Season 7): “I speak no evil, but I see and hear everything” A cute idea to play on the Three Wise Monkeys aphorism, but it required so much contorting that it lost it’s punch.
37. Kim Richards (Season 5): “I’ve been rich and I’ve been famous, but happiness beats them both” What would otherwise be a typical Richards Sisters clunker is elevated by the fact that Kim honestly did seem happy for the first time heading into Season 5. (It wouldn’t last past Eileen’s poker night, but still)
36. Dorit Kemsley (Season 8): “I believe in an excess of everything… except moderation” I think this was intended to make it seem like she lives an opulent lifestyle, but the word “moderation” kind of just makes it sound like she’s talking about overeating.
35. Kyle Richards (Season 4): “I’m from this town. I know what’s real and I know what’s fake” Look who learned how to be shady!
34. Lisa Vanderpump (Season 4): “Life is a sexy little dance, and I like to take the lead” Vanderpump has never had an outright bad tagline — she’s far too clever — but Season 4 was a particularly bad time for her to brag about being in control.
33. Adrienne Maloof (Season 2): “Having it all is easy, if you’re willing to work for it” Have you heard that Adrienne is rich?
32. Adrienne Maloof (Season 1): “Money is what I have, not who I am” Adrienne is very, very rich.
31. Taylor Armstrong (Season 2): “I finally found my voice, and I’m not afraid to use it” Bravo probably shouldn’t have aired Season 2 in the wake of Taylor’s husbands suicide, especially given that it centered on the public airing of her domestic abuse and her subsequent downward spiral. But whether or not it crossed an ethical line, it was fascinating to watch.
30. Kyle Richards (Season 1): “In a town full of phonies, I’m not afraid to be me” Kyle has always been the most relatable of the Beverly Hills Housewives, even as her circumstances have become more and more like those of the L.A. women she mocked back in Season 1.
29. Camille Grammer (Season 2): “Diamonds aren’t a girl’s best friend — freedom is” Camille is more interesting post-Kelsey.
28. Lisa Vanderpump (Season 3): “Life isn’t all diamonds and rosé, but it should be” I genuinely believe that even if life were “all diamonds and rosé,” Vanderpump would still find a way to manipulate that to her advantage.
27. Kim Richards (Season 4): “Everybody loves a comeback story, especially starring me” A solid, coherent, self-aggrandizing tagline from Kim Richards!
26. Erika Girardi (Season 7): “I may be two people, but I’m not two-faced” It’s Erika’s delivery that really sells it.
25. Lisa Vanderpump (Season 6): “I’m passionate about dogs, just not crazy about bitches” Vanderpump’s favorite double entendre.
24. Eileen Davidson (Season 6): “I may be an actress, but that doesn’t mean I’ll stick to your script” Definitely a shot at Vanderpump, but it’s better if you pretend it’s a shot at the producers about the way Eileen managed to seem sane and reasonable throughout the all the drama.
23. Yolanda Foster (Season 6): “Fake friends believe rumors, real friends believe in you” A pithy tagline summing up her point of view throughout the season, but also solid life advice?
22. Erika Girardi (Season 8): “Some people call me cold, but that’s not ice. It’s diamonds” Referring to PK and Dorit as “some people” is pretty savage, and brushing off their insult with a line about being rich is peak Erika.
21. Brandi Glanville (Season 5): “I’d rather spend my life kicking ass than kissing it” The crass take-no-prisoners attitude of her Season 5 tagline sums up Brandi pretty nicely, and that she thinks these are the only two options in life probably explains a lot.
20. Joyce Giraud de Ohoven (Season 4): “You can never be too young, too thin or too honest” At the Season 4 reunion Joyce said she originally wanted her tagline to be “Beauty is only skin deep, it’s what’s in your heart that matters.” Thank god they didn’t go with that.
19. Carlton Gebbia (Season 4): “In my world, money doesn’t talk, it swears” I don’t know what this means, but I think I like it.
18. Yolanda Foster (Season 4): “Don’t tell me you’re my friend, act like one” More solid life advice from Yolanda.
17. Yolanda Foster (Season 5): “Character isn’t what you have, it’s who you are” Honestly, Yolanda was probably too good for this show.
16. Lisa Rinna (season 8): “I don’t have to buy it, ’cause I already own it” The distance between “owning” your mistakes and learning from them is vast, but turning the concept into a pun should count for something.
15. Kyle Richards (Season 3): “I’m born and raised in Beverly Hills. This is my town” A lot of stock gets put into cleverness, but Kyle’s Season 3 tagline gets its power from how unexpectedly straightforward it is.
14. Adrienne Maloof (Season 3): “Know your friends, show your enemies the door” Adrienne is a polite woman, and here she found a way to make that borderline menacing.
13. Lisa Rinna (Season 5): “You’ve heard a lot about me, but it’s only true when it comes from my lips” Rinna’s self-deprecating sense of humor was a breath of fresh air when she joined the cast for Season 5, and the fact that her literal and metaphorical “big mouth” would later become fodder for drama made her addition only better.
12. Taylor Armstrong (Season 1): “It may look like I have it all, but I want more” Looking back, almost everything Taylor said about her life and marriage in Season 1 is now morbidly fascinating at best and ominous and foreboding at worst.
11. Lisa Vanderpump (Season 2): “Life in Beverly Hills is a game, and I make the rules” The most successful Housewives all understand that Real Housewives is a competitive reality show, and if you don’t come prepared to play, you’re going to lose (Sorry, Brandi).
10. Brandi Glanville (Season 4): “In Beverly Hills, the higher you climb the farther you fall” For all her tough talk, Brandi always seemed to let the petty drama of the show get to her in a way her cast mates didn’t. So was her Season 4 tagline a threat to her enemies or a defeatist self-reference? Hard to tell!
9. Lisa Vanderpump (Season 1): “In Beverly Hills it’s who you know, and I know everyone” You know that guy on “Game of Thrones” who’s always talking about his “little birds”? He’s got nothing on Vanderpump.
8. Eileen Davidson (Season 5): “I’m not a bitch, but I’ve played one on TV” This was all old hat for Eileen, who is both not a bitch and a very successful soap actress. She doesn’t need to perform for the cameras OR the other Housewives. Been there, done that.
7. Kyle Richards (Season 7): “I’m an expert on luxury, and I can always spot a fake” Something about the phrase “I’m an expert on luxury” is so distracting and weird that by the time the punchline comes around, you’d never see it coming.
6. Lisa Vanderpump (Season 8): “The queen of diamonds always has an ace up her sleeve” The “off with their heads” is implied.
5. Yolanda Foster (Season 3): “I like to have fun, but I don’t play games” Yolanda never quite reaches the level of making a threat, but she has the kind of personality that makes you believe she would really deliver on any threat she did make. That gravitas serves her here and, presumably, in all aspects of life.
4. Lisa Vanderpump (Season 5): “Throw me to the wolves and I shall return leading the pack” Anybody who thought the trip to Puerto Rico in Season 4 was going to bring down Vanderpump was not paying attention. She plays this game better than anyone, and if you need proof, look no further than her tagline rebounding from that setback.
3. Erika Girardi (Season 6): “I’m an enigma, wrapped in a riddle… and cash” Leave it to Erika to juxtapose a Winston Churchill quote with a blunt reference to her own wealth and make it hilarious.
2. Brandi Glanville (Season 3): “Money doesn’t give you class, it just gives you money” Brandi is funny! Beyond just being funny on its face, her first tagline as a regular Housewife cleverly riffs on the double meaning of “class” by repeating the singularly defined word “money.” It’s also a bratty dig at her wealthy cast mates delivered with pitch-perfect petulance.
1. Lisa Vanderpump (Season 7): “The crown is heavy, darlings. So just leave it where it belongs” All hail Lisa Vanderpump, the undisputed queen of the Real Housewives tagline. And, honestly, probably the entire franchise.