I think the first interesting point about this show is that the cast is entirely eclectic and diverse: three Black women, three white women, all from different ethnic backgrounds and nationalities. Dubai also of course attracts many people from around the world so it’s a truly global experience.

• Caroline Brooks is a Honduran woman from Boston, USA;

• Lesa is a Jamaican woman from Kingston, Jamaica/Miami, USA;

• Ayan is an Ethiopian/Somali woman from Kenya;

• Caroline Stanbury is a British woman from London, UK;

• Taleen is an Armenian woman from Virginia, USA;

• Sara is an Emirati native to the UAE.

People speculate that the cast is mostly expats because the country and its people are much too conservative to be on that type of show, and I believe that. 

When the show was about to premiere in 2022, someone on Twitter said that this is the best-looking Real Housewives cast. I’m not necessarily watching the shows based on the women’s beauty; I’m not so superficial that I judge a woman’s value and whether or not I like her based on her looks, so I never thought of it like that before. Rather, I enjoy watching and learning about dynamic women. For example, I like Caroline Stanbury and Karen Huger a lot but I think they’re both kind of strange-looking. I am actually someone who cannot find generally attractive people to be beautiful if I dislike their personalities, as I do most of Potomac, which the person who posted said is the next best-looking cast — outside of Mrs. Huger and perhaps Dr. Osefo, the Potomac women are vile, childish, ridiculously insecure and prejudicial, and therefore mostly ugly to me. However, I think taking into account the fact that I do like most of the Dubai cast and the fashion and glam are giving what they need to give, I can agree that it is a mostly beautiful cast. I was not really sold on this during the first season LOL.

The first season was a little stale, but I think most first seasons of reality shows are slow, unless they include gratuitous, largely choreographed physical fights and outbursts (of which I’m not a fan). The first seasons are hard because we’re still getting to know the cast members, their lives, their relationships with one another, and we still haven’t seen their drama between each other really play out. The drama spills over into the second season and the “friendship” dynamics start to take shape for us as viewers around this time. 

Ayan

Ayan is hilarious. She’s a fan favorite, of course. Some of her best catchphrases include likening Brooks to a hyena, because “they’re beautiful but the mouth can be a bit dirty” – ummm hello, hyenas are hideous! LMAO. It was funny because it made absolutely no sense. Yes, Brooks can pop off at the mouth. Brooks is an absolutely gorgeous woman, so I would not liken her to a hyena of all things. (FYI likening Black people, especially Black women, to animals and men is racist and misogynoir, please do not do it.) Ayan seems to liken just about everyone to an animal, Taleen and Sara’s quasi-boyfriend included. I guess that’s just her thing!

Ayan’s relationship with her husband Chris seems a bit odd. It seems like they don’t know each other that well, and/or haven’t lived together very long. I do believe that they share their son, Taj, who is about 18 years old. And yes, I saw the photo evidence of Chris and Ayan from approximately 20 years ago. But the way they interact seems a bit awkward and unfamiliar, certainly not a dynamic I’d expect from a couple who has been together for two decades. In any case, it’s not entirely my business and as long as Ayan and her son are happy, that’s fine.

I have noticed a few moments on the current season where it seems like Ayan’s being a bit phony, like crying for the cameras when she felt stressed before an event. Maybe it was real, IDK. But I wouldn’t put it past her, or I guess anyone on reality TV, to add a little fake flair here and there.

All jokes and banter aside, I am very proud of her for sharing her experience with FGM and shining a light on the topic. It’s an extremely harrowing practice and I think the more we can discuss it, the more we can fight it and put an end to it. A lot of people in the Western world are not well versed on or even cognizant of FGM and how many humans it still affects to this day; I think putting it out there on a reality show geared towards women and femmes that aims to tell real women’s stories is very noble. I also know that it was horrific for Ayan to recount and essentially relive her story in front of millions of people, and that the backlash she endured from her community and supporters of the practice must have been soul-crushing. I thank her for being a spokesperson and weathering all of that negativity and pain so that others can feel validated, hopefully saved from the practice, and so that we can all be informed and advocate.

Lesa

Lesa is too combative for me. I thought I liked her at first because she’s very put together, confident, fashionable and seems to have the perfect life with the quintessential family; but no one is perfect, and she’s honestly just over the top with her spitefulness. There’s a difference between being shady and being antagonistic. I can tell she prepares a lot of her one-liners ahead of time. So it seems as though she’s trying really hard to put up the facade of having an idyllic life; she even said to the ladies regarding a concern about an issue within her home life, “I’m a queen and you all can take notes.” I don’t think she’s actually grown as a person as much as people say, since her days on College Hill. I was surprised to hear that she has a close relationship with her mother, because if Kenya Moore and Candiace Dillard Bassett are any indication, it’s usually when a woman has a very strained, tumultuous and toxic relationship with her mother that she lives to attack other women, going for the jugular every time. She might not be quite as intense as those two but she’s too snarky for me. And again she seems to put on a fake air as does her husband, who seems like a stuck-up prick. I did appreciate his shade, referring to Caroline Stanbury as a 50-year-old influencer, but otherwise, his egotistical aura is off-putting to me. Then again, I suppose that’s why they make a good match for each other. Water seeks its own level. I don’t know what in the hell people are looking at when they say her husband’s so fine, so handsome, one of the best looking husbands…?! Their kids are super cute though. And it seems like he really cares for her, so that’s nice. I know they’re not my favorite people but they’re my favorite couple on Real Housewives (after Nene and the late Gregg). Lesa was a bit less biting in her last WWHL appearance so, I guess I have mixed feelings about her; I was previously surprised about how hard she was coming for Ayan but the story had to unfold pertaining to their falling out — I don’t know, I’m on the fence, because my first impression of how I feel about someone is right. That said, she is beautiful and has great fashion sense. Overall I like her on the show.

Caroline Brooks

Caroline Brooks! Yesss, Brooks for the win! Haha, she is absolutely off her rocker and I love it, simply because it makes her a great housewife. She’s outspoken, stirs the pot, dresses fabulously, creates over-the-top drama and keeps it going. 

Caroline Brooks is a stunningly beautiful woman who dresses well, and presents a polished external appearance, yet has a lot of inner turmoil. I’m not a mental health professional but based on what I’ve learned from observing people, hearing about people’s life stories, and working through my own traumas, I can tell that she has a lot of trauma in her past that she has not processed nor resolved. She doesn’t speak so much about her past marriage, but I’m guessing there were multiple forms of abuse and betrayal in the union because, 1) she says she left without a dime, which makes it seem like she felt the need to get out of the relationship quickly, 2) she tearfully told her mother that, “No one knows what [she] went through with that little boy” (her son), 3) she noted that her ex cheats, and 4) I believe that she got married when she was very young to a significantly older, Arab man, and I know that Arab culture is quite patriarchal and essentially deems Black women to be concubines. Older men also usually pursue marriage with younger women in order to exercise a certain level of control and manipulation over them. 

I also sense some unresolved childhood trauma as she sometimes expresses mannerisms and modes of behavior that children do, i.e. shaking her head insistently while making a point – I’ve seen Kenya Moore do this, too – and she can often teeter between being a put-together adult and expressing herself with a childlike exuberance. 

She also apparently made some incongruous claims about her heritage, at one point saying that she’s Honduran and at another point claiming that her grandmother was Jamaican; both of these things can be true, but I suppose because she delivered them at different times, Lesa was a bit thrown off and comically quipped something along the lines of, “One day Brooks is Afro-Latino, the next she’s Jamaican, the next she’s African-American, and I bet tomorrow she’s going to be Emirati.” Hilarious. I think Brooks is also shaving a few years off of her age. She has been accused of lying by some cast members – I didn’t finish season 1 to see but I can believe that she occasionally misrepresents information, especially when delivering a message across different parties.

That said, I think that Brooks is like most Black women who are not taught to address nor talk about their trauma, but instead to keep going, to keep it moving in life so as to achieve as much as possible. It seems like she equates all of her external achievements and wealth with success, self-worth and personal fulfillment, irrespective of her mental and emotional stability. She is operating at a high-functioning level to continue making money, attending fabulous and exclusive events, wearing designer clothes, raising her son, and building a business empire, without adequately addressing and healing from her inner wounds. (And Sara is not the person to “help” her do so!)

I can tell that most viewers have pinned Brooks as the villain – and the editors have painted her as such – and that most people outright despise her. I have more empathy for her (and Black women in general) than most people do because I understand that misogynoir makes people want to immediately vilify, demonize and discard “angry” Black women, especially the ones on their television screens, without thinking about what made the women “angry” in the first place; a lot of Black women are carrying a ton of trauma from societal discrimination and pressures, as well as intergenerational wounds, that result in much higher levels of violence and abuse over the course of our lifetimes than any other racialized, gendered social group. On top of that, Black women are not given the same space to have a range of emotions nor receive the same levels of support and compassion that any other group of human beings does. 

So, yes, when I look at Caroline Brooks I do see an emotionally unstable woman; her dramatic antics and outbursts actually remind me more of her Latin heritage/Latinidad. If y’all can label an angry Black woman we can label a spicy Latina. And if she wants to express herself that way, that’s fine. I find her entertaining because someone needs to carry the storylines but I also hope she eventually gets the proper mental health support and healing that she deserves (not via the alleged fraudster Sara) to help her exist in a more peaceful, less reactive frame of mind.

For the life of me I don’t know why this woman thought it wise to make amends with and be friends with Sara, after the latter supposedly threatened to punish Brooks for calling her “preachy” by calling the cops and/or taking legal action, i.e. Sara was being a racist, potentially violent white woman. This was preceded by Sara telling Brooks that Brooks needs to be closer to her son, a judgment she made after observing Brooks interact with her son over dinner for about twenty minutes. I’m not even a mother and I know that that’s a deeply hurtful, disrespectful and insensitive comment to make. I can only infer that Sara thought it was inappropriate for Brooks (as a Black woman) to have her maid/nanny attend to her son, and also take him upstairs for bedtime while Brooks entertained her guests, which is stupid because, 1) having maids, nannies, domestic help is very common in the UAE and the Arab world, 2) Sara herself of course knows this as she likely grew up with domestic servants, and she has definitely shown her domestic servant/maid/nanny on the show, and 3) how do you make such a bold, underhanded declaration about someone’s parenting skills based on what you see for twenty minutes? Even if you have made a conclusion after such time, unless the child is in imminent danger and you’ve witnessed clear signs of abuse, it’s none of your business and it’s completely out of line to tell people how they need to raise their children. (Caroline Stanbury gets this and it’s another reason she’s one of my favorites.) I have stated that Brooks seems emotionally unstable but I can tell without a doubt how much she loves her son and how affectionate she is with him; she seems like a very devoted parent. I didn’t finish season 1 because it was quite boring so I didn’t see how or why Brooks and Sara made up after their spat. Oh well! We shall see how that “friendship” holds up.

Caroline Stanbury

Shockingly, I live for Caroline Stanbury. I knew nothing about this woman prior to the show as I did not catch Ladies of London (maybe I will give it a try). I think she’s hilarious. I like that she’s direct, deadpan and brutally honest. I also like that she doesn’t call the cops on her Black cast mates! I was dying laughing when she told Sergio (I was about to type Carlos, don’t ask why) that he’s, “Like a f*cking gnat!” Ahhhahahahaha! He is! He’s super annoying in a kind of puppy way.

Sergio has a peculiar mommy-issues-turned-fetish attraction to Stanbury. He likes that she’s significantly older than him and that she essentially wears the pants in the relationship. In spite of this, he regularly tries to tell Stanbury that she has to respect him as the man of the house and cater to him. His verbalized desires don’t match up with his clear need to be led and directed by Caroline. He also has a very unnatural attachment to her; this is what I believe is referred to as an anxious attachment, which people would characterize as clingy. It’s rooted in insecurity and it shouldn’t be passed off as something normal.

I definitely don’t think the relationship will work long-term as this man staunchly wants to have his own children and Caroline is not one to just step in line and do anything, especially something as taxing as having a child, simply to appease someone. Surrogacy is apparently illegal in the UAE, so it seems like Caroline would have to carry the baby, unless she got a surrogate abroad which I think she stated was a no for her. Surrogacy aside, once the baby is born it still needs to be cared for; of course Sergio can do it but Caroline would still be mother to a whole new human being, and I don’t think she truly wants that.

I want to preface my next point with this: there’s a difference between “Black” and “white” cultures and relationship-oriented vs. time-oriented cultures; most people conflate the latter with being the aforementioned, and it's an egregious misinterpretation. Sergio is Spaniard, Caroline is British; both of these people are white. However, Spaniard culture is relationship-oriented (like most African cultures, Hispanic cultures, Italian culture, Portuguese culture, etc.) and British culture is time-oriented (like most Western European and American/Canadian cultures). I understand that a young Spanish man is insistent upon having his own children which he views as his own family, in the traditional sense. He has stepchildren and a blended family with Caroline, but he does not see it as a culmination of him as a man and father, because his culture dictates (whether he is conscious of it or not) that he has a woman give birth to his own biological children. I believe he also said that he grew up with a lot of siblings and that their family was very tight-knit, so he has that expectation for his home life. Stanbury basically grew up the opposite way, with her family’s staff and boarding school raising her, and not having very close relationships with her parents. I am honestly surprised that she herself even has three children (even though the youngest are twins). 

Even if Caroline gave him one baby, I think he’d want more. In conclusion, this relationship is based on Sergio’s unhealthy attachment style, his unacknowledged but veritably warped view of Caroline as his mother figure, and Caroline’s reluctance to admit that she does not want any more children. Caroline also probably understandably relishes the doting attention from a young athletic man. I give them about 3-5 more years together. And this, ladies, gentlemen, folx, is why it’s imperative to get therapy before you get married! Ha.

Taleen

Taleen is a good addition and definitely makes more sense as a cast member than Nina Ali. The only thing interesting about Nina was the fact that her husband is a billionaire. However, Taleen’s face is very perplexing to me; she looks like she had work done to stretch her lips out over her face and then add filler to both lips but more into the bottom lip. It’s weird. (She’s gotten more fillers and done more cosmetic work since filming the show so her face doesn’t look as thin and uneven but instead more mainstream white celeb with the thin, structured nose and injected lips.) Her husband is also strange-looking.

I suppose I focus more on their features because an ex-roommate of mine (who is an Afro-Caribbean woman) tried to sell me on her perspective that Armenians look “more like” Black / African people than they do to white people, but I’ve never seen it, and I never will. I’m not sure how white skin, straight hair, angular noses and thin lips amount to not looking white, but whatever. Not looking like most Western Europeans doesn’t mean they’re a different race, just like West Africans don’t necessarily look like East Africans, but they’re both grouped into the Black race.

Also, how do you look at someone after they’ve had extensive plastic surgery and artificial tanning and say that’s how people of that ethnicity “look”? Dark hair and dark eyes do not mean someone isn’t white nor do they indicate that a person is Black. I think she and most Black people are fooled by both the fact that Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) beauty standards skew Eurocentric but then cherry-pick certain African features, just like European beauty standards do, and that they are mostly open to extensive cosmetic procedures, heavy makeup, wigs, weaves and hairpieces. Arab and other SWANA cultures idolize white skin with an artificial, slight tan; straight, long hair; a slim nose, which apparently about 60% of Persians and I’m sure many other SWANA women (i.e. Sara) and Southern European women achieve via obligatory rhinoplasty; and, lip injections in their naturally small lips that sit on naturally small mouths. Natural SWANA facial features are distinct and do not look remotely African / Black to me.

African features can vary vastly but essentially most Africans have round facial features, with many West Africans and descendants having broad noses and full lips; some Afro-descendant women opt for nose jobs to slim down their noses. Europeans have angular facial features, mostly thin noses and thin lips; many Euro-descendant women opt for lip fillers to plump their lips. SWANA people tend to have protruding noses and small mouths with thin lips; most SWANA women opt to get both nose jobs and lip injections. The finished SWANA face that Black people see is generally not the face they’re born with, and they look closer to white taking all of their features into account, but especially due to their othering of Black and African people as well as their anti-Black, anti-African superiority complex and thirteen-centuries-long slave trades. Anyway, feature and race observations aside…

Taleen is interesting and outgoing enough but I of course sense somewhat of a forced performance for the cameras. It’s hard to get genuine women on the franchises now that Real Housewives has become such an integral, undeniable and lucrative part of the entertainment zeitgeist. I don’t necessarily like her thus far but I don’t despise her either.

EDIT: I do dislike Taleen cause she kisses too much butt, especially Stanbury’s butt. Hmm yeah a lot of these women like to kiss up to Stanbury…

Of course, Taleen’s funny-faced husband is unabashedly racist and so is one of their Lebanese besties…I have always heard and witnessed the most violently anti-Black accounts from Lebanon and on the part of Lebanese people.

Black people: please stop saying Arabs and SWANAs are Black/not white, they don’t like your ass…thank YOU!

Sara

Last and certainly least - I can’t believe they brought this trick back for a second season - Sara. She ain’t no doctor, neither. 

It’s apparent that she feels superior to the Black and African women on the show, which is why she’s always telling them how to live their lives. Again, I don’t know why Brooks is falling for it this season but…yeah. I know this is why she talks down to Brooks and Ayan — and then gaslights them when they are offended — because when Nina Ali (from season 1) was questioned about Sara being “preachy,” Nina chimed, “She doesn’t do that with me.” Of course she doesn’t, she holds no malice for her Arab sister. 

I said it in 2022 and I’ll say it now: the only reason Sara does not try that nonsense with Lesa is because Sara knows that Lesa will f*ck her up on sight. In a recent episode, there was talk of Sara speculating that Lesa had something going on “at home,” and when Lesa brought it to her, Sara quickly and nervously yelped, “Oh no! That’s not what I meant!” Sara has never backed down on the nonsense she peddles about any of the other ladies, i.e Brooks, Ayan, Stanbury. She knows that messing with Lesa will end up in her needing to redo 40-50% of her facial surgeries. A ghost knows who to spook. 

She stayed close to fellow Arab, Nina, in season 1. This season, she has a faux-accomplished South Asian bestie, Saba, who just like her, pretends to be spiritually and intellectually superior to everyone while being extremely vapid and judgmental. I can definitely see in their scenes together, the same way I saw her do with Nina last season, that she’s aligning with her sistren in a way that feels cliquey and disdainfully supercilious.

Speaking of her prejudicial superiority complex, I did some digging to find out what this lady’s deal was, as she’s clearly a phony. I’m like, why and how does she have money? I know she’s not a true entrepreneur who does anything significant with her time. People online have mentioned that she lives off of her parents’ money and generational wealth, which makes perfect sense. UAE, like most of the Arab world, is a country built on predominantly African slave labor, operating within a culture that normalizes and essentially openly brags about its thirteen-centuries-long, anti-Black, anti-African slavery systems. Therefore, it is implied that Sara grew up with enslaved servants who were more than likely African women. This more directly explains why she always wants to act like the Black women on her cast are misguided, malevolent children who either need to be taught how to live or need to have the police called on them.

As for her biracial German hunk of an almost-boyfriend…this lady likes young, modelesque men. She’s in her late 30s and he’s probably about 30. The internet streets have spoken of her dating an Italian model recently and swearing up and down that she was just his manager…right. People online speculate that Sara has the hots for Sergio (Stanbury’s 20-something-year-old husband), and even though she refers to him as her “brother,” I would not put that past her. 

Back to the biracial dude that Ayan calls “Giraffe Man,” Akin – I have no idea why this lady is dating him with her son in tow, and having Akin babysit her son, when she’s stated that they’re not even in a relationship. Her son is about 7-10 years old and refers to this man as his future “daddy” as well as “Caramel Seduction.” All very strange, and indicative of Sara’s failure to establish healthy boundaries and expectations with her child and the men she’s dating, while also teaching him her casual fetishization. She said that she’s had two failed marriages but the streets insist that she’s had three. She also claims to be a spiritual gangster, healer, motivational speaker and “doctor” but it’s quite clear that she’s living off of her parents’ money and social influence while peddling overpriced retreats with neocolonial white hippies parroting the teachings of Indigenous rituals and practices. So basically, she’s just an all-around fraud. She boasts over one million followers on Instagram but let’s be real, she’s certainly not above paying for followers!

I honestly don’t understand how anyone can trust someone who surgically alters that much of their face. Whenever she speaks of someone she likes, she highlights their looks. If someone is spiritual they believe in inner beauty over external appearance; yes you can be healthy and invest in looking nice, but going under the knife is a completely different and drastic measure. Aren’t we created in the image of our creator? If there isn’t anything malfunctioning due to your facial features (like a painful deviated septum), why change all of said features, so that you look like a completely different person? She also tries way too hard to be sexy in photos and videos, i.e. in her show intro, pushing her tongue against the bottom half of her mouth. So she’s trying to sell her fake spirituality with forced sex appeal. Good lawd!

Conclusion

At the onset of this season, I enjoyed the show because I like Ayan, Stanbury and Brooks, and I wanted to see the glamour and opulence that the Real Housewives franchises embody. I don’t like any other franchises and RHOA has been on hiatus for way too long – I have run the RHOA reruns into the ground, and while I love them and the nostalgia, I do want something fresh – so it was something new to watch. 

Just when my interest had waned and I was not sure if I’d finish out this season, “The Beauty and the Beggar” (episode 7) gave what it was supposed to! LOL that episode was comically insane and solidified the following:

1) Caroline Brooks is an immature child stuck in a high-functioning woman’s body;

2) I actually do not care for Taleen, as she tries a little too hard and kisses a little too much butt, both on the show and on social media; and,

3) Caroline Stanbury is HILARIOUS and my absolute favorite cast member.

At one point, Stanbury yells, “Okay party’s over, get the f*ck out of my house!” Taleen’s newfound alliance (I won’t spoil it) was also a little unnecessary. It seems like all of these women are backstabbers who align themselves with whoever their current “frenemy” dislikes, it’s weird. But it’s entertaining. And chaotic cosmetic surgery aside, the cast is mostly beautiful and dresses pretty well. 

Gossip, gold and glamour aside, the UAE is a country that regularly violates human rights, engages in modern-day slavery particularly as it relates to its African and Filipino immigrant populations, has been accused of supporting wars within African countries, and has a very unsavory reputation for imprisoning the women and children of its former royal family. The country has also been deemed a central hub for the trafficking of African children and adults, and has been identified as starting and sustaining a man made famine in Sudan. I would be remiss not to mention this. 

I cannot for the life of me understand why so many Africans (Nigerians, South Africans, Angolans, Zimbabweans, etc.) and Black Americans chose to vacation, live, marry, honeymoon — spend thousands, millions, maybe billions of dollars, flaunt their wealth and act like they’ve made it — in an Arab country that is so clearly anti-African and anti-Black. Like why is this the flex for you all? Come on now, there are way too many lush paradises, escapes, enclaves, vibes in the multitude of countries and regions that comprise Africa, and your money would be better spent investing into those African economies and communities. I know, I know, Africans want to combat the stereotype of being poor, but please do it somewhere in the melanin-rich part of the continent. We can easily create and popularize the next “gold-plated” world destination in Africa.

Caroline Brooks and her cousin stated during season 1 that people in Dubai “love us” (us being Black people) and, “[They would] die for us, [we’re their] champions,”…umm no. Please do not conflate someone being entertained by you, assuming you’re a celebrity, or fetishizing and exoticizing you, with love and respect. People around the globe usually have less anti-Black vitriol for Black people that they know are from the Diaspora (as opposed to being native Africans), Arabs included, BUT they are still super racist. The less contentious interactions with Black American people in particular comes from them knowing that those Black people are traveling with more wealth than most of the Africans they see in their countries, who have emigrated there for job opportunities and usually end up being entrapped in enslavement, and/or take very low-paying, low-regarded, labor-intensive jobs. They therefore look down on those Africans as being “migrants” who are both Black and poor.

In addition, Black American culture, entertainment in particular, is heavily exported, commercialized, and popularized around the world, meaning that many people around the globe associate Black Americans with being fun and entertaining, as well as representative of their favorite Black American celebrities. They also again assume the Black Americans are either traveling and won’t be there for long or have emigrated as a much wealthier person (than most of the African immigrants) and should therefore be treated better due to the different socioeconomic status. There is a special privilege to traveling as a Black American that African travelers do not have.

All in all, Black people from the U.S. especially need to stop being self-absorbed and scratching the surface when attempting to inform others of a foreign country’s attitudes towards Black people and its participation in anti-Black racism. Just because anti-Blackness is expressed differently in another country does not mean it does not exist there. I hate to break it to you but the British Empire alone colonized 90% of the world, and there were numerous other European countries colonizing, meaning virtually every part of the globe has experience with being taught anti-Black, anti-Indigenous, white supremacist notions. The Arab world has practiced anti-African trafficking, enslavement, violence and murder since 600 AD and their systems are still going strong today, which is a huge reason for their countries’ exorbitant wealth. Yes, they have resources, but so does Africa. The difference is that slave labor eliminates the cost of wages, the most expensive line on any business’s books, which results in the ability to amass extreme amounts of wealth. Billionaires have all exploited labor at some point within their supply chains.

I do not feel comfortable traveling to Dubai (ergo giving them my money) based on what I know about the culture and society – of course I’ve been tempted by the shine and mystique of it all on more than a few occasions – but I cannot in good conscience support that. I also had a really crappy, misogynoir experience with Qatar Airways and I’m not sure the other Arab-owned and operated airlines would be much better…I think other airlines fly there but the point is, I don’t think I want to go. That said I’m only human, I’m imperfect and complex (i.e. I can be contradictory) so I do want to keep watching the show; but I’m not stupid, I know that is supporting the economy and country.

Season 2 Rating: 5.1 / 10.0