Credit: Instagram
Alethea Shapiro, who was featured on Wendy Osefo‘s episode of Wife Swap: The Real Housewives Edition last Sunday, isn’t happy with Bravo’s portrayal of her and her family dynamic.
In a series of posts against the network, which paired her and her husband, Craig Shapiro, with the 41-year-old Real Housewives of Potomac star and her spouse, Eddie Osefo, 41, Alethea accused Bravo of “defamatory editing,” suggesting that it chose to ignore her mental health diagnoses for the sake of entertainment.
“I highly recommend people watch it/rewatch it with the knowledge that Bravo [and] Truly Original decided to pursue a defamatory editing job when they decided to remove my AuDHD [and] Neurodivergent context with respect to my burnout and the Neurodivergent philosophy of Low Demand Parenting,” Alethea wrote on her Instagram Story, as seen in a screenshot shared by OMFGRealityTV on Instagram on November 12.
While Alethea chose to promote the episode since she had a “fun experience” and had “great memories made on and off screen with the Osefo kids,” she didn’t appreciate the lack of context surrounding her struggles with autism and ADHD, and the decisions she made for her family because of them.
“What was done in the editing room with some unknown, suspect intent is not my fault,” she noted.
In videos she shared, Alethea said Bravo was guilty of the “mischaracterization and hijacking of a one-sided narrative that created a storyline both harmful and untrue, framing Wendy as a savior while stripping me of depth and humanity.”
According to Alethea, by erasing her AuDHD identity, Bravo misrepresented her life.
“By deliberately deleting or choosing not to connect low-demand parenting to the realities of my neurodivergent life, Bravo also stripped it of its meaning and depth,” she wrote. “Using a neurodivergent philosophy out of context felt exploitative and appropriative, reducing something rooted in lived experience, disability, and care into a shallow punchline. I imagine many disability and PDA advocates will share my concern about seeing a framework designed to protect our community turned into a cartoon. This hurts my heart, because I would never intentionally bring harm or embarrassment to the autism community that I love deeply and feel protective of.”
Alethea then included an explanation of why Bravo’s edits could be considered appropriation.
“It should be viewed as a form of cultural appropriation, but through a disability lens rather than a racial or ethnic one. Appropriation happens when elements of a marginalized group’s lived experience, language, or framework are used by outsiders without credit, context, or respect, often for entertainment, profit, or aesthetic value,” she explained.
She also said that low-demand parenting was not just a style of parenting, but a care philosophy rooted in advocacy and trauma.
“When media removes that neurodivergent context and reframes it as quirkiness or permissiveness, it’s taking ownership of an idea born from disability culture and twisting it into something unrecognizable for laughs or ratings,” Alethea stated. “That’s exploitation of a marginalized community’s lived framework for neurotypical consumption.”
“In other words, it’s not just editing out of context. It’s editing out of culture, history, and purpose behind it — which is exactly what appropriation does,” she added.
Wife Swap: The Real Housewives Edition is currently streaming on Peacock.