Of All Tom Sandoval’s Excuses, the T-Shirt-During-Sex Dig Was Actually the Worst

Tom Sandoval said a lot of shitty things during the three-part Vanderpump Rules, but there’s one comment in particular that will probably haunt me for the rest of my life. The T-shirt comment. A comment so low it left even the Vanderpump Rules cast momentarily speechless. It reverberated across the internet as viewers glimpsed the misogyny at his core, and perhaps wondered how many more such Sandovals walk secretly among us, who may have said or thought such a thing about them.

When Andy Cohen asked Sandoval whether he’d slept with any other women after Raquel Leviss, Ariana Madix interjected, “You know who he did sleep with after he and Raquel started sleeping together? Me.” Sandoval’s astonishing response was a bitterly sarcastic “Yeah, she kept her T-shirt on; it was really hot.” For once, the entire stage was silent. Cohen cringed. Tom Schwartz buried his face in his knees. Finally Lala Kent jumped in with the only reasonable thing to say in such a situation: “You’re such a fucking dick.”

There’s honestly not much Sandoval could have done or said at this reunion to make his situation any better, but his best bet would have been to sit quietly and eat the shit he knew was coming his way and try his best to look contrite. But Sandy does not have Leviss’s fortitude when it comes to weathering a verbal beatdown, and his castmates across the stage were giving his well-rehearsed narrative no quarter. So he snapped. Had he been at his mom’s house, he might have punched a hole in the wall.

All season long Sandoval has been trying and failing to sell the spin that the spark had left his relationship with Madix while his feelings for Leviss grew to such a point they became irresistible (but just once!). This little dig, however, shows us what he looks like in the cold, hard light of day. Sandoval decided Madix was failing to meet his personal hotness standard, so he fucked her friend instead. You might think from this comment that Madix’s primary value to Sandoval was boobs, and he doesn’t say much that would contradict that impression. 

What Madix does or does not wear during sex is her own business, and it was a crass betrayal in its own right to use such a detail from their personal life as a barb. But let’s say she was feeling a little insecure in her own skin that day. Longtime Vanderpump Rules fans know that she has struggled with disordered eating and body image in the past, and Sandoval, having been in a relationship with her for nearly a decade, must surely have been aware of that as well. There could be a million different reasons to keep a T-shirt on during sex, comfort being one of them, but considering what Madix has shared publicly about body image, he knowingly invited speculation about her body and her sexuality. He never seems especially concerned with how he has and continues to hurt Madix. If I’m reading this right, the problem for Sandoval is that her body failed to serve him in the way he wanted, so he blames her for his decision to sleep with Leviss.

Social media exploded with disgust for Tom Sandoval’s sheer tackiness, and also because there was something in his sneering, self-pitying tone that felt a little personal. Like, personal to me. To us. To the sexually active public. I’d venture to guess that most people have felt a little insecure or uncomfortable getting fully naked during sex. I know I certainly have. While understanding logically that Sandoval only speaks for Sandoval, he seems to think his feelings were broadly relatable, at least to other men, otherwise he wouldn’t have said it. And what if he’s right? Do some men think we’re all supposed to be getting completely nude every time we do the deed? 

“He’s disgusting,” Madix observed to Cohen. And the truth is he always has been.

Kathleen Walsh is a contributing writer at Glamour. You can follow her on Twitter @kath_walsh.

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