On January 2 at 8:00 pm, I gathered with friends and popcorn to watch ABC’s premiere of The Bachelor. The 21st season features Nick Viall, an attractive white man, who searches for love by simultaneously dating thirty beautiful women. What I now call “Monday Bachelor Night” began with season 6 of The Bachelorette when my sister and I followed Ali & Roberto’s “romantic journey of love” (which so happened to end immediately after the show aired). Although well aware of the obvious flaws—the blatantly sexist theme of the show, lack of diversity, superficial standards of love and beauty, stereotyping women and men, representing only heterosexuality, depicting marriage as women’s ultimate goal, and often promoting the idea that other women are competition (to name a few)—I still somehow became hooked on The Bachelor/Bachelorette. After all, this show is a feminist’s nightmare, which begs the question: Why do I, someone who deeply agrees with the progression of women as well as a more inclusive representation of all people in popular culture, keep watching it?
The show advertises love as its driving goal, which any educated viewer knows is fabricated and forced. However, I’ll admit that the show’s version of courtship—cheesy one liners with hard to miss sexual innuendos, overly expensive first dates on boats or airplanes, steamy kisses beneath fireworks, outrageous group dates, and all the other overly forced romance—is fascinating. At the very least, it offers a form of entertainment or a silly means of escapism from a more normal, healthy version of dating. Instead of internalizing The Bachelor or using it as a model of societal conduct, I think we can use it to appreciate our real, imperfect relationships. As well as a means to have a two hour break from life, an excuse to sit back with friends (and wine?), while watching something not quite mentally challenging. After all, if we can’t escape reality through scripted, over the top dramatic displays then where can we? And who says I can’t escape through The Bachelor while maybe enjoying it a little, too? Perhaps that is exactly the point. Watching The Bachelor gives us enough rose petals and red dresses for life.
However, it is important to note that we must do so with an armor of critical media consumption skills in order to be an active, aware consumer. Understanding that this is as fake and unrealistic as Disney fairytales or Barbie & Ken and should never be a reflection of reality, is crucial.
As much of the Bachelor junkie that I am (and hate to admit), I know I could give up watching TV about fake romance. With the evident, problematic tropes, I probably should. There’s no arguing around it’s degressive nature. But, maybe there’s something important, too, in trying to understand the vast popularity with shows like The Bachelor and the issues that still widely exist in media today. With that, here’s to hoping that for the first time ever a woman of color will make it past week five. And more and more women of diversity will appear, representing strong, multidimensional characters (because you don’t have to be a white, thin model to fall in love). And varying sexualities will be included. And the promotion of female friendship between contestants, rather than cattiness. Until then, we know we don’t have control over the media we’re given, but we can choose how we engage with it as well as critique its message in order to continue on our own uninterrupted feminist ways.
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