Every week, my roommates and I have a Bachelor night. We get home from our busy days, cook a nice dinner, and watch the drama unfold from our CPC (Comfortable Poofy Couch). It’s one of my favorite parts of the week; I get to unwind, hang out with my friends, and put aside all of my stressful homework. We make bets on who we think is crazy and who we think is going to get the final rose, and, after the episode, we get on Twitter and look at all of the new memes.
Of course, social media always has its downsides. When I get on Twitter post-episode, I see Tweets everywhere: ‘The Bachelor is so stupid’ and ‘I can’t believe people find this entertaining!’ It doesn’t bother me that people don’t like the TV show; I’m a fan, and even I can admit that it’s a little over-the-top sometimes. People are welcome to like (or dislike) whatever they want. What bothers me, however, is WHY people don’t like it.
Picture this: you are a 20-year-old college boy attending NMSU, and, every Sunday, you sit down with your friends and watch a football game. You wear your team’s jersey, eat some pizza and wings, and yell at every single play that takes place. You are a big football fan, of course; you know all the players’ names and you have a Fantasy Football league that you know will win this year. Best of all? Nobody cares. When you go on Tinder dates and talk about your favorite quarterback, nobody bats an eye. In fact, if you were to ever meet another guy that DIDN’T like football, you would probably think that he was the weird one. Nobody makes fun of you for it, and nobody bashes the sport over a Twitter post.
So now I ask you this: What’s the difference? What’s the difference between knowing the name of every girl on the Bachelor and knowing every name of the athletes on a sports team? It’s all because of social stigma. People make fun of The Bachelor for the same reason they make fun of romance novels and bath bombs: they each tend to have a female audience.
Subconsciously, as a society, we tend to ridicule things that are typically liked by women. People try to squish these things down, shun them, fit them into a tight little box. They try to make people feel silly for enjoying them. I have seen men being mocked or even threatened for watching The Bachelor, and I have seen women trying to seem cool by saying that they must be “the only girl on the planet” that doesn’t find the show entertaining.
The technical term for this behavior is Normative Social Influence. This is a type of social influence that people exhibit when they want others to fit into what are considered the ‘norms’ of society. It’s just like when you show up to a family gathering and your mom glares at you for being on your phone; it’s a way to push you to be more like the rest of society. People don’t post things on Twitter because they don’t like the show; they post them because they don’t want other people to like it, either. Football is considered normal. For some reason, The Bachelor is not.
Despite others’ opinions, I have not stopped watching my TV show, and I probably won’t for a long time. Does it add anything to my life to watch 30 girls fight over the same guy? No, of course not. I watch it for the same reason that people watch athletes throw a ball around for a few hours: I happen to find it entertaining. So next time you see someone making fun of something you like, ignore it. And don’t bash The Bachelor, bro.