Before this year, I had never watched a minute of “The Bachelor.” And honestly? It was something I prided myself on. From afar, the contestants were easy to scoff at—these women who went on reality TV, of all places, to find love. To me, it was nothing short of ridiculous.
But one Tuesday night in late January, I found myself on the couch with my roommates, like millions of other women across America, watching “The Bachelor.” At first, I told myself I enjoyed it because it was mindless entertainment, nothing of real substance. But as the weeks progressed, and the unnecessary girl-on-girl drama eased, I found myself resonating personally with the contestants. These women were draped in floor-length gowns and donning full faces of makeup, spilling their most personal secrets on live TV. But they were also just ordinary women trying their best to be vulnerable and to find love—at their core, they were a lot like me.
This realization caused me to look inward. Why was I so quick to laugh at these women? Yes, the premise of “The Bachelor” was still ridiculous to me—33 women thrown together to compete for the affection of 1 man. But when it came to the individual women, the ones who came from troubled pasts to open themselves up to love again, what exactly was so laughable to me?
In asking myself these difficult questions, I began to slowly uncover my own internalized misconceptions about love. Like so many other women, my views on love were born and raised on a steady diet of romantic comedies. When I look at these movies in hindsight, one message appears to me, clear as day: you can’t be looking for love. In “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days,” Andie attempts to further her career but ends up falling for Ben instead. In “10 Things I Hate About You,” Kat just wants to be left alone until she can go far away for college, and then Patrick enters her life. In “Clueless,” Cher is simply trying to help out the new girl—and prove that she is not shallow—when she just so happens to fall in love with her ex-stepbrother. According to these movies, women are supposed to be way too busy, independent and career-driven to look for love… and only then will love actually find them.
Even in cases where the protagonist is actively looking for love—take “To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before” or “You’ve Got Mail,” for instance—this is consistently portrayed as a negative trait. This type of protagonist is painted as too dreamy-eyed and is constantly told to “get their head out of the clouds.” In a society over-saturated with these types of stories, it’s no wonder that I, and so many other women, believe that looking for love is inherently bad… and even laughable.
This, of course, brings me back to “The Bachelor.” It is undoubtedly an incredibly flawed franchise, and I will always think that the premise is a little ridiculous. But I now believe that the contestants, who admit to the whole world that they are actively looking for love, should be admired for it rather than ridiculed. Most of all, I believe that the millions of women across America—who watch “The Bachelor” and realize that they, too, want to actively look for love—shouldn’t be ashamed of it.