Okay, I'll admit it: "The Bachelorette" is my guilty pleasure. I started watching it last summer because my grandma loved it and wanted to watch it with us, but now my obsession with it is all my own. I can't wait to turn on the TV every Monday night and watch the drama unfold. Hot guys all vying for one girls' love on extravagant dates in places I will likely not see (at least anytime soon)? What's not to love, right?
Wrong. There is a reason that it's a guilty pleasure. I feel awful when I watch it. Not because I'm embarrassed, ashamed, or afraid of what my friends might think, but because I know that this show grinds against a lot of values that I hold. I consider myself to be a fairly progressive thinker, and trying to marry off one desirable woman by throwing her to a multitude of men in nice garb just screams Victorian society to me. You know, that time when daughters were treated like cattle to be sold from one family to another. Yeah, not such a great time for women. Most women would be horrified if they had to live out that reality, yet millions tune in every week to watch it happen to a modern woman (sorry, JoJo!).
But it's not only the bachelorettes who are treated poorly by the wide TV audience: I find myself judging the men in a way that would be misogynistic if the genders were flipped. As soon as they step out of the limo, I'm judging their faces, their clothes, and their occupations (St. Nick, really?). As a feminist and a decent human being, I want to be judged on my character, not on how cute I am or whether my shoes match my outfit. But I don't extend the same courtesy to these men. I am constantly outraged when I see women judged in this way—best and worst dressed lists make me anxious and angry—but it seems excusable when I do the exact same thing to these men. Don't they deserve the same respect that I demand for women?
They do. But when I'm in the zone, I can't even begin to think like that.
The worst part of the whole thing is that I think I know the people better than they know themselves. The big difference between reality TV and other TV series is that the people are real. They're not characters to be analyzed; they are human beings with thoughts, feelings and instincts. But I, a viewer, also have thoughts, feelings and instincts. Somehow, I always think that mine trump the real, live, walking, talking and breathing people who choose to partake in this journey. Like somehow I know everything that happened, even when we all know that the show is heavily edited. There's no way that they could fit everything that happens into an hour-long time slot, yet I think I know enough to make their decisions for them. It's awful. I would never do that to a person that I know in real life.
At the end of the day, I know that I return to myself when the show is over. I become the accepting and decent person that I am most of the time. But when as soon as I hear Chris Harrison's voice on Monday nights, I turn into something that I don't like: a judgmental monster with little respect for the actual people on the show. I can only hope that I can learn to control it.
