For the past nine weeks, I have spent every Monday night watching Kaitlyn and her hoard of bros do ridiculous, controversial, and even offensive things, all in the name of love. Not only have I dedicated my time to watching this show — two hours a week is gratuitous at best — but I have also taken copious notes on each episode, spending the following hours crafting recap articles for The Odyssey. I’ve watched this show for years, but never have I given it the time and energy that I have this season, and honestly? I’m over it.

Watching "The Bachelor" or "The Bachelorette" gives me a familiar and disheartening cycle of emotions: short-term excitement leads to immediate boredom, frustration, incredulity, more boredom, and eventually, relief that the episode is finally over and I can return to my life free of rose ceremonies and fake crying. There may have been a time, perhaps during Ali Fedotowsky’s reign as Bachelorette, when I genuinely enjoyed this show. I believed in the concept, the drama seemed mostly real, and the stakes were high. Most of all, I was a sophomore in high school who really didn’t have anything better to do. Now, though, it seems more like a distraction than anything, a sect of low-brow culture that I somehow signed up for simply by virtue of being a white girl raised in an upper-middle class suburban family.

A brief geometry lesson: every square is a rectangle, but every rectangle is not a square. Not all women watch "The Bachelor," but the people who do are overwhelmingly female. Former "Bachelor" associate producer and showrunner of the new Lifetime series "UnREAL" Sarah Gertrude Shapiro notes that the show’s focus on princesses and fairy tale romances is reminiscent of what young girls learn from infancy — that we exist on this planet exclusively to find a man who will sweep us off our feet and carry us off into the sunset. This is what "The Bachelor" advertises as reality, and every season, like clockwork, women across America eat it up.

But here is the one theory I have always maintained about 'The Bachelor' franchise: Women do not watch this show because they like it.

It sounds counterintuitive — why would anyone watch a show if she didn’t like it? — but bear with me. At live premiere and finale episodes, Chris Harrison loves to hype up what he calls “Bachelor Nation,” which is an abysmal label that refers to the community of people who are loyal fans of the franchise. He often wants to hear the opinions of the members of the studio audience, and last season he and Bachelor Chris Soules paid a few visits to fans who were hosting "Bachelor" viewing parties in their homes. The homes were filled with women, young and old, taking tequila shots and drinking goblets of wine together while an episode of "The Bachelor" was on in the background. You could almost hear the murmur of the TV beneath the much louder sounds of drunken merriment coming from the women themselves.

Gatherings like this are what make "The Bachelor" a popular show. Women essentially use the series as an excuse to get their girlfriends together once a week for a night of drinking and laughter. In other words, many women who watch "The Bachelor" aren’t actually watching it at all, but are instead holding a friend’s hair back in the bathroom or, in many cases, having an entirely unrelated conversation that all but drowns out whatever is happening on the screen. Some might say this actually makes the series less insidious — if no one’s really watching it, then it can’t have a negative impact, right? — but regardless of how many viewers are actually viewing the show, simply turning it on contributes to the illusion that this is what women want and find entertaining. "The Bachelor" is a women’s show, and they keep watching it, so they must love it.

This week, I watched the “Men Tell All” episode with five of my friends. I’ve avoided watching in groups this season, because I knew what would happen: No one would pay attention, and I would have to endure the endless torture of re-watching the episode for a second time in order to write my article. Part of the reason why I’m not recapping this week’s episode is because this is exactly what happened. We spent most of the two hours talking about gender norms, racism, and Caitlyn Jenner, conversations which stood in striking irony next to a notoriously racist and heteronormative show whose producers think a fake gay romance makes for shocking television. I missed much of the episode as a result, and honestly, I think I’m better for it.

So ladies, here’s what I propose (pun totally intended): Let’s stop encouraging the notion that the contrived drama of beautiful white people will forever satisfy our entertainment needs. Let’s demand more of ourselves when we choose what to devote our time to. Let’s demand more of television executives, who will continue to produce the same drivel as long as we continue to watch it. Let’s boycott "The Bachelor," because our time is worth too much to waste it consuming manufactured drama in between commercials for cleaning products.

Let’s stop accepting their roses, because I’m tired of getting poked by their thorns.