Yeah, you heard me. " The Bachelor" is good for you. Most people see the popularity of "The Bachelor" and shows like it as a sign that true romance is dead, feminism is for naught, the Antichrist is coming, etc. And it's true: "The Bachelor" is a pretty offensive symptom of a pretty offensive patriarchal superstructure that wants to sell women into romantic servitude and then convince them that servility is happiness.
I could go on for days, but I’m not about to miss an episode.
I won't argue that "The Bachelor" is a great show and that Chris Harrison is a feminist icon. My point is that women should be allowed to watch crappy TV if they want to, without being ridiculed. For women that are at least partially woke, watching "The Bachelor" is actually a healthy exercise in social and self-criticism (while being entertained by good-old Hollywood drama) since it reminds us what we're up against. The women on the show are made into perfectly submissive potential brides, with perfect hair and perfectly affected personalities. They're the extreme version of what society thinks of as ideal womanhood, so laughing at how fake and corny the show is reminds us to laugh at how fake and corny the patriarchy is. If "ideal" femininity is this artificial and silly, then I'll go ahead and stick with my version of femininity, thank you very much.
And something needs to be said for the contestants. We may love to hate Olivia (may she rest in peace) but we still know what's going on. We know that Olivia was so aggressively edited that she appeared crazy on TV, but in reality she’s sitting at home with a nice fat paycheck. These women weren't chosen Hunger Games-style to compete to the death for Bland Man's love; they volunteered, and knew what they were getting themselves into. So as viewers, we need to know what we're getting ourselves into as well.
The crux of the issue is that watching "The Bachelor" with your friends while sipping red wine is not bad for you. If you want to watch the show, you don't have to justify it to anyone. Maybe I'm saying this because I'm defensive of my own "Bachelor" addiction, but it needs to be said nonetheless. Watching (and loving) crappy reality TV doesn't make you a "stereotypical woman" (because that doesn't exist) and it definitely doesn't undermine your feminism, strength, or independence. We have a right to indulge in all our giggling fantasies for a few hours just like we did as children when we played dress-up and pretended to be cowboys, princesses, dragons, or Nala from "Lion King." We know it's not real, but it's fun. So let us live.
As long as we know what’s really going on, each episode of "The Bachelor" is an opportunity to prove to the patriarchy that we can turn their multi-million dollar attempts to control us into a drinking game and then wake up and take care of business the next day.
