Let’s Talk About ‘The Bachelor’
People love The Bachelor — and love to hate it — so what does that say about love and relationships in the modern age?
I’m not ashamed to admit it…I’m really into The Bachelor. Every Monday night, my friends and I gather around the TV for two hours and watch as a man goes on dates with multiple women, all in the quest for some grand love, and broadcasted for millions of people to see. But as someone who is always looking for deeper meanings in everything, I can’t help but wonder why I enjoy watching The Bachelor, why it is so extremely popular, and what this says about the state of dating, relationships, and love in this day and age.
Some people are quick to denounce the entire Bachelor franchise, saying it paints an unrealistic picture of the search for love, simultaneously idealizing dating and marriage and normalizing the behavior of dating multiple people at once and proposing to someone after a few weeks of knowing them. I am certainly not blind to the negative aspects of the show, of which there are many, including the lack of diversity in contestants, who always fit into a very narrow Ken and Barbie ideal of physical beauty, the way that the show paints the search for love as a competition and pits women against one another in the pursuit of a man’s attention, and the way that the producers manipulate the contestants and the footage to paint the story that they know will generate the best ratings, to name a few.
Despite all this, The Bachelor is still a widely successful franchise- when I go on social media, I see people posting about it. When I go to work, I hear people talking about it. Whether we like it or not, this show has the power to be a conversation starter and have an impact on society, and for that, I think it is worth considering why exactly we like it so much.
First, it is important to consider the way that young people, who make up a big part of The Bachelor viewership, feel about love. Research shows that 40% of millennials think that dating today is harder than it has been for previous generations. As many know, young people are getting married later and later on in life than previous generations. In fact, those aged 18 to 34 are less than half as likely to be married today than as men and women were 50 years ago. Still, the percentage of Americans who aspire to one day be married (61%) has not dwindled since the 1970s.
As this information shows, we are at an interesting junction of espoused versus enacted values when it comes to millennials and relationships. As a young person myself, I can attest that many of us, including myself, have a tendency to feel pressured to downplay our emotions and our desires to find love. “Whoever cares less wins” is a phrase I have heard many times describing modern day relationships. With the rise of dating apps, young people always have endless options at their fingertips, but many times, this can lead to choice paralysis and fear of commitment. With so many options, there is always the fear that something better could be out there. So we become aloof and detached in our relationship pursuits, simultaneously afraid of being tied down for the fear of missing out on something better, and afraid of putting ourselves out there too much and facing true rejection.
Despite what many young people may say, they still want to find love and eventually find someone to spend the rest of their life with. Which is why, in my opinion, The Bachelor is such a successful show (but not the only reason). That being said, many people claim to watch the show “ironically”, laughing at the whole ordeal and the absurdity of it all. But there has to be something that keeps us intrigued, keeps drawing us back. Whether or not we really believe that The Bachelor is the answer to all our modern dating woes, the reality is that it brings a lot of conversations about dating and relationships to the forefront of our minds.
Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, The Bachelor gives us an opportunity to observe and judge the relationships of others- something we looooove to do. For many young people who may be insecure in their own dating lives, watching The Bachelor provides the opportunity to laugh- at the desperation of the contestants, at their naivete in believing that love can really be found on a TV show, and at their inevitable heartbreak when they don’t receive a rose.
Even more interesting is the fact that The Bachelor is more popular than The Bachelorette. Why is that? There are many possible reasons, but I believe that women prefer to watch The Bachelor because they get more pleasure from watching 30 women being rejected by a man than they do watching 30 extremely attractive men vie for the attention of one woman. Seeing women fight over men, and experience rejection, makes the women watching feel at least a little bit better about themselves. This, of course, is extremely problematic and something to reflect on.
While I could go on much longer about The Bachelor and what it says about modern love, I will leave you with this: yes, The Bachelor can certainly have negative impacts. And it is not an appropriate portrayal of relationships. But it is a conversation starter, and I think that is what we need to latch on to. Deeper reflection on the show, and on dating and relationships in general, can reveal some truths that we, as young people, may be afraid to confront. But the fact is that so many people are tuning into this show means that they, too, are interested in these conversations.
This is why I watch The Bachelor, besides the fact that it is truly very entertaining and generates a lot of laughs amongst my friends and I. I watch it because it gives me an opportunity to explore how I feel about dating and relationships, by observing (with as much of an open mind as possible) other people in their efforts to find love. I know that the show is certainly not an accurate depiction of love, but it does create the opportunity for more conversations- hopefully conversations that are open, honest, and vulnerable. I hope that as young people, we can realize that many of us are in the same boat with our disillusionment with love and our emotions about dating and relationships in the modern age. I hope that we can start to engage with one another more about our feelings, and ultimately form deeper and more meaningful connections as a result.
