The thorn among the roses
The chance to have your very own fairytale moment is one not many women would pass up. It’s not a bad thought to imagine yourself gracefully stepping out of a limo wearing a stunning dress, only to walk into the waiting arms of a stupidly handsome man who you could imagine spending the rest of your life with.
The Bachelor puts a unique spin on the concept of dating in modern society. The catch of the popular reality show is that instead of one woman enjoying this fairytale moment, it’s repeated over and over with about 20 different contestants. The women are then kept in a house together for months of filming, with minimal outside contact as they compete for the same man.
Does that make it seem like less of a fairytale?
With cameras always at the ready to make the most of any whiff of drama, The Bachelor isn’t just about finding love. Instead, it focuses equally on the lives of the female contestants while they’re in the house. As a result, it provides an interesting example of gender representation on television.
Despite the vast amount of time devoted to the women on the show, the Bachelorettes are rarely shown as more than just pretty faces desperate to find Mr Perfect. In fact, most of what we viewers see is footage of them being snarky and making negative comments about the other Bachelorettes.
Every season there seems to be one Bachelorette whose primary role on the show appears to be making comments about the other women. It appears Emily has been cast in the role this season, with most of her interviews to camera focused on negative comments about other Bachelorettes. So many of these interviews with Emily have made it to air that many of my Bachelor-loving friends have asked the question — is she actually that nasty, or is it just how she’s being portrayed?
Emily hasn’t failed to notice the way she’s being portrayed on the show, recently taking to Instagram to defend herself against what she’s calling careful editing by the producers.
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One of Emily’s Instagram posts[/caption]
As many of us have suspected, there is likely some truth to what Emily is saying. A reality TV editor has said that in interviews, producers try to say things like “so-and-so was looking at you funny, what do you think of that?” to try and turn people against each other. When you’ve been stuck in a fake environment for a long time, it’s not unimaginable that it would be easy to crack.
Episode after episode, the show focuses as much on the drama amongst the Bachelorettes as it does on the Bachelor finding love. Who could forget the infamous spat of the first episode of the season? The women had only just met each other when one contestant made a very public display of attacking another for refusing to take part in gossip. While this contestant in particular had apparently “not been drinking”, copious amounts of alcohol are supplied at cocktail parties to help turn up the drama.
Watch the moment one Bachelorette turned against another
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Sandra quickly attacked Reshael when she didn’t want to gossip[/caption]
It’s no secret that reality TV is carefully edited to give contestants distinct characters that will appeal to the target audience. However, with women only making up 38.9% of speaking roles on prime time television, it’s important that those who do make their way onto our screens accurately represent the rest of the female population. It’s not all about just having women on TV either, because women being under-represented on screen also refers to the quality of the positions and roles they occupy when they do appear.
All things considered, it’s not difficult to imagine that total strangers being trapped in the same space while vying for the attention of the same person would result in a few questionable comments and actions. Given the amount of time the Bachelorettes spend in the house, there are surely many less dramatic moments that occur that do not make it to air.
Australia has aired two seasons of The Bachelor so far, with the third currently in progress. The first Australian season of The Bachelorette is due to air later this year and it will certainly be interesting to note the way the Bachelorette and her competing male counterparts are portrayed in comparison to the dynamics we have previously seen on The Bachelor.
We can likely expect that the new program will follow the lead of the American Bachelorette. The US model has shown us that the male contestants on The Bachelorette are portrayed as more calm and put together than the competing Bachelorettes on The Bachelor. However, it is nice to note that both male and female contestants are typically portrayed as being just as eager to find love, settle down and have a family.
While it is unlikely that stereotypical representations of gender will disappear off our screens anytime soon, it’s important when watching reality TV that we take a moment to consider just how “real” the characters on reality shows really are. At the end of the day, The Bachelor is a program designed for entertainment. While there is no doubt that women, like men, may display questionable behaviour or make negative comments about others at times, this can easily be skewed under the scrutiny of a camera lens.
The Bachelor is all about the fight for love, but let’s see a few positive female moments thrown in with the competition for a man from time to time.
