Character Analysis: The Bachelor

As I walked through the Healey Family Student Center last Monday night, I saw a gaggle of students all crowded in front of a screen. On it, there was a young woman sobbing and threatening the lives of twelve other, seemingly unhinged women. Many of the students appeared unfazed or amused by the woman’s pain. What I saw as a grossly disconsolate scene was simply the typical reaction seen on The Bachelor, a smash-hit reality television series in which thirty women compete for the chance to marry one man. Why do we accept this kind of behavior as “normal” from a reality TV star? Or, if we are of the converse opinion that the woman is “crazy”, why do we continue to watch her suffer? In this essay, I will explore how The Bachelor continues to simultaneously

To ensure that they can create entertaining television, then, the show will bring on women with painful pasts in the hopes that the environment of the Mansion will bring out some irrationality. This is not only highly unethical, but also incredibly exploitative of women who might actually have serious trauma in their lives. Take for instance Kelsey Poe, a season nineteen contestant who confessed to her Bachelor that she was a widow in an early “trauma pitch” to him. The trauma pitch, a phrase coined by Dr. Shauna Smith, is the assumption that contestants will share their darkest traumas during their first one-on-one date. This expectation in itself is highly problematic as girls compete to have the most poignant past, a practice that belittles and undermines the actual trauma that not only these girls have suffered, but also the feelings of people who have suffered through similar experiences. In the case of Ms. Poe, she went on to have a panic attack when she was not chosen to remain on the show after week six, furthering her exploitation as a simply plot point for the show rather than being considered an actual human

The first is that this irrational behavior is indeed normal, even to be expected when thirty females come together in one room. To the viewer, this belief is dangerous as they can take behavioral cues from the women on the show, and alienate themselves in all of their relationships. Perhaps more nefariously, though, is the perpetuation of the belief that women in general act like this when it comes to men. This idea plays into a larger societal and anti-feminist issue of trivializing any display of emotion in relationships, which makes women think that they should feel serious distress in a relationship and for men to expect this kind of behavior from them. The second possible view takeaway from The Bachelor is that this is what “crazy” people look like. Should any of the women on the show actually have a mental illness, then the treatment they receive is not only insensitive but also exploitative in the name of television. Trauma should not be used to garner viewer sympathy, and by exposing these women to the competition, the show reveals that it cares little about mental health and more about its ratings. Even though many of the women on The Bachelor are probably mentally healthy off air, the editing of the show pathologizes their feelings, and this becomes problematic when viewers begin to think the same way about rational, genuine emotion in their