As irritated as I am, I can't seem to come up with an opening sentence for my latest rant...so I will just say - THE BACHELORETTE and The Bachelor must go!
I am no fan of the original show: The Bachelor, which made it's debut in 2002. I will admit to watching the very first episode and cheered when a beautiful Mid-Eastern woman stood up and announced that she was eliminating herself - her words were along the lines of "I know you won't be selecting me, I'm the token non-white". And that was the end for me as well, I didn't even finish watching that episode. Here it is 9 years later and unbelievably it is still on! Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bachelor_(TV_series) for the statistics of bad boy behavior and how they all fared. It's not pretty, but predictable for sure. I'm not that righteous, I just refuse to participate in the demeaning of women - even when these very women 'sign-up' for the event.
Where do I begin? To state the obvious .... do we know a young woman who got up one morning and said "when I grow up I want to be a contestant on the Bachelorette"...I think not. In my 20's I had no self-esteem...clearly I had more than the women who not only sign up to compete against each other over a man in front of millions of people. Really? You want to show the world how truly sad you are? Where are the feminists screaming for this show to be removed? Are we really teaching the young women of America that the way to find their 'soul mate' is by mass dating for one guy on TV in front of the world?
What is so charming and appealing about a man saying he "wets the bed", or is so drunk or tired that he falls asleep during your first meeting (per recent promo commercials) that screams "pick me, pick me"? And the other side is - she is crying about how "I didn't believe I would be hurt again so soon" in the first episode - or words similar. The first episode has you in tears? The commercials alone are enough to make me want to heave my most recent meal.
I just don't get this fascination with watching train wrecks on TV. If 25 women are chosen for a "season" that means that several hundred applied to be part of the train, for something like 15 seasons....and then if one of them is the runner-up or in the case of one recent finalist - engagement broken off on live TV and the runner up is chosen - you then get the opportunity to mass date 25 males on your own train - is it really love that you are looking for or the attention that this will bring you for about 15 minutes. I mean, seriously, the only woman I remember surviving the train wreck is Tristan - mainly because she's the one that got married out of all of the shows. So that tells me that young women are looking for the fame they believe they may find on one of these dating shows. It amazes me that bright, beautiful and talented young women sink to this level, just for fame.
The saddest part of all of this is that these shows are popular. America's willingness to watch this fluff and sign up to participate only promotes it's longevity...when I googled searched it I discovered that over 484K people "Like" this on Facebook...that's almost the entire number of members. I can proudly say that I was NOT one of them. And I won't be doing so in the future...however, I will dance the day their cancel the shows.
Young women everywhere: If you feel the need to compete - join a sports team, run a marathon, challenge yourself to achieving your dream of higher education, saving the planet one person/animal/plant at a time - compete for something that matters. Just when you aren't looking - Mr. Right will appear. I know - it happened for me.
~Ciao
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