As yet another season of ABC’s Bachelor/Bachelorette franchise draws to
a close, once again the show broadcast loud and clear the double standards that
exist for women and men on the dating scene –onscreen and off. Last week the star of ABC’s Bachelor, Ben Higgins followed protocol
and proposed to contestant Lauren Bushnell.
But two weeks prior he committed a big show no-no: he said he loved he loved her on camera…. right
before he said he loved another contestant, JoJo Fletcher. While Higgins wasn’t the first bachelor in
history to say he was falling in love
with two contestants, he was the first to say it directly to the women (while
caught on camera at least). The trope of
a bachelor torn between two women, in fact, has sort of become a staple of the
program. Loyal Bachelor fans will certainly remember the iconic balcony scene
wherein Jason Mesnick sobbed over his conflicted heart and the more infamous
moment wherein weeks later he dumped the woman he selected at the Final Rose ceremony,
Melissa Rycroft, on live television in order to reunite with the runner-up,
Molly Malaney, whom he later married and started a family with. Regardless, Higgins’s loose lips infuriated
fans. One viewer (@karachristine16)
tweeted “Why on earth would Ben say I love you to two different girls. Whoever gets sent home is going to be
crushed.” Another (@JacquelyneAnder)
posted: “I really can’t stand Ben. He
doesn’t understand the meaning of ‘I love you,’ if he says it to two
women.” While many tweeters were
concerned with the ethics behind his multiple confessions of love, others were
simply angry that he broke the show’s so-called “rules”: “Ben’s already broken two rules. Never say “I love you” & never ever say
“I love you” multiple times. Someone’s
in the dog house” (@MrsEllis4Eva).
Higgins defended his actions in an interview with E!News: “I don’t know of a rule book, maybe there is
one, maybe (one) fans out there are hiding… (I) keep hearing I broke all the
rules. I didn’t know there were rules to
this.”
Although
his over emoting caused some negative fan reactions over the past few weeks, it
paled in comparison to what unfolded during the previous season’s Bachelorette. On June 22, 2015, the Twitterverse erupted
when ABC’s bachelorette had sex with one of her male suitors prior to the
show’s pre-approved, pre-scripted timeline. Far from being a PG-rated reality
TV program, the long-running show is well known for broadcasting a slew of
make-out sessions and an entire episode devoted to speculating on whether the
bachelor or bachelorette will have sex with any or all of his or her final
three contestants in the fantasy suite. Yet when an episode aired revealing
that Kaitlyn Bristowe, the show’s star, and repeat contestant, Nick Viall, had slept
together at the close of their one-on-one date, Bristowe faced a wave of
criticism from fans through social media. Over 70,000 tweets with the hashtag
#TheBachelorette appeared in the 24 hours surrounding this episode and a vast
majority of them were negative posts consisting of judgmental quips and
derogatory slurs focusing on Bristowe’s sexual activity. These tweeters, the
majority of whom were female, were quick to affix all the normal labels used to
discuss so-called female promiscuity. Among the tamer tweets were chastising
posts like this one: “Kaitlyn needs to learn how to keep it classy & not so
trashy” (@otrat_rowyso).
Amid the caustic
remarks were also hundreds of tweets defending Bristowe. For example, comedian
Amy Schumer (@amyschumer) posted: “Oh no someone slept with a guy they’re
dating and considering marrying! Showing love for @kaitlynbristowe.” Tweets that
challenged slut shaming began to fill the feed, as did posts that specifically
called out ABC’s producers for the ways in which the show was participating in
and encouraging such shaming. (For example, the network promoted the episode as
“Kaitlyn’s Sex Scandal.”) The attention paid to this episode resulted in some productive social commentary both on and off the twitter feed. Social media
users and journalists alike drew attention to the continued sexual double standard that exists – one that is broadcast loud and clear on this
show. Bristowe and Viall both spoke out
against the criticism as well. The evening of the episode, Bristowe tweeted: “Just
remember, when you judge me, you do not define me, you define yourself,” and
Viall posted numerous tweets drawing attention to the problematic ways in which
people, particularly women, are judged for their sexual activity. Through a series of posts, Viall praised Bristowe for having the courage to admit on
national TV to having sex, “knowing that she [would] be unfairly judged by
some,” and further arguing that “sex is not shameful” and that “both men and
women have an equal right to have sex without judgement.’” While some important
conversations resulted from this sensationalized reality television episode,
the initial social media response it provoked reveals how, even in the 21st
century, expectations for single women on the dating market are entrenched in
problematic sexual double standards that have remained unaltered for decades.
Consider, for example, this live tweet (@HeatherGossman) that aired during the
episode: “you can turn a housewife into a hoe. But you can’t turn a hoe into a
housewife.” As the negative twitter posts prove, many still believe that
certain behaviors determine whether a woman is good girlfriend or wife material,
and at the top of the list remains sexual activity.
The fact that
Bristowe’s character was torn apart in social media – and she even received
death threats! – because she dared to be physically intimate with a man, while
Higgins was criticized – albeit to a lesser degree – not for his three fantasy
suite encounters with women (which likely involved sex), but for his verbal
intimacy is interesting. Perhaps these
reality television tweet-inspiring scenes received such attention because they
flip the gender script. After all, it’s
the girl that’s supposed to be overly emotional and the guy that’s supposed to
be the horn dog, right? Sigh. Maybe live tweeting our reality shows is a
new way to police gender norms.
But what is even
more telling is how antiquated and uneven the criticisms launched at these
contestants are once we step back and view their actions within the context of
everyday real dating practices. Although
our romantic ideals tell us that love should proceed sexual relations, for the
great majority of people navigating 21st century relationships, the
simple fact is that physical intimacy is often part of the process of determining romantic compatibility. It is, therefore, more common for someone to
be having sex with someone they are dating casually than it is for someone to
be proclaiming love to two people simultaneously. Yet Bristowe was more heavily criticized for
doing something relatively normal while Higgins was less chastised for doing
something that would be seen as pretty cruel in non-reality television
settings. (Imagine for a second a female
friend told you she discovered the man she was in love with was proclaiming his
undying love for her and another woman at the same time.) Again, it is clear that when it comes to
judging men and women according to societal norms, women are often held to the more
unattainable standards.
What these little
blips in the Twitter world indicate is that we not only want to hold reality
television stars to standards we ourselves don’t consistently reach, but we
also want to do so while turning a blind eye to the problematic aspects of the
programs that house them. After all,
isn’t it a bit hypocritical to critique any Bachelor/Bachelorette
star for their sexual encounters when the show almost necessitates that contestants
who makes it to the end become physically intimate with the star once they reach
the fantasy suite stage? And isn’t it
unfair to bemoan the emotional pain a star might cause a constant by expressing
feelings when the show itself is structured
not only to cause such emotional pain, but also to broadcast it
nationally? Rather than critique those
who participate on these reality television programs it seems viewers (myself
included) might need to turn inward and consider why we continue watching this
show season after season and what it might reveal about how the double
standards that still exist for women when it comes to navigating romantic
relationships.
Melissa Ames
is the author of How PopCulture Shapes the Stages of a Woman’s Life: From Toddlers-in-Tiaras to Cougars-on-the-Prowl (2016), Time in Television Narrative: Exploring Temporality in21st Century Programming
(2012), & Women and Language: Gendered Communication acrossMedia (2010).
