Until this year, I had never seen “The Bachelor.” Reality television shows had never sparked my interest, and as I learned, it is hard enough finding love in the real world; how likely is it that these women are going to find love with cameras in their faces? But I gave it a chance this season, which features Sean Lowe, whose love was spurned by Emily Maynard on season eight of “The Bachelorette,” and I must say this show is stranger than fiction.
The season has introduced an array of crazy characters and Lowe’s implemented plot twists. These girls are host to a whole slew of emotional troubles – abandonment issues, missing limbs, childhood trauma. These women are getting catty and have gone to great lengths to get Sean’s attention. Meanwhile, he has made them face some of the most grueling challenges to earn his love, including (but certainly not limited to) drinking goat’s milk, roller derby, mountain climbing and having a picnic in the frozen tundra of Canada. I have watched this for half a dozen episodes now, and I have to ask: Is love really worth this?
These women are participating in obscene challenges and maneuvering around the backstabbing and plotting of other women in house. This is all in the name of the love of a man they barely even know. A girl has ended up in an ambulance twice and alienated all the girls in the house for the sake of winning Sean, as if winning means she becomes Empress of the United States or receives $10 million. To listen to the girls on this program, you would think “The Bachelor” was some romantically charged version of “The Hunger Games.”
This is the thing about reality television: These women are no longer the women their co-workers or families can recognize. By being on this show, these women become caricatures – hyper-extended, over-animated versions of their real personalities. They are real women we could see in Starbucks or at the gym. On the show, they’re just more characters we can root for. One girl actually went against her culture’s beliefs to impress Sean. My question is this: If they change who they are, if they do what they can for the show, how do they face their friends and family at home if they’re kicked off?
We all have our times when we joke that being on a reality show for love would be better than finding it in the real world. “Sign me up for ‘The Bachelor,’” we say. In actuality, I think we’re the lucky ones, because I would never drink goat milk for the sake of love. Would you?