The Bachelor and Female Comparison

I love the Bachelor. I have won Bachelor brackets. I obsessively live tweet episodes and actually cry during emotional and not so emotional moments. I get emotionally attached to the contestants and follow most of them on Instagram. I shout at the TV when things get awkward and have probably devoted at least a year of my life to just sitting and watching those sometimes three hour weekly episodes.

You could say my “sport” is The Bachelor. 

And although I realize that it’s a TV show, it is more active than you think …  see shouting at TV …

Intellectually I know that the Bachelor is not great for women. (There are exceptions, see Andi, accomplished attorney and Emily Maynard = saint). I know it’s not great for women like I know football is not great for men. Football players leave the field with minor concussions and physical after effects from the combat of the sport that will follow them late into their lives. Bachelor contestants leave the show, return to their normal lives and jobs with a national reputation as the “crier” or the girl who drank too much at the cocktail party. Some contestants leave relatively unscathed, but those are generally the ones who win. The rest depart heartbroken.

This past Monday’s episode was pretty typical of most seasons. Bachelor Chris, unnaturally tan farmer from Iowa, went on a group date with about six women. Chris is clearly more into one of the girls, Brit, who is so self aware that she is on national TV that she sleeps in a full face of makeup (Wut!) and all the other girls can clearly see it. Chris takes his chosen, Brit, to a concert and leaves the rest of the girls alone with their vino. But when he returns, they are beyond heartbroken.The girls see and know that Chris likes Brit more than them. They then begin to spiral into deep, deep caves of comparison and self-doubt.  

And this is why The Bachelor is bad for women.

As a woman, the smallest you ever feel is when you start comparing yourself to that girl with the better hair, skin or job. The desire to be chosen is good. The desire to be married is good. 

But none of these desires are safe in an environment where comparison and competition is the name of the game.

Seeing the object of your affection chase after some other twenty-something with better hair is enough to make the sanest woman go cray.

God is so cool because He knows this.

His plans for female soul flourishing and beauty unraveling involve not competing for some guy but being the one being competed for. 

The visible evidence of that system breaking down is obvious – it is a probably pretty normal girl sobbing on national TV, mascara streaming down her face… Not pretty.

He desires for you to feel like the most beautiful girl created- not to be constantly reminded that there is someone else out there with better hair. The Bachelor system preys upon female insecurities in a way that The Bachelorette does not. Men do not relentlessly obsess over whether one of them is better dressed or in better shape than the other the way that women do. Last season Andi’s winner Josh seemed to be completely un-phased by the fact that Andi had slept with one of the other guys in the Fantasy Suite the night before. If the tables were turned, any normal woman would have lost it.

Next Monday I will watch The Bachelor again because it is entertaining and I do not live in a monastery. If you want someone to gossip with about the show, I am your girl, let’s just not pretend that the system with its grandiose dates is better than the one that God designed for us.