Married At First Sight Has Waged A Dangerous War On The Perception Of Masculinity And They Need To Fix It

Married At First Sight is flawed beyond belief, the original format isn’t working and it feels like each seasons ‘drama’ is turned up for the sake of entertainment and nothing has exemplified it more than the pairings of Bronson with Ines and Billy with Susie.

Both couples were doomed from the start.

Bronson and Billy are two types of the same coin. Both are emotionally open, in touch with who they are and what they want but fundamentally, honest people. Although there is a difference between them when it comes to how emotionally affected they get on camera but nonetheless, they’re open with how they feel.

Ines and Susie are also essentially the same type of person. They’re loud, outspoken and they both have an outdated perception of what it takes to be “manly” and “masculine”. On countless occasions they’ve belittled, demeaned and straight out insulted their “husbands”,  alone and in front of others.

They’ve projected what they think a “man” should be and taken advantage of the well-meaning nature of their partners to not argue or put up a fight. However, the snowball effect of abuse and insults came to a head at a commitment ceremony where Bronson used the forbidden word to describe Ines’ behaviour.

Bronson was called out by “expert” Mel Schilling leading many to wonder where this vigilance was before. Ines had repeatedly verbally abused Bronson, jokingly threatened to cut the rope while he parasailed and mercilessly mocked him and yes, we wholeheartedly believe that what he said was horrible and consequences are required but damn, if that didn’t feel one sided.

As a society, we’ve tried to fight the perception that being in touch with your emotions and open doesn’t mean that you aren’t “masculine”. And we try to celebrate it whenever we can but Married At First Sight needs to open a balanced dialogue that respects opinion but also holds people accountable because mocking someone on TV because you they don’t meet your expectations of “masculinity” is damaging to all of us.