The Bachelor is all about finding love through the time-tested technique of televised competitive dating, which isn’t just a weird way to find a relationship but is actually… well, also downright toxic.
If you had a friend who spent their entire time pondering how best to respond to their boyfriend in order to placate him, with the risk of being discarded for the sin of expressing a contrary opinion, then what would you do?
Allow me to answer: you’d tell them to head for the hills. Even if those hills didn’t have adorable alpacas frolicking upon them as per the Bachelor lawns.
And this is where the final six women in The Bachelor are right now, monitoring every utterance to ensure that they’re as compliant and agreeable as possible, knowing – correctly, in this case – that they’re headed for the waiting car.
And yes, that’s the point of the show and no reflection of Matt himself. But even so, if someone you were dating said “hey, let’s go skydiving!” and you said “actually, no, that terrifies me” then you’d figure a decent human would go “OK, how about something else?” rather than feeling like showing the slightest advocacy for one’s own health and happiness was a relationship-ending event.
That’s a whole bunch of red flags, right there.
And we get that the people who go on this show are people who self-select for this kind of aggressively competitive environment. This is an opt-in situation, obviously.
But this still sends an insidious message, which is that if you want to appeal to someone you need to contort your personality and opinions into whatever shape wins their approval. And, furthermore, that failing to do so Has Consequences.
And as a bonus insult, if you’re good at doing that – as per Abbie, the ostensible villain of the show – then you’ll be slammed for being fake and manipulative. Only those that actively opt in to the self-censorship will be considered deserving.
Basically, in decades to come The Bachelor is going to feature in SO VERY MANY gender studies courses. And in psychology sessions explaining to people how to spot a toxic relationship before it’s too late.