I’m a lifelong, card-carrying member of Bachelor Nation, but I gotta tell you — this season, Season 20 of the show, is really putting me off to the whole thing. The normal problems aside — a patriarchal notion of marriage, heteronormativity, etc.— the women on this season of The Bachelor are so unbelievably catty I can barely still tune in. I hate calling women catty; I feel like it reduces their emotions, but there's no other way to describe the show's mean girls. Even Chris Harrison called them catty on the after show. As Molly Mesnick said on Bachelor Live following the episode, the girls really need to start focusing on Ben and forget about the noise around them. The infighting has gotten so bad, and it’s only Week 3 — what will happen when the stakes get even higher?
Now, I get it — all emotions are running rampant, and the women in the house have no televisions, magazines, books, or cell phones to help pass the time. Instead, they just decide to start problems with each other, ganging up to pick on the strong contenders for Ben’s heart. Jubilee made a joke — a literal joke in between her talking about how socially awkward she is — and she was ripped apart for it over the next two days. Jubilee was literally telling Ben how her whole family died while the women were bickering about how she wasn't friendly enough, supposedly.
Meanwhile, Olivia, who is just a super-confident gal, was being shredded by the other women in the house. They make fun of Olivia's face, her legs, her feet, etc. It’s just like being in junior high — there may be as much booze as you can drink, but the mean girls are still the same. What’s the deal, guys? It’s not like The Bachelor has been a bastion for female empowerment, but this season seems to me to be particularly toxic.
As I said before, if this is what three weeks in looks like, what are viewers to expect after 10 weeks? At the “Women Tell All” special? I’m going to venture a guess and say that if this really pernicious talk continues, it’s going to turn off a lot of viewers from The Bachelor.
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Images: Craig Sjodin/ABC
