Reality Television The Bachelor Edition

One of my favorite topics, the Bachelor. In high school, I used to watch the show religiously with all my friends. We lived for the humor, the adventures, but most especially, the drama. We are all feminists, so we were well aware of the how the show negatively portrayed women. Moreover, in a sense, you could call us “bad feminists.”

This season on The Bachelor was Arie Luyendyk Jr. Although, I did not watch his season, I could get a feel for his personality during the After the Final Rose episode. 

The male gaze is about how men perceive women in the media and in pop culture. Women in this show are usually viewed as objects. The show is centered around the drama the women create fighting over one man. This man, “the bachelor,” is perceivedas someone who is über attractive and can do no wrong. Women are seen as crazy, manipulative, and conniving. Although, this does make “good television,” it attributes to a negative stereotype of how women are. For example, the women usually form small cliques and if they don’t like that one girl is spending “too much” time or receiving too much attention from the bachelor, they will team up against her. You’ll usually see the camera pan to one of the girls sneaking behind her back to go tell him about how the girl “isn’t who she really is.” There’s so much power in the hands of the bachelor and he’s feeding off the attention of all the beautiful women. On the show, they have different adventures. There’s always at least one opportunity for the women to show off their bodies on T.V.

What happens when the intended spectator is not a man? 

For shows like this, the target auddience is women. It is not particularly men that will sit down and watch the bachelor. I think that just because the show isn’t specially targeting men, it does not mean that they are not presenting women in a way that is for male pleasure. The women are still seen as objects from a masculine perspective.

But if the spin-off show The Bachelorette exists, which is the exact same premise of The Bachelor with the roles reversed, then is there really a male gaze? Is there a “female gaze”?