F06 :: Feminist Film Studies

The final two "bachelorettes."

My hour of reality television experience was with this season of The Bachelor, in which Prince Lorenzo was down to the last three girls. I found the way the show tries to construct reality very interesting. Many of the women who have already been eliminated act out of their own character just to appeal to the bachelor himself; out of desire to win or to be the best. It seems as though these women are looking for some kind of love, a love from the bachelor, even though it is not real. In addition to this, most men do not date three girls at a time and immediately following, chose the one he will marry and spend the rest of his life with. The thought of how difficult this would be for any person to do supports the fact that the entire construction of the show is very unrealistic. One construction of reality that came close to the actual situation was the interaction with the families of the final three girls. The parents of the women make their best representation of who they are and the true character and personality of each candidate comes out around the people who they were raised around. This particular reality television show has a strong angle of “scaling of bodies�; while observing all of the girls who had been eliminated during the introduction, along with the remaining ones, the similarities were easy to see. All of the girls, except for one Italian, came from the United States and were very beautiful – in the eye of popular culture and media. Each of them had long and shiny blond or brunette hair and a great smile. They were all thin and tall with beautiful eyes, and without a sense of their personalities, didn’t have many distinctions. In each and every episode, all of the women were made up perfectly with the right colors and amount of makeup and the perfect hairdo. In order to emphasize this point, an article written by Gust Yep and Ariana Ochoa Camacho called “The Normalization of Heterogendered
Relations in The Bachelor� contains a very relevant statement that is extracted from the visions of the actual producers of the show. This block quote was taken from page two of this article.

The Bachelor clearly reinforces current US standards of female beauty and objectification of the woman's body. In the first episode, Mike Fleiss, Executive Producer, tells the audience about how the women were selected: "Most importantly, they have to look good in the hot tub." The women undoubtedly submitted to the "tall, young, fit, and thin" beauty standard as one of the participants observed, "All the women are beautiful, gorgeous, and skinny." Although the bachelor typically described the women as "amazingly beautiful" and "extremely intelligent," the show focused on their physical appearance—body shape, clothing, make-up, and hairstyle. The women were mostly presented as objects of the male gaze. This was accomplished through two primary techniques. The first uses visual approaches that scan and scrutinize the women's bodies with the camera focusing on the women's breasts, buttocks, and legs as they dressed, entered and left the pool, or disrobed to catch the bachelor's attention. The second technique utilized plot devices that created situations for the women to expose their bodies such as pajama parties, water rides in an amusement park, and interactions in hot tubs and pools. In a number of these shots, the women's faces were absent or de-emphasized as they became interchangeable body parts for public consumption. On the other hand, reflecting the asymmetrical power relationships, the bachelor's body was hardly the object of scrutiny. The bachelor was presented as the subject of the gaze complete with agency and control of every situation in the show.

Another idea from feminist theory that is brought up in this particular article is the idea of the male gaze. The Bachelor is one of many Reality TV shows that imply a heavy use of the male gaze. The camera is used to focus on the general beauty of the body and face of each woman from the man’s point of view; such as scanning her from her toes to her head. Most scenes are filmed with the camera pointed at the candidate and not at the bachelor himself, unless he is directly speaking at it. Not only this, but many of the scenes are filmed with the women in their bathing suits, especially when the couples are on exotic vacations. If only in real life we were all able to fall in love with the right person for us, no matter who they are or what they look like, on exotic vacations and with all expenses paid.