When Will I Be a 'Bachelorette'?
If you know me, you know I’m a bitch who loves romantic shit. I adore the “quality” romantic shit like: Albert Brooks’ “Modern Romance”, various French New Wave films, and love songs like “God Only Knows” by the Beach Boys. But of course, I equally adore the ostensibly low-brow romantic shit like: Lifetime rom-coms, and 90 Day Fiancé. To me, it is all quite good. All the same level of brow.
In keeping with that, I confess that I also watch “The Bachelor”. And, of course, “The Bachelorette”. Moreover, the spin-off series that takes the rejected Bachelor and Bachelorette contestants and puts them on a resort in Mexico. While I don't consider myself a legal citizen of Bachelor Nation or anything, I have watched several seasons of these shows--especially in the last few years. I’ll admit, my Bachelor affinity has evolved beyond mere hate-watching. It has grown into a guilty pleasure.
Sure, the formula is strict; it’s drastically heterosexual and nauseatingly cliché. It holds few true surprises. The men and the women are all pretty much the same person. The Bachelor is basic, in the truest sense of the term. The women look and act like a high school cheerleader’s Pinterest board come to life. The men are similarly cookie-cutter: they’re mostly named Chris and are finally ready to find that special someone to conquer the world with. Some identify as “nerds” because they read Harry Potter books growing up. Some are damaged because their parents divorced when they were young, ruining their image of love (until now). There’s little personality to speak of, outside of loving God, loving love, and really wanting to get married for some fucking reason.
Alright so hardcore fans might find my assessment of their personality types debatable, but the indisputable fact of the matter is: they’re all hot. The women are all thin, obviously, fitting perfectly into the several size 2 gowns they spent thousands of dollars to wear just once. The men, muscular and toned, are also hot. It all bugs the crap out of me. It didn’t before, but now, I’ve grown wiser and more confrontational. I’ve come to learn that hot does not belong to one specific body type, and seeing a fat person on a reality dating show isn’t an impossibility... it’s just that this show (and other shows like it) refuse to let it happen.
In 2014, Chris Harrison was interviewed in the NY Times and asked if he would ever consider having a “chubby” guy on the show. His answer:
“No. You know why? Because that’s not attractive, and television is a very visual medium, and I know that sounds horrible to say, but I know that at 42, in the eyes of television, I’m old and unattractive. Sure, I can put a suit and tie on, but I have hair on my chest, and I don’t have a 12-pack. I live a healthy life, but I don’t do eight hours in the gym, nor do I want to. And I don’t eat 50,000 egg whites.”
God what an awful answer, but there you have it. In 2014, Harrison would never dream to allow a fat person to taint the show’s image. Nor would he dare have a contestant in their 40’s grace the screen ...or even a man with chest hair? (Is that really the best he can do in terms of coming up with something for men to be self-conscious about?)
Why do I specifically want to see a fat contestant on The Bachelor? Because it’s not just a reality dating show. It’s the reality dating show. It’s the one that unites all of America and has for decades. From people like me -- liberal Jews who self-identify as proud, fat, sluts and have been on easily accessible birth control since they were 15 -- to far more conservative viewers in parts of America I’ve never been to, who genuinely smile when they hear a contestant say they want to bear five children before they turn 30. We may be watching the show for different reasons, eliciting different reactions entirely as we watch, but at the end of the day, we are all watching it. Due to its mass appeal, this is a series that thrives on playing it safe. And yet, there has still been a push for the show to evolve past conservative-pleasing sentiments. Since that interview, The Bachelor franchise has acquiesced to a series of firsts, conceding to the wishes of a percentage of its audience begging for progress.
In 2020, six years after that interview, Clare Crawley was the first Bachelorette to be pushing 40-years-old. This week, “The Bachelor” will premier with their first-ever Black suitor, Matt James. And, I’ve seen (and liked) some hairy-chested dudes in recent seasons. Mind you, it took literal decades to reach this point, and the show still has a huge diversity problem (though it claims to be working on it), but here we are.
You see, the thing is, all these other “firsts” still allow for that person to be thin and/or “fit”. My question is: how many more years will pass before someone fat will be granted a shot at finding televised love, too? It’s peculiar that this is one of the last bastions of repression in a series obviously targeted at women in middle America, especially considering the average size of women in the US is 16-18. If you’re unaware, that means the average woman is “plus-size”. The perfect Bachelorette must be relatable in every way, but this.
To Harrison, and the franchise he presides over, a fat person on-screen, being depicted in a desirable manner, would be the worst possible offense. It would ruin the very essence of television. It would be flat-out “unattractive”, and thus, destroy the fabric of such a “visual medium”. In a fucked-up way, Harrison has a point: visual media, and especially reality dating shows, hide people who don’t showcase a very specific look. A look that has changed very little since being deemed the ultimate standard of beauty by European colonizers and the capitalist scum they spawned.
In my formative years, I consumed romantic media just as passionately as I do now, but also with lament. Of course, the storylines they conjured did a perfect job of making me long for a similar love story but, deep down, I always knew these were not stories made with a woman like me in mind. In love songs, I knew I was not the woman any of the musicians I romanticized were crooning for. Fat women aren’t love interests. We aren’t the main character. We don’t get meet-cutes. We aren’t pined after. We are ignored. We are mocked or pitied. Then we’re told this is the reality we must accept. We are forced to concede and, in the process, we lose ourselves to a cultural hegemony that tells us every day there is something wrong with us at our core. It hurt to be a young woman forced, over and over, to intuit that my body was an inhibitor to physical, sexual, and emotional attraction. Even if guys did like me, many wouldn’t admit it, because they grew up watching the same shit I did and got the same message: the fat girl isn’t hot. You can’t like her.
Today, I don’t need anyone to tell me I’m hot. I am confident in my body, regardless of who finds me attractive or not. Everyone can have their shitty opinions. What tears me up is how long it took me to get to this point. Growing up with a body you don’t see reflected back to you on-screen (in a positive light) fucks with your head. In my youth, I felt hopeless. I wanted to be wanted, but never was. So, I became bitter and angry.
Try telling younger me, who got no attention from men but still craved a love story like the ones she saw on-screen, about the misogyny behind the male gaze. I would tell you to shut up and fuck off. All I wanted was to be paid attention to in a way that let me know I was desirable. We all deserve that to some degree. We all crave being desired in some way and even though it’s often warped into objectification, at its core, desire is not inherently evil. What is evil is using external validation as a tool for profit. As a determiner of self-worth. What is evil is not letting a fat person be on a reality show, because it could result in fat people feeling slightly better about themselves.
Chris Harrison acts the way the entire entertainment industry does. As if it is projecting onto us what we want to see. As if they have no control over how this shit works. It’s us who demand all celebrities and television personalities be extremely fucking gorgeous, in a very specific way. But I don’t remember ever putting in such a request, and I don’t think any of you have either. Do you think I give a shit about how flawless anyone’s face is? My very specific celebrity crush is Steve Buscemi in “Airheads” (but, admittedly, also Brendan Fraser and Adam Sandler in “Airheads”. That whole movie is basically pornography for me). Alright but my point is, it’s not us, it’s them. They are the ones in control of it all, and that control is all about making us feel like shit for their financial gain (the more we idealize people in media the more we want to buy things to look like them).
Look, I know The Bachelor can’t be everything I want it to be. It will never be sex-positive and will always be about the “sanctity” of marriage. There will never be a passionate monologue from a dude named Chris about how much he loves to eat pussy. Yes, it will keep casting the most basic people on the planet and keep the pattern of predictability we have all come to know and maybe even love. But I know it can cast a fat person. It can, and it should.
When it does happen, it will probably be a woman who will be what’s considered “small fat”. Her stomach will be flat, I guarantee it. She’ll give a few speeches on loving your body, and how she is proud of her curves. Then, she’ll be kicked off after 3-4 episodes, so the Bachelor doesn’t come off as a dick. Her presence will be brief, and it won’t be truly satisfying for those of us who’ve spent our lives wanting to see a fat person on a show like this. However, it will still be something. It’ll be the first step. I am the colloquial “small fat” and yet I can only count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen a woman on a television screen with a similar body type to mine that wasn’t presented as a source of shame. For those fatter than me, the numbers are lower than that.
I don’t need there to be a fat person on the show for me now. I need them to be there for younger me. For me who felt like it was wrong not to hate her body and was forced to believe that she was ugly. It took decades to feel good about myself, and maybe those years of feeling like love was never a real possibility for me, like I couldn’t be considered worthy by a romantic partner because of my size, wouldn’t have happened if I could see someone like me on a dumb as fuck reality show. It might seem like it doesn’t matter at all, but it does. The resistance might be strong, but it’s not impossible to break through.