Friday, February 5, 2016
Bachelor and Emily and Hayley
The Bachelor has always been a problematic show when it comes to the portrayal of women. 25 women live in one house competing for the attention of one man. This intense living situation prevents the women, often, from creating friendships with one another. The highlights of the show include girl fights, verbal confrontations, and at least one ambulance ride from a mental break down each season. This season has hit a new low, however, where the show has literally brought on identical twins. And though it is not a detriment to have identical twins on the show within itself. it was the situations that the producers decided to have the women participate in as problematic. The first episode, every contestant gets to greet the bachelor, usually with a fun fact about themselves, and then go inside the bachelor house, and then the next contestant introduces themself. However, this season decided that the twins should do EVERYTHING together, including introduce themselves to Ben, the bachelor. The women later in episode 4 are forced to go on a 2-on-1 date with Ben, where he is forced to choose between them, at their childhood home, in fact! During their time on the show, the producers make no effort to establish separate story lines for the 2 women, making it practically impossible to tell them apart. And don't get me wrong, I am sure that they both have distinct and unique traits that make them distinguishable, the problem is that the show decided not to portray that part. Where other contestants have their occupation as a descriptor under their names when they appear on the show, Emily and Hayley only have the word "twin." The Bachelor is clearly playing into the trope of the masculine fantasy of the sexualized identical twins, who's main objective is to please the man. These women are portrayed little more than objects. They kept this story line of the twin-fantasy just long enough, before creating a dramatic spectacle of the 2-on-1 date, only to ensure the audience still believes that true love is the object of the show, not sexual desires. The Bachelor has no problem making women disposable, and it's important to recognize which aspects of individuals they capitalize on to see the bigger structures, like heteropatriarchy.
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