Issue #7: a love letter to The Bachelor
On Bachelor Nation and the importance of routine & brain breaks
Appetizers
Book: Bachelor Nation: Inside the World of America’s Favorite Guilty Pleasure
Author: Amy Kaufman
Page count: 277
In one sentence: a smart, juicy, dishy behind the scenes look at The Bachelor franchise
Perfect for: reading in the sun in the park on a blanket with some cute sunglasses, if you want to escape all the bad headlines, if you want to turn your love for reality tv into an intellectual pursuit
Angst Score (highly scientific rating system where 1 teardrop I’m smiling the whole way through and 5 teardrops I can’t stop crying): 1 teardrop, not angsty, just fun!
Friends of this books/read it if you like: The Revolution was Televised by Alan Sepinwall, dishy celeb gossip, getting deep on things you love
If this book were a song: “Sucker” by The Jonas Brothers
Main Course
Wanna know something crazy? I’ve lived in New York for almost 9 years (that’s not supposed to be the crazy part, but still!) and for each of those nine years, I’ve watched The Bachelor with my friends, every week, pretty consistently for about eight months out of the year. A lot can change in nine years. In that time, I’ve started and ended friendships, lived in four apartments, and watched people drift in and out of the city. I’ve had three jobs, gotten married, and adopted two cats. In a world where consistency can be elusive, sometimes a dose of sameness is welcome.
Before you start thinking - wow this girl might know books but her taste in TV is bad, I am very aware The Bachelor is not the best thing on television. However, it might be the most reliable. It built me a routine. It’s an excuse to hangout with friends on a Monday night. We’re usually in pajama adjacent attire. Take out sushi is often on the menu because what is intimacy if not knowing that your pals prefer salmon rolls over spicy tuna? We usually talk over the show. Regular snacks have ranged from Australian licorice to Dots pretzels. Anyone is welcome and we’ve had an eclectic rotating cast of characters over the years - a visiting college roommate joins for a night or a new friend with a shared interest in fairytale romance pops in. We alternate who hosts and I love the summer season of The Bachelorette when the air is warm and the light is long and I can bike down 4th Avenue to my friend’s apartment.
All of that is a long way to preface why I loved Bachelor Nation: Inside the World of America’s Favorite Guilty Pleasure (2018) by Amy Kaufman. Bachelor Nation isn’t exactly a complimentary portrait of the franchise, but when I’m invested in something, I devour as much content about it as possible. As my yoga teacher said mid downward dog in a Taylor Swift themed class last year, “it’s really fun to love something a lot” and you know what? Wiser words have never been spoken.
Bachelor Nation is an inside look at what happens behind the scenes - both genius and nefarious - to bring the show to life. The book is grounded in excellent reporting from Kaufman including interviews with producers, cultural critics, and actual contestants from the show. Hearing from contestants gives me the same benign buzz as listening to gossip about someone you don’t know -- I couldn’t couldn’t read it fast enough.
Kaufman weaves in her own commentary on what has made The Bachelor endure. She posits that part of the show’s resilience is fueled by America’s obsession with happily ever after’s, especially the cookie cutter, heterosexual kind. The Bachelor capitalizes on that, creating a reliable narrative of the princess and her generically handsome personality-like-a-piece-of-toast prince charming. In the most recent season of the Bachelorette, the winning contestant’s proposal literally included the line “let’s make this fairytale a reality”.
The Bachelor, however, is not a guiltless franchise. What Kaufman illuminates in the book is the actual contestant experience and just how manipulative it can be. She speaks to producers and actual contestants (free from their infamous ironclad NDAs of course) to understand the machinations, isolation, and fabrications that go into making two people fall in love — or making it look like they’re in love — in a short eight weeks. If you are a cynic or you hate The Bachelor or you hate reality tv like my husband (his iconic quote is “it’s really depressing”), you still have to admit that it’s an art to simulate love out of nothing. An art that uses people’s emotions as the medium de jour.
The show manipulates the emotions of not only the contestants, but the viewers too. Have I cried during the Bachelor? Yes, most definitely. This proposal especially got me and I willfully ignore that they already broke up.
Did I also cry watching this wedding video of JoJo and Jordan - who have not broken up - yes, yes I did. Because love is real. Don’t mind me crying in the Brooklyn Public Library while looking up these clips.
Ironically in the face of all that fairytale romance, one of the big themes that Kaufman also explores is the feeling of isolation that is so often leveraged - ironic on a show ostensibly about love. oftentimes alienated from other contestants in order to drive storylines and interest. Kaufman even likens the in the moment interviews (ITM) contestants are required to do to police interrogation,
"Before any accusation or confrontation, police seek to increase the suspect's anxiety by removing him from any social setting in which others could provide psychological support," Leo writes. Check. Bachelor contestants are always sequestered during their ITMS…"For suspects who are already sleep deprived, fatigued, dis-tressed, or suffering from physical discomfort," Leo writes, "inter-rogation exacerbates these conditions. ... The need to escape may become so overwhelming that it overpowers any rational considerations about the effects of confessing." Yep. Bachelor contestants are often coming into ITMs already tired, intoxicated, or upset. So why not just say what the producer wants and end the interview already?”
Even Kaufman admits this might be hyperbole, but the clear similarities between a criminal confession and an admission of love was equal parts fascinating and horrifying. Kaufman’s refusal to ignore the less positive parts of the franchise are what made the book captivating.
The show is flawed. That is very clearly true. But, it’s pretty freeing to like something even though you can see clearly what’s wrong with it. For me, the Bachelor falls in the slot of a definitive brain break. Not everything we consume has to be meaningful or life altering. What a liberating realization. Despite what I learned in Bachelor Nation I will keep watching because I like the optimism of believing that it’s real. And I like an excuse to see my friends every, single, week. And sometimes, it’s just that simple.
P.S. S/O to my Bachelor buddies, past and present. You keep me young!!