The Bachelor is one of the most popular reality television shows, one that seems to take the nation and social media by storm every time a new season airs. With each season, viewers contend with the carious flaws the franchise presents year after year, but die-hard fans usually usually ignore these issues.
Despite being on air for 20 years, The Bachelor and its spinoffs have earned a lot of criticism for the premise of the show and the example it sets for people looking for love. Although The Bachelor has produced memorable memes and a handful of couples that ended up walking down the aisle, it has also showed its many flaws in cultivating unrealistic beauty standards, lacking representation, romanticizing problematic behavior, and more.
The Exploitation Of Drama For Ratings
The Bachelor franchise has been known to capitalize on drama among contestants to drive up their ratings. It can be entertaining at times, but usually leads to unkind people and bullies to get more screen time than they should.
Take a contestant like Victoria Larson on Matt James' Bachelor season, for example, whose antics were fun to watch unfold for the first episode or two, but whose personality quickly went from not taking herself too seriously to berating other women and stirring the pot for the sake of 15 minutes of fame.
Complete Isolation For Contestants
When people compete on The Bachelor or The Bachelorette, they are subjected to the isolation from their friends, family, and cell phones for however many weeks they stay on the show.
In the pre-COVID-19 era of the reality show, contestants would get to travel every few weeks to a new state or even country, but they would be confined to their hotel rooms there as well unless selected to attend a one-on-one or group date. This isolation can make people feel lonely and uneasy, and may also lead them to make rash decisions like quickly getting engaged to someone they hardly know.
Unequal Relationship Dynamics
The premise of The Bachelor calls for the selected lead to date a group of 30 people at the same time and then eliminating them until finding their one true love. The idea of a "lead" making these decisions can create an unhealthy, unequal relationship dynamic so early on in a romantic relationship that may never be repaired.
Since the lead is the one pursuing the contestants, they are often not subjected to the rejection that those competing for their love are. It can make the contestants feel as though they are not good enough or insecure on a much higher level than in a normal, real-world relationship.
The Time Frame
According to Insider, The filming schedule for The Bachelor usually lasts anywhere from six to nine weeks, giving contestants two short months to fall in love and decide whether or not they want to spend the rest of their lives with someone they barely know and have rarely spent any time with.
In order to have a higher success rate and give contestants more time to get to know one another, the show could lengthen the process. However, with COVID-19, the timeline for each season has only gotten sped up and shorter, giving even less time to make a decision that could affect the rest of two people's lives.
A Lack Of Mental Health Resources
Producers of The Bachelor often convince contestants to reveal all of their thoughts, feelings, and secrets in their "In The Moment" confessionals. Producers act as therapists and confidants for those competing on the show, which creates trust and what seems like a safe space for participants.
However, when these intimate interviews are aired they often have a negative impact on the contestant, seeing themselves being vulnerable or breaking down on camera and being made fun of by people on the internet. 2-time Bachelor Nation contestant Blake Horstmann has been open about the lack of he received following a negative stint on Bachelor In Paradise. after The lack of mental health resources offered to contestants after the show is irresponsible on The Bachelor's behalf, as many people may never recover from the public scrutiny and heartbreak.
The Bachelor Bubble
The Bachelor "bubble" is the world in which contestants live in while competing. Outside factors that may affect the relationship between two people like distance, careers, or family are all nonexistent during the course of filming, causing contestants to get swept up in the process and believe they have found their happily ever after.
The reason so many engagements on The Bachelor end so shortly after the airing of the season is because of the reality of real life sinking in. The various logistical issues and realizing they may not really know who they've gotten engaged to leads to the demise of so many Bachelor Nation relationships.
Unrealistic Standards
TV shows like The Bachelor are supposed to reflect "real" people dating in an unconventional way, however, especially in recent years, the contestants are almost always pageant queens and social media influencers.
The fact that so many contestants are either models or have competed in pageants perpetuates an unrealistic beauty standard for both men and women, suggesting that people with more normal jobs and unglamorous lives could never be on the show.
Romanticizing Toxic Behavior
The editing on The Bachelor often makes it look like everything that contestants and leads do are in the name of love, and that each act that could come across as toxic in the real world is actually a grand romantic gesture.
Colton Underwood's infamous fence jump for Cassie Randolph on season 23 led to many fans tweeting their hopes that someone would "jump the fence" for them. However, it was later clear that Cassie's exit from the show was disrespected by this gesture, and that their relationship was actually incredibly toxic and not the love story that aired on television.
Lack Of Representation
It took Bachelor Nation 15 years to have a Black lead on either The Bachelor or The Bachelorette, and almost 20 years before the first Black Bachelor was selected. The lack of representation spans through the entire run of the series, with a majority of contestants and finalists being white.
On most seasons, a large percentage of the contestants are white, while there a usually only a few contestants of color. This lack of representation is not reflective of the actual population, and therefore does a disservice to contestants, those hoping to be contestants, and viewers alike.
The Abysmal Track Record Of Relationship Success
The success rate of relationships that emerge from The Bachelor and The Bachelorette is very low, with short Bachelor engagements often lasting less than a year after a finale episode of any given season airs. The fact that the process is continuously repeated without any amendments makes it seem like a recipe for failure.
If the franchise wants to have a future, it needs a major revamping first so that viewers will once again believe that the process will actually work and their favorite couples will last. For now, fans spend weeks watching two people fall in love only for them to break up a month later.