How The Bachelor Stereotypes Women:

 Hi Everyone, 

Welcome to this week's topic of discussion where we will be taking a deeper look into the fan favourite show The Bachelor and looking at how they want women to be perceived in the media.

The more society develops and evolves, the more difficult it becomes to avoid mass media and the elements involved. Whether the elements are positive, such as accessible communication, or negative, such as the media's corrupt effects on gender. As we already know, media is a significant phenomenon in today's society and is a prominent factor in shaping social structures and operations. Today we will be looking at the show The Bachelor and closely examining how there is a misrepresentation of gender in the media, especially looking at how women are portrayed and sexualized in media.

The show the Bachelor was created for single women to find their true loves over the series of a couple of months. The show begins with about twenty to twenty-five single women who are interested in the one male Bachelor. Then, the show consists of the Bachelor taking these women on either group or individual dates and games and offering them a rose at the end leading to the final proposal of the chosen girl. 

 

Although the drama and suspense of who the winner of the show is exciting to find out taking a step back and looking at how women are represented in the show, there are several forms of gender misrepresentation and the way the audience perceives these women in the show. The Bachelor portrays gender stereotypes of feminity; weepiness, dependency on men, maliciousness, and the women are derived as jealous, emotional, and sometimes incompetent. 

 

The Bachelor holds on to this old stereotype of gender roles within dating and marriage; they depict this narrative that femininity ensures survival in a world run by men. The show belittles the women and makes them look less of their sleeves based on how they interact with one another, their outfits, and how they have to "sell" themselves to a man that twenty other women also want. This is a complete misrepresentation of women and can be related to the documentary Miss Representation (2011) of how females are represented in media. The Bachelor relates to the course content by elaborating how the media can give a false reservation about how women are supposed to look/act. In the course reading Miss Representation (2011), the author states that "Men and masculinity are also impacted by lopsided representation: if men are taught by media that they should be smarter than women, making more money than women, or getting more respect than women" This claim relates to the Bachelor because in the show the women give a quick rundown of who they are. They often have no occupation or are given non-traditional roles in society that imply the idea of unemployment, such as "free spirit," "chicken enthusiast," "queen," etc. These titles belittle the women and emphasize masculine power.

Also, the women are expected to navigate their behaviour on the show to a certain degree, for example, they must appear sexy but not slutty, they must reveal their emotions without being overly emotional and they must be driven but be able to drop everything for a husband and family. Overall the show is trying to depict these women as wife material, but they are just reinforcing the idea of “acceptable femininity” This relates back to one of the readings in the course Gender Representation in the Media this supports the claim made about how women are completely misrepresented in media because as stated in the reading “women remain underrepresented on primetime television, demonstrating little change across the past several decades with regard to proportional representation. When women are depicted, some troubling gender stereotypes have persisted, whereas others appear to be declining” Gender Representation in the Media (p. 15-16) Meaning that women are presented with this standard of what they should be and the media reinfoces these ideas and preceptions through their content.

To conclude, the show The Bachelor reinforces the narrative of traditional gender roles in media and implies a false representation of a women’s role in society. The Bachelor stereotypes women in the lenses of looking like they need a man or that women are pitted against each other. I think the show needs to do better and empower women and show that women can be on their own while being successful.

References.

Papayanis, Alena “Sex &Gender in Pop Culture” Humber College, Blackboard (2021).

Humber.ca. https://learn.humber.ca/ultra/courses/_186707_1/cl/outline