The Bachelor isn’t funny anymore. Now it’s just gross, and I’m done

IT used to be some silly fun, but The Bachelor has turned into wholesale humiliation of women for ratings, and I’m done, writes Angela Mollard.

Where’s the quirky girl, the funny one or the smart one? This season’s Bachelor makes Mean Girls look like Playschool. (Pic: Channel Ten)

FOR years now I’ve had a fantasy about The Bachelor.

Not THE actual Bachelor because clearly they’re 15, ahem, 20 years younger than me and I’d be scared of injuring myself on those abs.

Rather, I have a longstanding fantasy that a new series will open with one of the girls driving herself to the mansion and stepping out of her VW Golf or suchlike wearing jeans and a T-shirt.

She’d walk up to the Bachelor in a pair of Nike Gazelles, shake his hand, tell him a bit about herself (“I’m an engineer, I love snowboarding and recently developed an investing ap which I’ve sold to Westpac”) then invite him to go for a coffee or a walk.

For his part, he’d jump at the chance, rip off his ridiculous bow-tie and hop in the passenger seat, relieved at being rescued from the parade of ocean-going breasts and girls so caricatured they look like Disney princesses. Off they’d drive leaving the other 20 girls to swap their nonsense frocks for pyjamas, drink champagne, swim in the pool and hit the snooker table where the chick from Wagga would slay it, thus earning the next date with Bachie. (He would not have an infantile name ending in “ie” or “y” and because he is no longer in kindy or a rap star he’d also drop the single consonant surname. In my fantasy he’d be called John. Not Johnnie or Jon or Jonty B).

As you can ascertain, television has reached peak stupid when you realise what you really want to watch is normal people doing normal stuff.

The fact is the new season of The Bachelor is such a shameless, anachronistic humiliation of women it makes me cringe on behalf of my gender. It makes Mean Girls look like Play School. And I say that as a bolted-on fan who’s watched each season, albeit while delivering an ironic commentary for my two teenage daughters.

I approached this season as I have every other — reconciling my feminist principles with the excuse that I’m a journalist and thus I have to be across popular culture. Of course that’s bullshit. I love it — it’s entertaining escapism where you hoot with laughter and champion your favourite contestant in much the manner you might cheer for, say, the Titans or the Swans.

But this year’s offering is banal, humourless and contrived. All but a few of the women are positioned as fruit loops or porn stars and have clearly been plied with alcohol and encouraged to be as brazen and aggressive as possible. There’s even a dress code: the more skin on show, the more deranged. Notably the sane ones get to wear jumpsuits and don’t have to showcase their ribbon twirling (what, are you six?), their penchant for helium balloons (nutjob alert!) or their fire-eating (excusable since said flame muncher also brings cultural diversity by being Tahitian).

With Matty J — or possibly just his chest — recycled from last year’s The Bachelorette, this season promised some emotional heft on the grounds that this chap is a) heartbroken by not being chosen last time and brave enough to say so; and b) so clucky that never mind anyone else’s ovaries, he’s clearly growing a pair of his own.

Bachelor Matty J with contestant Stacey Simpson. (Pic: Network Ten)

We were expecting women of calibre. Instead it was like watching teenagers at a year 10 social what with the gimmicks, the gaucheness and the ghastly dresses. It’s clear these young women are either dumbing themselves down or being persuaded to. Throw in a self-confessed stalker who reveals she’s ended her lesbian relationship for a chance with Bachie, and a girl hoping he might visit her “secret garden”, and you’ve got television as grubby and unfunny as Benny Hill.

Granted, these contestants aren’t auditioning for a seat at the United Nations but where’s the clever one, the amusing one, the quirky one? It’s as if a memo has gone out saying “normal need not apply”.

The worst bit? The moments when women did things that men would never be allowed to do. In the first episode a girl strides up to Matty and promptly restyles his hair. It’s not flirty or funny. Had he done it to her it would, quite rightly, be seen as the sort of controlling behaviour that precedes domestic abuse. The following night the same girl blatantly attempts to kiss him even though he’s sent plenty of signals that he’s not interested. He recoils. It’s hideous television, useful only to prompt a discussion that consent goes both ways. As for women, generally we like each other. This is a bitch-fest on speed.

After four years The Bachelor is still winning audiences but those audiences are mostly women. We love a laugh. What we don’t like is the wholesale commodification and humiliation of women purely for ratings. Network Ten knows better than most that roses die. Sometimes quicker than you think.