The Bachelor’s nickname for women is a major turn-off
I’M all for a nickname, but likening ladies to animals who gather twigs and regurgitate food to their young as The Bachelor’s Nick Cummins does isn’t endearing or sexy, writes Michelle Andrews.
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PUBLIC service announcement: The Bachelor’s Nick Cummins, better known as the Honey Badger, is not looking for your average woman.
Actually, if the words that spill out of his mouth are anything to go by, he’s looking for “a sheila”, a “good sort”, or “a missus”.
More than anything, though, Cummins is on the hunt for a “bird”.
In the former rugby union star’s press interviews for Channel 10, Cummins spoke endlessly of his experience “meeting a few birds”.
Each new episode brings discussions of what “bird” he finds mildly attractive, which “bird” is perhaps a little bit loopy, and which “bird” will be flying out of the mansion and into a nest of Instagram followers and teeth whitening endorsement deals.
Speaking to Marie Claire last month, the 30-year-old explained: “This time around, I thought, it’s 2018. It’s never something I’d normally do [but] the timing is right in my life, I’m looking for a bird, this all lines up.”
Given he’s considered the most eligible single man in the country, someone at the network perhaps should have informed Cummins that women dislike — nay, despise — the chirpy nickname he employs at every opportunity.
If you happen to be a man, or Nick Cummins for that matter, let me be the one to break it to you: Not a single woman on this planet likes you referring to her as a toothless, weak, feathered creature.
Don’t just take my word for it, though.
A 2016 study of thousands of women, conducted by Kellogg’s as part of their equality campaign, revealed women found “bird” to be the most offensive nickname from a male partner — even more than other gendered terms like “doll” and “chick”. Over half of female respondents said they wanted men to stop using the term altogether.
So, why do women find Nick Cummins calling us “birds” so incredibly infuriating? Well, for starters, birds are annoying. They squawk and swoop and poop on innocent people’s heads. Their main job is to collect twigs and leaves. To raise little baby birds. Birds are literally flappable. Their brains are tiny and incapable of coherent thought. They exist on a diet of worms and other unattractive things. They are flighty and easily agitated. Birds are sometimes beautiful and impressive (eagles, sure) but mostly, they’re useless. And there’s also no male pet name equivalent.
While men may affectionately refer to one another as a “good-looking rooster”, you don’t often hear women use anything like that for their male partners. At our most cringe-worthy we might say “other half”, “honey”, “babe”, or “love” — terms that refer to someone who is our equal. Someone who doesn’t eat bugs to pass the time before regurgitating them into their offspring’s mouth.
When a woman is single, you don’t hear her yabber on about finding a frog, mouse, or tadpole. She doesn’t want an animal, she wants a man, even if said man is keen of a nickname or two, as Cummins has shown himself to be.
Perhaps because there isn’t a history of ownership — where a wife considers her husband among her possessions, along with a block of land and the pet dog — it simply isn’t in a woman’s vernacular to speak about men in such a way.
And yet, here’s the most desirable man in Australia, illuminated into hundreds of thousands of
living rooms twice weekly, using the least desirable nickname to speak about the women who are supposedly falling madly in love with him.
So if you feel frequent earthquakes between 7.30 and 8.30pm on Wednesday and Thursday
nights for the next month, please, don’t be concerned. That’s just all of Australia’s women collectively shuddering.
Michelle Andrews is a freelance writer and co-host of Shameless Celebrity Podcast. Follow her on Instagram or Facebook.