We should be praising the Honey Badger
When Nick Cummins signed on to the show, I dreaded seeing him sacrifice all his individuality. Now, though, I’m back to thinking he’s one of the good ones, writes Claire Harvey.
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NEWSFLASH, ladies.
The Bachelor owes you nothing.
Not an apology. Not an explanation. Not even the outlandish compliments he’s lavishing upon you and your rhinestone-encrusted décolletage. He doesn’t even owe you the satisfaction of knowing he feels like a cad for “breaking your hearts”.
He is just not that into you. So hold your heads high and take a moment to appreciate that finally someone in this commodified, bee-stung, tandoori-tanned fake-fest had the balls to tell the truth.
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And girls, if you’re feeling humiliated, that’s all on you. Maybe you shouldn’t have worked yourself up into a Salem witch trial-style tizz in the first place.
Nick Cummins is the first person on the whole show — and probably the first Bachelor in history — with the courage to be honest.
I suspect the truth is that every Bachelor and Bachelorette who’s gone before — and all the contestants vying for a supplied-gratis-in-return-for-@mention cocktail ring — have told a giant lie every time they’ve breathed the words “I’m falling for you”.
That is just not feasible. Nobody falls for someone they’ve encountered for a sum total of three hours, all of which has been spent in “intimate” settings surrounded by cameras, makeup artists, producers, directors, pony handlers, quartz lamps, bounce-boards, boom microphones and catering trucks. It’s about as believable as when Bear Grylls declares himself the first man to rappel into an active Indonesian volcano or scrambles across a crumbling land bridge over a Scottish gorge, when it’s perfectly apparent the cameraman, soundo and catering truck have been there since 9.30, waiting for him to get his bronzer applied.
The Bachelor 2018 has been a ratings triumph for Network 10, and Nick Cummins was a genius casting decision. Apart from being resolutely physically different from all the other dudes they’ve attempted to panelbeat the spiv out of in the past, he’s also the one with the most media experience.
As a footballer, Cummins had spent about a decade speaking to journalists and answering questions. He was smarter than either the viewers or the contestants expected him to be.
And who would have thought Cummins, in continuing to be himself, would provide something completely new to the Bachelor franchise — the confidence to understand the meaning of authenticity.
Cummins wanted to be the Bachelor, he says, because he wanted to show Australian men they could show emotion without being sooks — and could engage with women without necessarily thinking exclusively about getting into their knickers.
Before this season of The Bachelor, I thought Cummins was a good guy, the one who gave up his Australian rugby career to look after his family by playing overseas.
When he signed on to the show, I dreaded seeing him sacrifice all his individuality to become yet another smarmy creep pretending to be “in love” with strange women in order to satisfy the demands of producers — only to subsequently whinge about how he’d been unfairly edited to look like a smarmy creep.
Now, I’m back to thinking he’s one of the good ones.
And to all those people getting angry about his failure to stick to the script, the laugh’s on you.
Cummins has just made himself a thousand times more marketable — and more dateable, and dare I say more marriageable — precisely because he did what nobody expected and remained true to himself.
An eligible Bachelor indeed.