image via abc.com
The Bachelor is up for another season with the second episode airing tonight (Jan. 9) on ABC. Now, I know many many people my age berate dramatic reality shows (especially those that let some random white dude get famous off of manipulating innocent girls only to marry and later divorce one of them), but The Bachelor still remains an important staple in reality television. The “group dating” show features a group of women after one man, the bachelor, and the reverse happens on its sister show The Bachelorette.
Basically, the show is too annoyingly dramatic and predictable for me to watch an entire season. So, I watch the first episode and then tune in for the last three, to see who is left and who “wins.” But, when Bachelor Nick walked into the room full of beautiful women to do his picking, I had a realization: The bachelor is literally always white (okay, well, except for Juan Pablo Galavis, a Venezuelan-American Bachelor from the 2014 season).
When I think of a hot, sexy bachelor in a room full of gorgeous, thirsty women, I’m not only going to think of a white guy. Unfortunately, many typical favorite celebrity crushes are often white, but there is an array of colors on the spectrum of desirable husbands. Everyone loves a chiseled Idris Elba or Michael B. Jordan; I, for one, definitely still drool over Prince Royce.RTT
“There is an array of colors on the spectrum of desirable husbands. . . it’s time to stop putting the same kind of man on the bachelor pedestal as the epitome or only definition of sexy and desirable.”
While the pool of women contestants on the show gets more diverse every year, the bachelor himself always looks the same. Pale skin with a light tan, short hair that’s gelled back, and at least a light beard. So let’s be real: It’s time to stop putting this same kind of man on the bachelor pedestal as the epitome or only definition of sexy and desirable. If every year a white man marries a white woman on this show, the audience just gets smaller and smaller, and what was once a staple will just disappear.
Here’s what ABC had to say about why there hasn’t been a black bachelor:
“Yeah, yeah, we’re doing a whole lot of tweaks,” Lee said. “We had a Latino Bachelor, obviously. We’re doing a whole lot of tweaks. We have The Farm Team, right? Which allows us to pick the next one. But I’d be very surprised if The Bachelorette in the summer wasn’t diverse. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said that, but I think that’s likely to happen. I think the tweaks that Mike Fleiss have put in place will get us where we want to go.” – ABC’s Entertainment President via Entertainment Weekly
As you can see, the television network is pretty good at deflecting today’s important questions and this leads the public to set the bar for change pretty low.
I’m no advocate for the behavior of the bachelor himself or the contestants, but the show’s entertainment value loses me when I realize it has always lacked a beautiful chocolate man. Just imagine how many more women would tune in if the bachelor had some color on him! Social media would erupt in intense discussion, and the actual contestants might actually fight each other over him even when the cameras are off.
Most importantly, the world’s most entertaining wedding would finally look a bit more realistic.
Now, the issue of contestants-of-color not making it past the 11th episode is another article in itself. But each year, they seem to have better chances, and this first episode featured a larger amount of black women. A black woman was awarded the “First Impression Rose” for the first time! The show also features a woman who just left a relationship with another woman (her specific sexuality has not been disclosed).The inclusion of diversity is subtly progressive, so for the lead of the show to almost always be white is just ridiculous at this point. The point stands clear: We need a black man on The Bachelor.
