So I heard there's this show called The Bachelor and all the ladies love it.
How do I know?
Because it's in Season 15 of the show and you will inevitably hear about if you are in the presence a female anytime between the time of Monday and Tuesday morning.
As I attempted to come up with a good way to describe the show, I immediately thought of things that were addictive. Naturally, drugs was the most obvious choice.
But what type of drug would The Bachelor be?
Well, a hallucinogen of course.
After all, hallucinogens change a user's perception of reality. What better way to describe this popular network TV show, then to say that it does just that.
But I don't have a gripe about the way The Bachelor is affecting the minds of aspiring wives across the country. To me, it's just reinforcing certain views that were hammered home many years ago.
I'm referring to Disney movies in which lovely princesses are swept off their feet by a charming prince. Playing off of an old social studies phrase they use to throw at us, I like to call this the "Divine Right of Princesses" (instead of kings).
The "Divine Right of Princesses" is all part of an upbringing that begins with a father who tells his daughter that she is a princess. The newly crowned princess relishes her father's attention and trusts that nothing bad will ever happen to her as long as he is there. She sees other princesses going through the same type of treatment. It starts with movies such as The Little Mermaid and Aladdin and then turns into tweenage Disney shows like Hannah Montana. By the time a princess embraces a higher degree of pop culture, she will inevitably gravitate to real life princesses such as Taylor Swift (but hopefully not Paris Hilton).
When the princess comes of age and has to leave her original home, her father performs the utmost due diligence to make sure she is ready. Necessary resources are sent with the princess to her new home including high maximum credit cards, gas guzzling SUV's, and a highly-reliable smartphone so the princess can call her "daddy" whenever things get too out of control. These four years of a princess' life are called college and they can be rough. This is also the first time she might find her first real prince.
The princess will do a thorough search but she will not settle for anything. If four years go by without finding "the one" the first natural thought will be to go to graduate school. This makes plenty of sense because in graduate school, the possible pool is much more selective (I've heard someone say, "undergrad is where you go to have fun. Grad school is where you go to find a husband'). If graduate school is not an option (or she can't get in based on her undergraduate college performance), things get much more complicated. Dating sites are a possibility but the real princes, like Eric from The Little Mermaid or Prince Philip from Sleeping Beauty are not members. Life turns into a complicated dating scene and sitcoms about post-college singles become an easy way to escape from reality (and yes, I am referring to Friends and How I Met Your Mother).
But then came along The Bachelor, the idea that the perfect prince charming was at your fingertips and all you had to do was wear a cute dress and appear before millions. This was something all single (and even non-single) hopeless romantics would just sink for. Go on a date on a multimillion dollar yacht, go cliff diving in the Caribbean or take a helicopter tour of a foreign countryside.
Not to be forgotten is the fact that you have to vie for his heart against several fierce competitors...oh wait, I mean potential romantic interests.
This recurrent theme can be described by an age-old two-word phrase: cat fight.
This is the one "redeeming quality" I do appreciate in The Bachelor. While I don't condone the fairy tales that this ratings-monster enforces, I acknowledge that it hasn't created this fantasy either. That has been taken care of by hundreds of years of socialization and does not look like it will change anytime soon. I accept it for what it is, but let's be very clear...average guys are not benefiting from this show in any way shape or form.
