Why Reality TV's Depiction of Love Is Harmful

When I was 2 years old, my parents got divorced. My mother has two sisters who have both been divorced since before I can remember. My grandparents are also divorced. I have two older brothers, both of whom recently got out of emotionally abusive relationships that they stayed in for years. The story I planned to tell my kids one day about my high school sweetheart did not end up being a story worth telling.

What do two people in love look like? I can’t say that I have seen it firsthand. But one piece of advice I have for any other girls my age with the same question: Do NOT look to reality TV for answers. Specifically, the worst show they can turn to is the one that advertises itself as the exact place to look for love: The Bachelor.

The Bachelor first aired on television in 2002. The show follows one man and around 25 female “contestants” who hope he’ll choose them to be his wife. Week after week, the bachelor eliminates romantic interests until there is one woman left, to whom he proposes.

This representation of love is completely misleading to millions of impressionable young women like myself. First, let’s look at the numbers: Each woman on this show has a one in 25 chance to win a man’s heart, which implies that men are rare prizes that women should fight over. The show suggests that it’s worth letting a man essentially cheat on any given woman with other women, with whom they live and get to know, just for the possibility of marriage — a marriage hardly based on a foundation of loyalty or trust. Then, there’s the fact that, after 42 seasons, only six couples from the show are still together. This means that even should a woman win that prize, she has only a 17% chance of staying with him after the cameras stop rolling.

While the women on the reality show are “real,” they are still carefully selected by producers to make the show interesting, not to genuinely reflect people making healthy connections or falling in love. In fact, many contestants are chosen because producers think they will display toxic, unhealthy traits which, they in turn assume will be entertaining. As Dr. Drew Pinsky writes in his book The Mirror Effect: How Celebrity Narcissism Is Seducing America, “producers have told us they consciously seek out contestants who are vain and controlling, because they make for more dramatic, watchable television.” This choice — to purposely put people in unhealthy romantic situations — degrades the contestants themselves and the women watching.

It also seems that producers manipulate contestants to draw out this behavior. A former contestant revealed that the producers didn’t allow contestants to have alone time or access to newspapers, magazines, TV, movies, music, or the internet. They are cut off from everything but each other and their “prize,” the bachelor himself. The women live in these conditions but still often walk away from the show with damaged reputations because their statements and actions are presented on the show out of context.

Another issue the series has only just begun to acknowledge is the lack of representation in the cast. There has only ever been one Black bachelor in the show’s history, and no Black contestant has ever made it to the final two. Rachel Lindsay, a contestant on season 21 of The Bachelor, even said she had never seen the show before because it “did not appeal to me in any kind of way because it was notoriously known in the Black community that The Bachelor was not for us.” Even though 40% of the U.S. population identifies as nonwhite — and, of course, fall in love and have healthy relationships all the time — this show implies that only white people are worthy of “true” love.

When all is said and done, it is clear that The Bachelor franchise frames a deep emotional connection between two people as a game that needs to be won in order to be real. It demonstrates to young women a fake reality of what modern dating is, which leads to high expectations that normal men cannot meet. The contestants never have to deal with the stressors of everyday life, which is why so few relationships survive after the show is over. If viewers aren’t constantly reminding themselves that The Bachelor is a show meant to entertain, it is possible that they internalize unrealistic expectations of beauty and love for themselves or their future partners.