I had many expectations when I started watching Channel 10s The Bachelorette. And so far it's delivered.
Dumb Australian macho culture where even yoga is a competitive sport. Check. Host Osher Günsberg conducting the rose ceremonies with the gravitas of NATO negotiations. Check. "Intimate" moments in "secluded" locations attended by Bachelorette Georgia Love and her beau, a full camera crew, production unit and about a million TV viewers. Check.
More Entertainment Videos
The Bachelorette: Interview with Georgia Love
Talking about the experience of watching the first episode of The Bachelorette, Georgia Love spills the beans to Fairfax Media's Michael Lallo.
What I wasn't expecting was to learn something. But three weeks in, I've been schooled in just how sexist our dating culture is. Even when a woman is the star of her own dating TV show, with 16 men apparently vying for her affections, she is still constrained by a bunch of sexist expectations.
Here are five depressing examples of sexism that just won't die:
![The Bachelorette with all her potential suitors, back at the beginning of the show.](/web/20161111202958im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/r/u/p/5/l/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.grw92l.png/1477607964596.jpg)
1. Women are so superficial they can be bought with shiny things
When self-proclaimed "Business Mogul" (aka stripper) Carlos first met the Bachelorette, he presented her with an aqua Tiffany box and a cocky assumption that a $500 bracelet would buy him a rose.
Maybe it was just a spot of product placement, but there is a long tradition of women being expected to provide emotional and sexual services (or a rose) in exchange for men buying them things.
The transaction didn't work out as Carlos had expected, and there may well have been some degree of meddling by the producers. It's hardly surprising that, as the only person of colour, he was kicked off in the first episode. But Carlos, at the very least, agreed to rock up with the bling and the insulting assumption that Georgia's affections could be bought with it.
2. A woman's function is to establish status among men
The premise of The Bachelorette is that 16 men come on the show with one primary objective: to win the love of the Bachelorette. But for at least two of the contestants, Georgia Love isn't the object of their affection. She's just an object.
As Sam and Rhys battle with each other to compare their peni… I mean exert their male dominance, it's clear that they see Georgia as the prize rather than a person, as interchangeable as any other hot woman. Rather than getting to know the Bachelorette, both men seem more interested in using her for their own private pissing contest.
![Tension reached boiling point during the wood chopping scene when Rhys stepped up their model-off by whipping off his flannel shirt.](http://web.archive.org./web/20161111202958im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/r/m/q/1/4/image.imgtype.articleLeadwide.620x349.png/1474603597653.png)
Tension reached boiling point during the wood chopping scene when Rhys stepped up their model-off by whipping off his flannel shirt. Photo: Channel Ten
In this respect, The Bachelorette isn't a million miles from the dating mores found in some of the country's "better" private schools where boys seek to publicly define their status by scoring a hot girl. As one future leader from Melbourne Grammar said recently: "This is Grammar, boys – that means nothing, and I mean nothing, under a 7".
3. Mates before dates
When men are not using women to establish their pecking order, they are using them to bond with each other. On two separate occasions Courtney sacrificed one-on-one time with Georgia so one of the other contestants could claim the date.
He wasn't being strategic, he wasn't trying to impress Georgia with his nice-guy magnanimity. He was using the Bachelorette to curry favour with his mates.
This was not lost on Georgia. "It was all about trying to spend extra time with me, and he just couldn't have cared less, it seems."
What really matters is the relationship between men, and women are just the transactional objects to facilitate their bonding or their competition.
A more sinister example of this same attitude is men securing and sharing images of non-consenting women and girls with their mates, and even complete strangers. It's all about using women to elevate their social status among the boys, with a complete disregard for how this might affect their victims.
As Courtney said when he was challenged by Georgia about his behaviour: "I didn't think about it from her perspective."
4. Women are expected to reward men's effort, no matter how lame it is
The bar is so low for male effort that pretty much anything, even stupid, narcissistic poetry or forgettable songs, is expected to be rewarded.
Georgia Love was clearly unimpressed by a poem Rhys had penned – her face said it all – but she would have been a bitch not to praise him for it and reward him with a rose.
![Chilton reading the poem he wrote for Georgia Love.](http://web.archive.org./web/20161111202958im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/r/m/r/j/w/image.imgtype.articleLeadwide.620x349.png/1475037490467.png)
Chilton reading the poem he wrote for Georgia Love. Photo: Channel Ten
After Sam and Jake made a dessert for the Bachelorette, Sam said without a hint of sarcasm or jest: "This is the rose ceremony where I'm the most confident I've ever been. If Georgia doesn't give me a rose when I made her chocolate, what more is there?"
The expectation that women should be grateful when men pay them any attention at all – even unwanted attention – is so strong that in real life women can suffer serious repercussion's if they don't comply.
After all, it's not unusual for women who do not respond to men's advances on dating websites to cop abuse, and even be threatened with violence.
5. Women still can't make the first move
After the first one-on-one date with Lee, Georgia said "He finally kissed me, I've been waiting all day for this moment. I thought it wasn't going to happen. I'm so glad it did."
And then on another date with Courtney she wanted to snog but was waiting for him to initiate it. She later lamented that he didn't kiss her.
Why didn't she kiss the guys? Even when the show is called The Bachelorette and the premise is that a woman searches for love in a house full of eager and available men, she still can't own her own desire. Allowing the man to feel like he is in charge is more important than anything a woman could possibly want.
6. It's all about him
Presumably Rhys understood the premise of the show when he signed up: one woman is pursued by 16 men and she gets to choose which one she likes best.
But three weeks in Rhys has had enough of not being the centre of attention and is missing his special snowflake treatment.
"I'd like her to chase me for a bit of time,' he says. "It's about time she did it, so ... I suppose winning this would kind of defeat that purpose, um, I'm not going to say no if I get the time. So I'll definitely be trying."
Even when a woman has her own show she is expected to be a cheerleader for male egos.
7. Desirable women are weak
When playing two truths and a lie with Lee, Georgia chose the wrong answer and was required to do push-ups. Why? I have no idea. Georgia responded to her push-up penalty with: "Can I do girly ones?"
This from a woman who, we later learn, is a trapeze instructor. Yes, that trapeze, where you fling yourself through the air and catch swings and other people, relying on your upper-body strength. The same upper-body strength that would enable you to successfully lift your weight off the floor. But being a woman, Georgia still felt like she had to act as though she was so delicate she could only just hold herself upright.
Lee of course did the "manly" push-ups. Which is just as well, because not only does a woman need to be weak, she must be weaker than her man.
Kasey Edwards is a writer and best-selling author of Thirty-Something and Over It: What happens when you wake up and don't want to go to work. Ever again. www.kaseyedwards.com
23 comments
New User? Sign up