Last night, on The Bachelorette, Jenn weeded out some more goofy goobers. That’s right, I said it: The dudes on this season are making us wonder if the producers got bored and decided to conduct some kind of “average Joe” experiment on the most-watched reality dating show of all time.
It was especially hard to miss during Episode 1, when Jenn, adorable, light-hearted, and charmingly confident Jenn, stepped into her shiny dress and became the first Asian lead, and then… medium-cute guy after medium-cute guy stepped out of the limo and flashed their silly grins.
While you might’ve expected Jenn to keep some of them around, ya know, for appearances, she is in her right to let go of the nerds and the dad-bods.
Honestly? Good for her. As the star of the show, she’s allowed to want a mega hot man, and you better believe, if a size 10 or 12 woman was ever to be cast as a contestant on The Bachelor (let’s be real, fat chance—absolutely no pun intended), she wouldn’t make it very far.
Still, that didn’t stop someone from making a very specific casting choice here, which was certainly based on the very real, and very sexist stereotype that, while hot men don’t date unattractive women, women aren’t supposed to mind dating unattractive men.
I mean, even in regular life, it doesn’t take much for women to get passed over. Women have to work hard to keep being dateable past the age of 25 (thanks, Leo), while men are more or less allowed to dress like Adam Sandler and have beer guts. And we’re supposed to swipe right? I mean, the reality is (at least when you’re not on a reality dating show), that’s kind of what’s out there. We have to take it or leave it.
Listen: being regular is not a bad thing. I’m regular AF and I date regular men. But I’m not going on an ABC reality dating show, and you better believe, neither are they. If I were to even attempt to be cast, I’d need about a year to get a tummy tuck, breast lift, and probably to roll back the clock a decade.
However, while I’d imagined that to be true across the board—that the men lining up to date The Bachelorette would be subjected to the same unreasonably rigid beauty standards—it seems like maybe that’s no longer true. And on The Bachelorette, no less! I mean, if you can’t find 25 hot AF dudes to cast on this show, what is actually going on? Have mega hot dudes gone extinct? Or have we just collectively accepted that, while it’s totally fine and expected that men do, women aren’t supposed to care about looks?
There have long been reality dating shows that aren’t just for the 10s of the world. Remember Sexy Beasts when everyone wore ridiculous masks to prove…well, I’m not sure what it proved. Love Is Blind has a mix of super beautiful and super average contestants. There was an actual show called Average Joe that lasted for four whole seasons!
The Bachelor franchise, however, has pretty much been reserved for bonafide hotties. If we’re changing the game, great! I’ll be eagerly awaiting a woman with love handles and a unibrow when the next Bachelor season rolls around. I mean, I personally would be about it. But it’s, quite simply, never going to happen.
The result would be too painful, too hard to watch. The men, perhaps, less evolved and ill-equipped to judge someone by their personality when surrounded by size fours and sky-high boobs and perfectly symmetrical faces as they may be, would send the eight or nine home before she got to be smart, funny, or exquisite.
Is it true that women are more inclined to get to know a goofball? Maybe. The Pete Davidson phenomenon is a real thing, which is why one goober remains: Devin, the dude who everyone keeps calling a cheap Pete Davidson knock-off. He actually seems to be piquing Jenn’s interest, too. His personality is clearly working overtime on the show where hotness is essentially…essential.
Still, while Devin is cute in a funny gas station employee kind of way, he’s not likely to win the show. Jenn deserves a 10, and it seems safe to say that she knows it. If she wanted an eight, she could’ve stayed home. There’s certainly a gas station where she lives.
Either way, until we see some ladies who are anything less than perfect take Bachelor Nation by storm, maybe we should skip The Regulars on The Bachelorette, too. They might be cute enough for a dating app. But bringing these reasonably cute blokes on Jenn’s season perpetuates an abysmal dating reality that we don’t need further drawn out.
Because even if it’s true that women don’t mind a lowkey dadbod, we have enough of those in real life. We’re out here scouring our dating apps hoping there’s just one dude who looks even half as cute as Devin who doesn’t open with “who’s your favorite Muppet?!” Yes, that’s a real question in my Bumble queue at the moment.
America tunes in for the hotties. And if we can’t find one ourselves, we’re at least rooting for Jenn to. She’s The Bachelorette for Christ’s sake. If she can’t find a 10, we’re all screwed. In fact, we’d probably be better off settling for actual Muppets than putting ourselves through these unfair dating double standards anymore. At least they’d make us laugh.
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