Page 136 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

Dat ng Shows | 11

CBS’s Cupid, which allowed audience voting, and UPN’s The Player, which
pimped out the formula. In spring 2007, The Bachelor was in its tenth cycle,
still going strong.
Meanwhile, MTV and VH1’s move into the world of reality television pro-
duced yet another subgenre of the dating show, with over-the-top, outrageous
comedies with quirky twists. Date My Mom required suitors to go on a date with
the bachelorette’s mother, Next allowed the bachelor/ette to end the date and re-
place the suitor at any time, Parental Control gave parents the chance to choose
two alternatives to their child’s current significant other, and The Flavor of Love
and spinoff I Love New York tried to find love for the comical characters Flavor
Flav and Tiffany Pollard.

PLaying For ThE CamEra: CriTiCism
A common criticism of many dating shows is that they perpetuate tired and
regressive notions of how men and women should behave, especially while dat-
ing. First, with all but a few exceptions, most shows take heterosexuality as the
assumed norm, immediately marginalizing gay or lesbian sexuality or romance.
Such a move occurs at blinding speed, though, precisely because dating shows
often espouse rigid ideals of ideal masculinity and femininity. Women on The
Bachelor, for instance, are rewarded for being demure, quiet, and submissive,
as many seasons of the show have featured a loud and assertive woman in the
first episode who is cut from the pack, and is shunned by her fellow contestants,
for daring to behave as she does. Women are assumed to want a rich, muscu-
lar, take-charge man, while men are assumed to want a slim, demure woman
who will let him take the lead. Moreover, the women often appear to privilege
finding romance above all other activities in their lives, suggesting that finding
a spouse is a single woman’s first and most important task in life. Even when
the bachelor is in theory the one seeking companionship, shows such as The
Bachelor often depict him as the “missing piece” of the puzzle for the women,
positing a clearer sense of lack with the women than with the man, and hence
implying that women need validation and completion from men. Certainly,
since many such shows depict the women willing to back-stab each other, or
to gloat in victory, they paint a picture of fiercely competitive, even desperate
women, that is often contrasted to the relaxed friendliness and composure of
the man or men.
Of particular concern too is the degree to which many dating shows require
women to perform for the bachelor significantly more than their gender-flipped
variants require men to perform for women. Women are encouraged to con-
form to a slim body image, and to render their body as a spectacle for the men
to enjoy. Whether this takes the form of dancing competitively on bar tables or
poolside on Elimidate, or of the prolonged set piece of the “rose ceremony” in
The Bachelor, in which the man, the male host, and the camera gaze continuously
at the women while trying to decide who to pick, as if from a catalog. Feminist
critics express concern with television (and film) images such as this where the