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When “Bachelor in Paradise,” ABC’s freewheeling spinoff of “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette,” premiered in 2014, true love barely seemed like a possibility. Production stocked the cast with franchise eccentrics like Kalon McMahon (”The Bachelorette”) and Clare Crawley, along with little-known past contestants like Lacy Faddoul and Elise Mosca (all alums of “The Bachelor”). The cast sunned, drank and retreated to the ocean in pairs to talk *ahem* in private.
Every few days, new former cast members would turn up to vie for attention, and each episode culminated in a rose ceremony in which either the men or the women each offered roses to the individuals they most wanted to pursue a romantic relationship with. As with musical chairs, some asses would be left without seats ― and it would be an immediate, sweaty SUV ride out of “Paradise” for the rejects.
Marcus Grodd and Lacy ended the season with the first “Paradise” engagement ― a rather surprising one, at that point in the show’s history. The finale merely promised that couples would choose whether to split up or leave together. (Lacy and Marcus later ceremoniously wed on the second season premiere of “Bachelor in Paradise,” but they reportedly never made the marriage legally official and split relatively soon after.) Other couples engaged in weird psychodramas with each other, had loud but quick breakups, exchanged partners, and moved on quickly.
So how did we get here, to a Season 3 of “Paradise” where there were three proposals? (Plus, nearly all of the people left standing by the finale were in the original cast, not the newcomers who came in ostensibly to shake things up.) No knock on the happy to-be-weds from this season, who seem genuinely giddy to have found their partners and who will hopefully have great lives together. But filming lasts less than a month: the instability and game-playing of the first season makes far more sense than the domesticity of the latest one.
The realization that an engagement on the show means a free Neil Lane sparkler ― provided the relationship lasts a contractually mandated number of years ― surely played some part in the upward trend, as did the sheer pushing the envelope in terms of outcomes. Jade Roper and Tanner Tolbert’s engagement came as no surprise when they fell in love on Season 2; by Season 3, Nick Viall’s failure to propose to Jen Saviano, a woman with whom he clearly had an affectionate but far from committed relationship, was the shocking moment.
Ultimately the trend on “Paradise” bends toward conservatism and commitment, oddly enough for the supposedly boisterous cousin of “The Bachelor.” This satisfies a taste for monogamy and romance among much of the show’s audience and allows the show to play up the purity of its contestants’ intentions in looking for love.
But while we often assume that emphasizing monogamy benefits women, the expectation of commitment also tends to fall more heavily upon them. There’s no “boys will be boys” excuse for the ladies.
This season, while Vinny Ventiera made out with both Sarah Herron and Izzy Goodkind in quick succession after he’d apparently paired off with Izzy, he received no notable backlash from fans and continued his relationship with the latter woman. Later, when Izzy told Vinny she felt an attraction to a new man who’d arrived and wanted a little space to explore the connection, Vinny broke things off entirely and left “Paradise.” Izzy became the target of ongoing abuse on Twitter, with viewers calling her a “selfish ass,” “ugly soul,” among other less creative, slut-shaming insults. He had been loyal, so how dare she question the romance?
The Ashley Iaconetti-Jared Haibon-Caila Quinn love triangle threw this dynamic into even clearer relief. On Season 2 of “Paradise,” Ashley pursued Jared despite his lack of strong interest; he gave it a shot for a little while, but eventually told her they would only be friends. She arrived this season still infatuated, and shared that she felt that he had offered her “a glimmer of hope” by behaving romantically toward her and even hooking up with her. Of course, none of this made her question her opinion that “everybody in the world needs a Jared ... He has a golden soul.”
This season, Caila arrived and Ashley’s man fell fast and hard for the smiling beauty from the last “Bachelor” cycle. Ashley, and the rest of the cast, were apparently outraged that Caila, who seemed more tentative about her feelings, could risk hurting Jared (though, as seen with Izzy, honesty might not have gone down tremendously well either). Ashley devoted much of her free time to slurring Caila as a “piece of shit” and a “whore” in order to protect her ex from Caila’s apparent romantic chilliness.
The root of Izzy’s and Caila’s offenses, it seems, is that women are typically expected to love men out of gratitude ― for the gift of manly pride and love that has been laid at their feet. Izzy violated this by being honest about the fact that she couldn’t properly return that love yet. Caila violated this by giving herself a chance to let those feelings grow before admitting that they weren’t there.
The only correct response? To actually feel that reciprocal depth of love and to commit to demonstrating it as long as the man desires it. Add it all up, and basically, the duty of a woman in “Paradise” is to sublimate her own doubts and desires to reward a man with the love he’s earned.
It would be a mistake, of course, to insist that this moralistic approach to romantic feelings is a hard-and-fast gender principle. Of course Nick was dragged a bit for rejecting the love of a good woman after he broke up with Jen on the finale. In general, shows like “The Bachelor” ― competition-based dating shows ― emphasize a worth-based concept of romance in which love is about finding the best option and winning it, rather than about finding a compatible option and mutually choosing to work on it.
Men and woman alike can find themselves trashed as arrogant, superficial or slutty for choosing to end relationships that aren’t the right fit for them. That “The Bachelor” franchise counteracts its reality TV sleaze factor by interrogating whether its contestants are there “for the right reasons” only reinforces the perception that having “wrong reasons” (or “wrong feelings”) is the ultimate and only sin in love.
But typically, when it comes to being penalized for perceived arrogance, superficiality or sluttiness, it’s women who bear the brunt of the backlash. An obvious example from Bachelor Nation: the Twitter abuse endured by Bachelorette Kaitlyn Bristowe after she tearily admitted to having sex with one of the suitors on her season, far more extreme than criticism faced by past Bachelors who had been known to sleep with contestants.
Men are expected to have their pure intentions muddied by physical attraction or career aspirations (a common accusation of the male contestants on “The Bachelorette”), but expectations of the ladies tend to be higher. We saw that on Kaitlyn’s “The Bachelorette,” we saw it on “Bachelor in Paradise” this season, and we see it in shows like MTV’s “Are You the One,” where the women this past season rarely if ever drove the match-up changes, though male contestants like Asaf and Gio routinely ended apparently solid commitments to abruptly pursue hotter options.
Women know the mercy for them, if they’re perceived as disloyal or promiscuous, will be strained.
The double standard here is obviously infuriating, but there are other consequences to emphasizing monogamy. Couples sitting quietly with whoever first caught their fancy makes for dull TV, for one thing. The arms race toward pairs tanning together for three weeks and then getting engaged means a race to the bottom, entertainment-wise. As viewers, we should be aware that real humans realize they’ll be reading tweets calling them “whores” and “shallow bitches” when they consider dating two men on a reality show where the actual goal is for them to date multiple men. In fostering that puritanical culture, we are making “Paradise” and similar shows more mind-numbing.
Besides, chastising people for dating around or changing their minds about new relationships offers a questionable message in terms of how to build a healthy romance. Shopping around can go too far, sure, but being honest about doubts and one’s need to play the field can make a single more emotionally prepared to settle down and work on the right relationship. There are no awards handed out for staying in a relationship that fills you with doubt and FOMO.
Next season on “Paradise,” we’re going to need to allow the ladies and the gents to behave a little more disloyally. Musical chairs is only fun if things get unpredictable.
For more on Week 6 of “Bachelor In Paradise,” check out HuffPost’s “Here To Make Friends” podcast below:
Do people love “The Bachelor,” “The Bachelorette” and “Bachelor in Paradise,” or do they love to hate these shows? It’s unclear. But here at “Here to Make Friends,” we both love and love to hate them — and we love to snarkily dissect each episode in vivid detail. Podcast edited by Nick Offenberg.
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