This season’s Bachelorette is Vancouver-girl Kaitlyn Bristowe. She charmed viewers with her quick comebacks and laid-back West Coast style on last season’s The Bachelor, and now she’s vying for the attention of 25 men in the California mansion.
The only problem is, unlike all the past singles looking for love, her promo video for the season doesn’t focus on the drama between the contestants, or the beautiful sights on their travel across the globe on extravagantly unrealistic dates.
Instead, it focuses on the fact that she chose to sleep with one of the men she was dating, before the allotted ‘time’ she is allowed to do so. On the popular reality show, contestants are ‘allowed’ to sleep with the Bachelorette in the fantasy suite, no cameras allowed, when there are only three left vying for her heart.
The promo highlights and overemphasizes the guilt that the bachelorette is expected to feel from sleeping with one of the men before she had permission.
Since when is entertainment value worth shaming a woman for sleeping with someone she hopes to marry?
The way the production studio purposefully edited the cuts for the promo highlighted the sexist attitudes within our entertainment industry. In one shot, Kaitlyn claims she should not feel bad for what she did, however, seconds later, she is seen crying and apologizing to the other men for her poor judgment and behavior. The men are then seen storming out, and questioning their own relationships with the upset bachelorette. They each act personally betrayed and disgusted that she acted in such a ‘promiscuous’ way.
The sad truth is, on other seasons with men in the lead role, the same thing has happened, and been either simply ignored or hinted at like it is not a big deal.
This is because it really isn’t.
Yet, when a woman consciously made the same choice as men before her have — to have consensual sex with someone she was in a relationship with, the summer-long television program had to focus on that one decision.
Since when is shaming a woman for sleeping with someone she is dating or even hoping to eventually marry considered entertainment? In 2015, do we really not understand that people have sex?
Because sex is a mere casual highlight during many other shows on the same network, I feel like ABC understands the birds and the bees. That being said, they should not have decided to slut-shame Kaitlyn for doing what so many others before and after her, will do.
