The UnReal-ity of the 'Bachelor' Universe

It's been a hot minute, I know. Working in TV and social media makes it harder to dedicate your free time to TV and social media. Who knew?

Nevertheless, I am currently swept up in the faraway land known as the Bachelor/ette/inParadise franchise. There is something very interesting happening in this world, which I've written about before, but you might not know it unless you are an avid fan able to parse out which tropes and codes are being disrupted in the Bachelor-verse this summer. These disruptions fall under two categories; one within the series The Bachelorette, the other outside it, namely the seriously compelling Lifetime (what, did I say those words together?) show UnReal. 

Let's start with how Kaitlyn Bristowe, the most recent Bachelorette to be whisked away by the glamor of 'dating' 25 men on TV, purposely or purposelessly spun the show on its head. See, Kaitlyn seems to behave like a woman of 2015, meaning she has a sex drive that leads to certain events. A few weeks into the courtship, when there are still ~8 men left in the game, she sleeps with one of the contestants. Normally in this show, sex happens under verrrryyy controlled circumstances and locations that are actually called 'fantasy suites,' which serial viewers of the franchise will tell you only pop out when there are 3 guys left. Usually these 'overnight dates' happen on a tropical island, complete with pillows and candles and maybe some palm trees rustling in the wind. Everyone knows sex goes on, but it is never talked about, because the show seems to pander to what it believes to be Middle American values (for its Midwestern mom demographic, maybe). This season, Kaitlyn sleeps with Nick in Dublin, in a hotel room. It's so pedestrian in comparison, but so much more real, because the next morning the crew catches her on camera having a heart-to-heart with one of the producers on her balcony, reciting all those things we millenial women sometimes recite to ourselves and to friends after sleeping with someone too early. She doesn't regret it, but now she has to figure out how to break the news to the others. Furthermore, she had already told another contestant in private (Shawn, who would end up with her heart), that he was the one.

How did the production team approach this behavior? They sort of embraced it and altered the format of the show. Yes, they seem to have scrapped the other exotic locations in favor of staying in Dublin with a shorter schedule (could this have been a weird punishment? Nah, since producers will do whatever they can for ratings), but they actually gave Kaitlyn the go-ahead to have overnights with four men, not three. They also exposed all the slut-shaming tweets aimed at Kaitlyn in a reunion special (and my feminist heart whined as I heard this vitriol) in order to incite and maybe defend their now-controversial commentary on sex. Then Kaitlyn only met two families instead of 3, which was probably a good call on the producers' part when they must have known pretty concretely that Kaitlyn only really cared about those two guys. It may have been a misstep on the production's part to bring the 'loser' all the way to a proposal, but again, ratings rule.

 "raise your hand if you have ever felt personally victimized by Regina George Twitter trolls"

Why is this important? Finally, after a bajillion seasons of this show perpetuated archaic values, romantic inventions, and hegemonic gender roles, we're finally seeing the cracks in that rigidity. I wouldn't go so far as to say that we're getting a positive representation of healthy relationships, but Kaitlyn has ushered in a frankness about sexuality that is welcome on a show that has, for better or worse, dictated some standards around courtship and romance in pop culture. That this franchise is also responsible for Bachelor in Paradise is interesting because the otherwise proper values steeped in the Bachelor/ette are nowhere to be found in "Paradise," where sex, backstabbing, and manipulation are called "love" to hide the jealousy and competition that draws us in like any good trashy tv.

Then there's UnReal. A scripted series that draws quite tightly from the Bachelor universe (it's basically a fictional behind-the-scenes look at the Bachelor), it tells the story of the backstabbing, manipulative producers responsible for this good trashy tv. What's great about UnReal isn't so much the scandals and cat-fights the producers encourage, but that these producers are women living in the feminist/post-feminist media landscape, grappling with their conflicting desires: power and morality, danger and safety, love and lust. For example, the female showrunner Quinn is a ruthless yet intuitive boss gunning for her own franchise, and she wants to take her best associate producer, Rachel, with her, despite Rachel's paranoia that this world is drawing her irreversibly farther away from escaping the manipulations and destruction she happens to be good at.

 Quinn certainly isn't nice, but she knows people, and she knows what makes good TV.

Honestly, I sometimes feel like Rachel. It is difficult to work in media without internalizing a general feeling that the internet brings out the worst in people. Being addicted to social media, like many in my generation, has made me less patient, less able to be in the moment, less empathetic, and less able to think deeply about issues larger than 140 characters. Yet when I see complex stories on TV about complex women, I feel like at least I have a voice, because stories like mine are starting to be told in mass media. I'm trying to escape it all, but I end up sucking myself back in. Maybe it's a vicious cycle, condemning the hand that feeds me because media also tells the stories I care about, but the fact that dating shows actually resonate on my feminist scale gives me hope.

The Complicated Feminism of "Frozen"

I watched Disney’s Frozen on a plane today – it was on one of those shared teleprompter-like screens that, nowadays, you’ll only find on domestic flights. This lack of individual screen permitted me to watch the gaggle of college girls sing along to the movie in front of me. They knew every word, which should have felt to me no different from the nights my own college roommates would put on the sing-along version of “Mamma Mia” and bop around the dorm room to find some cheer during finals week. But with Frozen, I kept in mind their enthusiasm for this movie as a backdrop to the fact that, while watching, I couldn’t make up my mind about whether or not this movie had a feminist stance. 

I’ll give you the rundown of the story, fittingly based on dour fairy-teller Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen,” so that we can make sense of it together. Sisters Elsa and Anna are princesses, and when they are kids Elsa is cursed with a variation of the Midas touch – what she touches turns to ice. As a child Elsa has trouble controlling her power and accidentally strikes Anna with ice, injuring her. As a result, their parents decide it is best to keep Elsa’s power a secret, encasing her hands in gloves, shutting her away in the castle, and isolating her from her sister. Not surprisingly, this turns her into a closed-off, protective, literally frigid older sister.

As young adults on Elsa’s coronation day, Anna—the compulsive, spontaneous, evidently modern one—meets Prince Hans and gets engaged to him (on the same day, omg what?). Elsa finds out, and in her anger, accidentally freezes the ballroom and the rest of the town, which the townspeople interpret to mean that she’s dangerous. She runs away in exile to her own icy castle, where she sings a song about being free. Anna hunts after her with the help of loner mountain man Kristoff. A series of things happen as various parties try to lure Elsa back to the castle to end the eternal winter, during the last of which Elsa again strikes Anna with ice, freezing her heart. In keeping with fairy tale lore, only “an act of true love can thaw a frozen heart,” so Anna races to kiss Hans to break the spell, only to find that Hans is just using her to get to the throne. When he tries to kill Elsa, Anna jumps in front of the sword, though, which is the actual act of true love that revives her back to her full warmth. Yay, and they all live happily ever after.

So, what’s complicated about that? The thing is, many of the story elements could be subversively feminist, or not. So, let’s make a list:

Wait, I think this is feminist:

-       The Prince and Princess theme feels like a comment on exhausted tropes; for example, when Hans turns out to be a bad guy, we’re relieved and turn to root even more for the imperfect, clumsy, good-hearted Kristoff. We’re equally excited to see Anna, who’s not the helpless princess type, take matters into her own hands. She leads the effort to find Elsa, and Kristoff is an often self-interested, begrudged helper. Yay strong female characters!

-       Elsa’s self-imposed exile in her icy castle could be seen as a liberating break from patriarchal/feudal oppression

-       When Prince Hans reveals himself to be evil, the story is counteracting the countless romantic comedies and Disney movies that place a female character’s worth and self-worth entirely in the male lead’s heroism

-       There’s a song about both Anna and Kristoff being “fixer-uppers,” which proclaims that we all have flaws that can align in true love.  No more having to be perfect for a man!

-       “True love” turns out to be familial and not romantic, with romantic happiness a serendipitous side effect

Or is it?

-       Elsa can only feel free in isolation, because being at ease in society and/or having connections with people while also cherishing her gift is impossible, because that gift is damaging to the patriarchal status quo

-       For every time Anna saves Kristoff, there’s a time he saves her as well (or at least tries to). But this could also be advocating reciprocity, equal respect and contribution to a relationship, regardless of gender. Ahhh I don’t know! 

-       When Hans reveals himself to be evil, Anna is made to seem weak and a fool for falling so quickly, and can only redeem herself by kissing another dude. Oh no, bye strong female character!

-       Kristoff is the more obvious fixer-upper, according to his family’s song, but the part about Anna that needs fixing is that she compulsively decided to marry another man after one day. So she needs to change for a man anyway?

-       The fact that Hollywood still feels the need to write female protagonists into the world of princes and princesses frustrates me to no end! What is it about this ideal, this fascination with princesses?

-       There’s still a need to include Anna and Kristoff’s love at the end, as if we wouldn’t be satisfied with just the sisterly love story.

So I’m stuck; each point for feminism has a problematic (maybe postfeminist?) counterpoint. Maybe all this doesn’t matter and we should just be happy that Frozen passes the Bechdel test. But I’d like to think that a higher standard for our movies, especially our kids’ movies, is warranted. I also can’t help wondering if the girls in front of me loved the movie just for its music, or if they perhaps appreciated its complexity. Sound off in the comments if you think this film is progressive, transgressive, regressive, or if you don’t care!  

Inner Beauty in a Postfeminist Television Landscape?

Whether or not you're a fan of the show, you probably have something to say about TLC's What Not To Wear. "Oh, the makeover show?" you ask. Yes, it's the one where they transform women from 'drab' to 'fab' by throwing out their clothes and helping/forcing them to shop for a new wardrobe.

The same thing probably goes for Orange Is The New Black, Netflix's outstanding new drama. "Oh, the one about the women's prison," you say. Well, I have a lot to say about both--especially because despite a divide in genre and form (reality vs. fiction, episodic vs. serial), much of the content overlaps when it comes to women's inner beauty.

What Not To Wear aired its series finale a few weeks ago, and I'll admit, I binge-watched the entire last season leading up to this finale. I guess I found it hard to resist the temptation to watch what hosts Stacy and Clinton call 'fashion disasters' clean up their look.

But I found myself getting more and more uncomfortable with the premise of WNTW as I went along. The setup--where Stacy and Clinton surprise their contestants with intentionally embarrassing hidden camera footage of them in 'bad' outfits--seemed designed to sabotage and humiliate as much as possible so that the episodes can set up for the narrative of transformation we've come to expect from reality TV. Then, they dump the contestants' entire wardrobe in a trash can, but not before ridiculing it, sometimes before a 360-degree mirror.

(Ok, I admit, some of the outfits are pretty weird...Megumi, right, thinks this is a normal outfit and not a costume)

Finally, Stacy and Clinton take the contestant out shopping and POOF! Two days later she's a changed woman. Or is she? It depends on which context we're using to define changed.

During the finale, Clinton says, "it's really not about the clothes." And to some extent, the show does concentrate on bringing out the confidence, strength, and beauty that these women already have but aren't displaying on the outside, perhaps because some personal demons are hidden under or exacerbated by the bad clothes. My problem is that their vision of beauty is so incredibly narrow. I can't count the number of times the hosts have dressed their 'fashion victims' in the same iteration of jeans, blouse and blazer or flower print dress. Yes, they teach the women to dress for their body type, but does everyone have to dress in some combination of Stacy's trademark "color, pattern, texture and shine"?

More irritating still is the proclamation of transformation and success that the clothes will bring (and they often do). It seems that by adhering to a certain standard of femininity and fashion, these 'remade' women will better navigate their careers and personal lives. Whether this change happens because of a legitimately rediscovered confidence or rather just an easier time conforming to class indicators through clothing (and hair and makeup), who knows, but I'm inclined to say the latter. Maybe I'm just bitter because I hate the pressure of looking 'just right' or having a 'personal style' - why can't my personal style be comfy sweaters and no makeup? I mean, it can be, but maybe not if I want to get ahead in the urban, media-saturated landscape where I live my life.

Rosalind Gill, feminist critic, points out how the fascination with women's bodies in our current postfeminist media culture makes the body into our singular identifier:

"In today's media, possession of a 'sexy body' is presented as women's key (if not sole) source of identity. The body is presented simultaneously as women's source of power and as always unruly, requiring constant monitoring, surveillance, discipline and remodeling (and consumer spending) in order to conform to ever-narrower judgments of female attractiveness." (1)  

Agreed! So, where does television go from here?

The remedy could be something like Orange Is The New Black (yes, I also binge-watched), which takes the same narrative of transformation/facing demons and puts it in a humanistic and complicated light. I'm not saying OITNB doesn't have its own problems of representation (especially queer, class, and racial ones), but it's a start, because the show exists in a woman's space, mostly devoid of the male gaze (with the exception, of course, of 'Pornstache'). The women come in all sizes and colors in their mono-color jumpsuits, so we get to know them through their personalities and actions, not what they're wearing. If there ever were a show about real female inner beauty, this one's it in my opinion. Talk about Sophia - what a gorgeous character, whereas Pennsatucky is portrayed as an ugly person from the inside-->out.

So, what I'm saying is this: I think this narrative of transformation happens in both shows, but in directly opposite manners. The 'way out' to a better place in WNTW is through exterior fashion, but in OITNB on other hand, it's through self-investigation while the inmates endure their sentences, biding their time on good behavior. Depending on how you look at it, both are uplifting stories, but OITNB is just more realistic, in my opinion, because accepting yourself from the inside is much more complex, difficult and ultimately rewarding than just slapping on some new clothes to feel beautiful.


---
1. Quoted in Rosalind Gill, "Postfeminist media culture : Elements of a sensibility," European Journal of Cultural Studies 2007 10: 147.

Girls Against Boys?

Uh oh.

So I've been reading a lot lately about how millenials are in a "post-dating" world. There's Hanna Rosin's polemic book The End of Men. There are the women at The Gaggle who encourage opening up your eyes to the men you never considered. There are the depressingly spot-on Atlantic and New York Times articles condemning hookup culture, texting, and online dating. There are the Acculturated symposium articles that ask "Can Men Be Men Again?" The (horrible horror) film above, Girls Against Boys, seems to be an extreme prediction of a result of this current battle of the sexes. So, in a departure from my usual film-focused posts (which nevertheless owes a lot to Girls) I'd like to weigh in with my take on "post dating."

Of particular importance here is the fact that I don't date a lot. This is both a conscious and subconscious decision. The simplest explanation is that living in Denmark as a non-Dane, I may be scaring off potential interests because they worry that I'll leave the country (which I did, once, after a French boyfriend broke it off for precisely this reason), so neither of us tries from the start.  But the second-simplest explanation is that it's too hard.

Sometimes I'm full of rage, like these murderous women, that post-feminism has rendered men lazy, unambitious and averse to commitment. Unfulfilling past experiences with "the casual thing" tell me I don't want that anymore, but how do we get out of the cycle when casual sex is everywhere and endorsed? So my anger brews until I (wrongly) peg all men in sight as commitment-phobes without getting to know them.

Sometimes I think it's us girls' fault for putting up with casual sex. Some argue that casual sex empowers women; I think that in a society with more highly educated women than men, we're really just scared that if we stick up for our right to monogamy, we'll scare the boys away because they can chase easier tail. Plus, casual sex is awful and awkward. The insidiousness of hookup options leaves the mature women partnerless.

Sometimes I'm complacent, more interested in my comfy bed with its comforter that hugs me just right, and that doesn't snore. Reading a book on a Saturday night often feels much more fulfilling than braving the sticky floors of bars, only to have unwelcome men barge their way into my (great) conversations with my friends.

Sometimes I simply have no idea where to meet men. In my daily life I'm surrounded by students (I can feel my mom repeating, "they're too young, Kate!") and, worse, startup entrepreneurs. And with a job, a master's program, intensive Danish courses, and an active social life, all my time for new activities is taken up.

Sometimes I pity the men who've missed out on the encouragement and support that my fellow female generation has reaped. Masculinity is confusing these days; how are boys supposed to learn how to be men if Bruce Willis's guns and hipster jeans are the only guiding symbols?

But most of all, I don't date because I am an emerging adult. I have a lot of things to work on, for myself. I genuinely feel as though I do not really know who I am yet. I would argue that most of my peers agree. We're in the midst of deciding careers, lifestyles, worldviews, and finances for ourselves, and this is more than a full-time job. Therefore, none of us can possibly know what we want in a relationship, and what we have to offer the other person.

So I guess I wish that the media would quit ringing the alarm bells about millenial dating, because it's making a pressure-filled situation even more stressful. Could we instead focus on the fact that emerging adults need help and guidance too, much like teenagers and new parents? At this age, I'd much rather be asked the question "how would you describe yourself" than, for example, "what do you do for a living?" The latter implies a fixed identity, while the former hints at the truth - that we have the capacity to decide who we are and who we become. And that we are ever-changing.