Another episode of The Bachelorette has come and gone, and I wish Roberto and Ali much luck. They do seem very happy, but are we to believe it? Why do we watch? Especially when we know these are completely contrived circumstances; that deciding to marry someone after knowing them for only two months makes little sense; and that the track record for lasting relationships on these shows is less than stellar?
Maybe it’s because despite all of those rational reasons and the cynicism that lies in us all, we want to believe in love. We want to believe it’s true and it’s real and it can work.
But as I reflected back on this season (which took about twenty-nine seconds), and all of the ridiculous Bachelor and Bachelorette shows I’ve seen, something occurred to me.
I’d love to see what would happen if they did a spin-off of The Bachelor called “The Bachelor: Forty-Plus Edition,” where all the women in the house were forty-plus. You know, women who have finally gotten past a significant amount of insecurities of their youth, are more comfortable with their bodies (and the associated imperfections), and could give a shit what the other women in the house think.
Now don’t get me wrong. It is not my intention to put down the younger twenty-three to twenty-nine year-old set that is so prominently featured in The Bachelor. There are many super-intelligent, confident, successful twenty-something women out there whose ambitions reach beyond being the next reality star of the moment. It’s just that most don’t go on national television to make out in front of a camera and have catfights in a souped-up dormitory.
I think this forty-plus Bachelor concept would make for very interesting TV. Let’s just imagine how this would play out…
You’d have the forty-plus women all hanging out in the big living room on the first night of the meet & greet party with The Bachelor. They would sit and talk about their fitness routines, share healthy recipes, and exchange stories about their career and past boyfriends. Many would find new friends and have such fun conversations that they may not notice when The Bachelor walks in.
If one of the coveted one-on-one dates with The Bachelor wasn’t something particularly intriguing to his selected woman, she would call him up and say, “um, yeah, about that bungee jumping thing followed by a night out at a swank new club...I’m not much for heights and am not a big jazz fan, so why don’t you just go without me… I’m going to take a bath and read a good book tonight.” A forty-plus woman will tell you what she thinks and will not succumb to pressure - she will do what she wants to do.
Or what about if one of the women is talking smack to The Bachelor about the others? The other forty-plus women in the house would probably tell her to grow up, then ignore her until she behaves. With age comes a lack of patience for such shenanigans. They are mellow enough to deal with it, though, without drama. They simply address the issue at hand, then walk away because they know they don’t need to be bothered with it; it’s not worth the energy.
And as far as the group dates go, I think the forty-plus women would have little interest in competing for The Bachelor’s attention. They would think, “look, I don’t need to jump through hoops to impress him, or step over the other girls to see him. Either he likes me for who I am or he doesn’t.”
Then, I imagine, the women on the group date might wind up having so much fun chatting over a couple of glasses of wine, that The Bachelor would get bored and have to remind them that he’s even there. Women in their forties truly value friendship and enjoy the camaraderie of other cool, interesting women.
