Tag Archives: Chris Soules

These womyn are about to tell us so much.

Oh man, oh WOMAN, the women certainly told all this week, and oh how amazing their stories were. The Women Tell All episode started with Chris Harrison babbling about how every Bachelor season they have the Women Tell All Episode, and sometimes, ya know, there’s just not that much to talk about, but this season is SO special and dramatic. Oh please Chris Harrison, we’re not idiots. The Women Tell All consists necessarily each season of a stage full of women, and we all know that The Bachelor‘s very most favorite thing to do is pitting women against each other.

It’s kind of darkly funny—jealousy between women is a thing that we learn from a sexist culture that tells us women have to fight each other for a man or a job or a book deal; it’s a biproduct of a culture that makes us feel invisible and starved for attention through making it harder for women to get the material stuff that many men get easily. As feminists we have to work to unlearn that internalized misogyny. But the thing is: The Bachelor takes that social message and makes it real in order to further perpetuate it. There is actually one boring dude that these lovely womyn have to fight over. They’re perpetuating competition amongst women because they are literally competing. And so the social norm of female jealousy and competition is so, and so on forever. And we get to watch it in its fullest force on The Women Tell All. Continue reading →

Just wearin’ some clothes that we totally understand the cultural significance of!

Ugh Bachelor Nation, we are getting to that point in the show where we should all be glued to our TVs, but instead I am bored. Jade is gone, and I am sad. Britt is gone, and I miss her inspiring makeup and red Chucks. Farmer Chris is boring, and Whitney is boring, and Becca is boring, and Kaitlyn is refreshingly not that boring which makes it all the more depressing that she’s vying for a chance to live with a boring guy in a desolate town in Iowa. I don’t even know who to root for anymore—the one I like best? That she be banished to Arlington, Iowa?!

We’re in Bali, and it’s rully pretty. The first date is with Kaitlyn, at a local temple where they basically go because they’re not allowed to kiss and I guess The Bachelor thought that sacred aspect of this place would be a fun kitchy restraint. Chris has maje pit stains and a monkey jumps on his head and Kaitlyn makes a weird metaphor about going after what you want and wishing she was a monkey. Kaitlyn tells Chris she’s falling in love, and I thought Farmer Chris was only allowed to say things like “thank you” and “it means so much to hear you say that” and *silent tongue kiss* in response, but in an unprecedented Bach move, he says “I’m falling in love with you as well.” Wow, Farmer Chris, “as well,” aren’t you a fancy genius. They go to the fantasy suite together. I am so bored you guys, someone please give me a lobotomy. Continue reading →

Illustration by Matt L Rohrer

OMGGGggggg there is so much to say about this week’s episode that I don’t even know where to begin! I guess I’ll start at the beginning, which was really the end of last week’s episode (which is annoying, The Bachelor, end each episode with a fucking rose ceremony, we already have enough confusion and mayhem in our lives). Kelsey is on the floor and having or staging a panic attack. They’re basically playing her sobs in a loop because they think we won’t notice, and the paramedic tries to distract Kelsey by asking her about some brownies (what brownies?!), which works like a charm. Kelsey laughs “I better get a rose tonight,” and asks to see Chris, then returns to the group of other womyn, who are all pissed. Kelsey laughs off her panic attack and says things like, “these puppies don’t come out every night” about her choice to wear a dress that shows off her cleavage. That’s what we all call our breasts right, “these puppies”?

At the rose ceremony, Farmer Chris speaks more words than we’ve ever heard him utter in all five preceding episodes combined, Exhibit A that we May Not Actually Like Him. And then Kelsey’s like, wait, why am I, a 28-year-old guidance counselor, fighting over this dumb-as-box-of-hammers farmer guy who has marbles in his mouth all the time? JUST KIDDING, you guys, that would of course never happen. You know that moment when you’re dating someone and obsessively asking yourself “does ze like me???”, and then your feminist BFF has to remind you to ask whether or not you’re even into said love object in the first place?? As women, we are socialized to please. And sometimes we forget to think about our actual desires in light of other people’s. If this were the real world, these ladieeeeesssss likely would have moved on from Farmer Chris by now. But this is the Bachelor universe, and there are no feminist best friends, and no alternative suitors. There’s just Farmer Chris, with his mouth slightly agape as he hands out roses to Jade, Kaitlyn, Megan, Becca, Hot V Ashley, and Kelsey, and they all gleefully accept. He sends home Samantha (who is this person?) and 21-year-old Mackenzie (Thank God. Although I was enjoying seeing her and No Longer Hot Virgin Ashley’s friendship forming over a bond of incredible immaturity.) Continue reading →

This week’s Bach brought Farmer Chris and his clan of ever-more-uniformly blonde ladiesssssttttthhh to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Chris talks up this wonderful city while wearing a chic leather jacket, and one nondescript blonde thinks she is going to actual Mexico, ’cause, you know, girls are dumb.

Welcome to Mexico

The first date is a one-on-one with Cruise Ship Singer Carly, and the date card reads, “Let’s come together.” I know what you’re thinking—simultaneous orgasms with Farmer Chris = every womyn’s dream date! But Carly puts the accent on “let’s” and pretends all ladylike like she doesn’t know what orgasms are… but not for long. Cue “spiritual music” and Farmer Chris and Carly walking into a room where a woman who identifies as a “love and intimacy mentor,” or “love guru” as Farmer Chris prefers to call her, waits for them on a pile of sensual Southwestern blankets. She burns sage and leads the pair in a chant, and it’s all really vaguely racist and cultural appropriation-nation and gross. She encourages them to like, hold their gross open mouths near one another without kissing, and then they sort of start dry-humping, ewwies all around. And also a totally insane first date, since the “love guru”’s goal is clearly to help couples reconnect. Oh yeah and love guru tells Farmer Chris and Carly to take each other’s clothes off (because clothing is different masks we hide behind you guys) but they’re too nervous and can’t do it (thanks a lot, Eve!). At dinner, Carly tells Chris that her last boyfriend didn’t want to touch her and it made her feel like she isn’t beautiful while I ran downstairs to get my sushi delivery. When I got back, Carly was still crying. (I hear her, because I had the same ex-boyfriend, basically.) Chris says he’s scared his farmer lifestyle isn’t good enough to make someone happy, and Carly assures him he’s wrong. Carly is confident and nice and normal when she’s around Farmer Chris. Which makes me almost like her, except that I have to remember her talking shit about/gender-policing Jillian last week. And then I’m like, oh right I live in the real world and Carly is horrible. Continue reading →

This week, NYC’s Snowmaggedon allowed for totally unfettered, cozy watching of The Bachelor live on Monday night, and OMG, this week’s episode was a feminist Bachelor recapper’s dream/nightmare.

You know what’s the best? Putting up a tent while wearing only a bikini.

Let’s start with the group date. The date card said “let’s do what feels natural,” which spurred highly philosophical conversation addressing what “nature” is anyway. “What does he mean by natural?” one womyn asked. “Natural beauty?” pondered another. And Mackenzie, in fully mascaraed and eyelinered hypocrisy, said right to the camera, “most of these girls aren’t very natural in the way they look.” Thank goddess though, no one was forced to not wear makeup, and instead they just were brought to a lake, where they spent the night camping. Funny Canadian Kaitlyn took off her bikini bottom and jumped in the water, and Hot Virgin Ashley took off her top. Beautiful Widow Kelsey was not having it—she called the whole experience “a date for bimbos,” and continually dissed the whole camping experience, brattily calling the lake a “hellhole” and claiming that it doesn’t compare to her native state’s Lake Michigan. Then she gets stung by a bee, and the camera panned down to her incredibly wide thigh gap. Continue reading →

“One of my wives is punk as fuck.”

This week’s Bach featured the very special guest host Jimmy Kimmel, a delightful reprieve from Chris Harrison. The episode began with him sneaking into Chris’s bedroom and waking him up, and Chris pretending to be totally surprised. Then they greeted the ladiesssszzz, and Kimmel made some funny jokes that commented on the ridiculousness of the whole Bachelor scenario: “I’m going to help Chris make his decision by making love to each of you.” LOLZ. And some jokes that took it a little too far like “If anyone would like to join me in the bedroom…” Ew, Jimmy Kimmel. Continue reading →

Our future husband wears his hoodie zipped just slightly above half-way up at all times.

This week’s episode kicked off with Kimberly, the woman who was rejected at last week’s Rose Ceremony but stuck around to talk with Chris just cause she’s sure she’s that special. We know that she isn’t, and that Chris doesn’t like when girls have brown hair. “Ick,” he says when he sees brunettes, and closes his eyes and grimaces. (Just kidding, Chris actually has said at several points, “brunette, blonde, I don’t care—it’s all about the connection.” Wow you guys, can you say FEMINIST?!) Chris worries about what kind of message it will send to the other women if he lets I’m Sure I’m Special Kimberly stay another rose ceremony cycle, but his BFF Chris Harrison assures him: “this is your life; there are no rules.” And so he lets Kim stay, to the horror of the other women.

We learn that Farmer Chris is staying in a house right down the driveway from where the ladiesssszzzz are lodging, and Host Chris basically encourages the womyn to break into Farmer Chris’s house by repeatedly saying “Chris lives right there” and “there are no rules.” Two gals do break in later in the episode; they like look at Farmer Chris’s motorcycle and it’s really boring. The only interesting part is that the girls are both wearing bikinis, and for some reason one of their lower halves keeps getting blocked out by one of those black censor bars because apparently her swimsuit does not cover her ass nor her vulva. Continue reading →

Let the journey to find love begin.

On Monday night, Bachelor Chris Soules began his season-long swim into a pool of conventionally pretty, ultra-traditional women competing for his hand in marriage. As a feminist, I’m horrified by The Bachelor. I’m also deeply excited to watch every single minute of it.

First of all, I want to address what I think it means to write a feminist take on The Bachelor—if I was doing a truly non-lazy and incisive feminist response to the show, I would talk about larger problems with how gender, race, class and more are portrayed in reality TV, and about media, and like, capitalism. The fact that the show’s politics are incredibly not-progressive to an almost unbelievable degree and that it promotes a totally archaic view of gender norms, and depicts a world that’s virtually absent of people who aren’t straight and white and cis. It is so dumb and bad, you guys. Truly. I’ll touch on all of these ideas here, but I also can’t deny that I’m basically deeply committed to watching every episode of this terrible show, for pretty un-feminist reasons. These are:

Reason 1: In 2008, Erica DiSimone, a Girl Who Went to My High School, was on The Bachelor. And so I watched. And because each season’s Bachelor or Bachelorette is a well-loved rejected suitor from the previous season, I became hooked for SEVEN YEARS. Continue reading →