The Bachelor vs. The Bachelorette

For over a decade ABC’s hit television shows The Bachelor and The Bachelorette have been captivating the hearts of audiences everywhere. The Bachelorette is a spin-off of The Bachelor, which first aired in 2002. Although these two shows both have the same underlying concepts, they are very different. The Bachelor is a show that focuses on one man attempting to find love between twenty-five women, and The Bachelorette is about one woman attempting to find love between twenty-five men. This is an elimination competition. At the end of each episode, there is a rose ceremony. The bachelor or bachelorette reflects on who he or she can still see as a possible soul mate. Anyone who receives a rose stays, and those who come up empty handed are forced to take the limo ride home. Although both of these shows are extremely popular among most all audiences, The Bachelorette tends to appeal more to female audiences than The Bachelor for several reasons.

The Bachelor first started off as an extremely popular show, but then by the ninth season viewership began to decline. The producers decided to create The Bachelorette in order to see if it could help improve ratings, and it did. The Bachelorette is easier for audiences to watch for many reasons, but female audience members especially. Female audience members can feel a special connection with the woman chosen as the bachelorette because they become so emotionally invested in her journey, as if it was her own. If a guy breaks her heart, you’re automatically going to hate him and cry for her. If she chooses the bad boy over the good boy, you’re going to cry for the good boy and hate her. The way the producers designed the show is to purposefully draw you in by your emotions, whether they be actual occurrences or just scenarios staged by producers. Audiences desperately want the bachelorette to find love and happiness, because who doesn’t love a good love story, right?

Another reason The Bachelorette appeals to female audiences is because of female power. Given how hard women have worked over the years and the progress they’ve made to gain success and respect, there is something disheartening about seeing a house full of single women on The Bachelor pining for one man. I hate that young girls have the opportunity to see these attractive, often smart and successful, women in tears and ultimately devastated, only because they did not receive a rose.

On the flip side, there is The Bachelorette in which the woman is the one with the power and the men do their best to charm her and win her affection. They often put The Bachelorette on a virtual pedestal, going after any fellow contender whose intentions seem questionable and who may not be there for “the right reasons.” This is of course going to attract female viewers because we all love when a woman is in control and you want to watch her journey basically because you want to be her. Of course we have to also consider the rather obvious fact that The Bachelorette has twenty-five smoking hot guys pouring out their hearts for female viewers to look at. If you were a girl trying to decide what television show to watch one night, and you had to choose between a show with beautiful, single guys all looking for love, and one with dramatic and catty girls, you will obviously choose the one with the guys.

The drama in The Bachelorette, while it still exists, is a lot better because drama between males is so much different than drama between females. Guys will be mad at each other one minute, throw a few punches and call each other vulgar names, and then in the next scene you will see them having a beer with one another like they were best friends and nothing ever even happened. Watching the guys fight over the bachelorette is something that is also very attractive to female viewers because often times men wont show their emotions, and for them to display them to the nation makes you feel a special kind of love and respect towards that guy. On the other side, one of the main reasons viewership began to decline for The Bachelor is because of all the drama the girls cause.

I know that the producers have some part in portraying the drama in a certain light to make the show more interesting, but in reality the girls may not even be like they are portrayed in the show, which is very frustrating. They always pick one girl to be the mean girl and everyone hates her, and they always make one girl be the sweetheart who gets her heart broken, and then she shows up the next season as the bachelorette. They stopped focusing on the whole purpose behind the show which was for the bachelor to find love, and started to hone in on creating the girls out to be some kind of monsters or good girls that in reality they may or may not have been. When the bachelor or the bachelorette choose the wrong person in the eyes of the audience, things can get very nasty.

There are so many shows on television today such as The Bad Girls Club or The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills that focus so much on the drama between women, that while they can be entertaining, audiences are especially tired of watching cat fights for an hour. A good example of this occurred in season fourteen of the bachelor between Vienna Girardi and Jake Pavelka. Vienna was without a doubt the mean girl of the house and everyone hated her. Audiences were extremely frustrated with Jake for sending sweet, perfect girls home every week and keeping someone like Vienna. Nobody expected her to even make it halfway through the season, much less to the finale, and eventually winning the show. I use the term winning very seriously because to Vienna, the show was just a game. She used Jake and the show ultimately for her own fame. There were allegations that Jake was paid extra to choose Vienna only because it called for good television. The couple did get engaged on the season finale, but then ended up breaking it off, publicly through a “special edition” episode, just a few short months after the season aired.

By the end of this season many viewers were extremely fed up and frustrated with the producers because while all of this drama called for what they thought was good television, it actually drew away from the main purpose behind the show, which is to find true love. So, what did the producers do? They brought back the audience favorite and America’s sweetheart from Jake’s season, Ally Fedotowsky, to become the bachelorette for season six of The Bachelorette. To many viewers this was a chance for the shows to redeem themselves. Ali’s season was filled with so much love and not as much drama. Ratings shot through the roof on this episode because I am sure everyone in America was rooting for Ali to find her one, true love. Roberto Martinez, one of the twenty-five eligible bachelors, came in and stole everyone’s heart from the first night, including Ali’s. Watching this season was fun for viewers because it was literally like watching a love story.

The season finale roles around, and of course Roberto was down on one knee at the end. Audiences were thrilled at the couple’s love for one another only to be devastated to find out that Ali and Roberto split up just a little while after the finishing of the show. The Bachelor and The Bachelorette have become a household name and one of ABC’s most successful television shows. If it was not for The Bachelorette, I am not so sure The Bachelor would have survived to see today. The Bachelorette came in at the perfect time and kept audiences interested in the show when it was headed downhill. As long as ABC chooses to air these shows, I will continue to watch, and fantasize about my future husband.