Watch Me Ruin Your Faith in Straight Men

The final rose goes to…

Recently, my roommate and I wanted to find something mindless to watch in our free time to decompress, and she turned on Temptation Island. On this reality romance show, four couples go to an island (you know so they can justify wearing fewer clothes) and split up by gender. Each group goes to live in a house with several “temptations.” The temptations are hot, single, homewreckers hoping to start dating by being the person they are cheated with. Of course, my understanding of the show’s concept is a little biased. Each week the people in relationships are shown videos of their partner, and what that person has been doing on the island.

Honestly, it was an interesting pull away from petty competition between women because no one is fighting over a single person. It all sort of felt like a satire to visualize how disgusting men can be. For example, here are two screen shots from the show. Guess which one was the men’s villa and which was the women’s:

 

I’ll give you a hint: One of these was in episode 2 (within the first week of leaving their partner), and the other was in episode 8 after the person had already watched their partner fully cheat with someone else.

Congratulations you’re correct! The men’s villa is a on the left and the women’s on the right. To be honest, the producers constantly put the men’s villa in highly sexualized situations— Why?

Dating shows are social experiments made for entertainment. You start with a research question like is love really blind? How does someone choose a partner when they are dating multiple people at a time? Will people in committed relationships cheat on their partners when given the opportunity?

However, the commercial factor of reality TV leads to producers manipulating situations, propagating negative female stereotypes and framing complex human beings as stereotypes (ie: the hero, villain, prude, slut, fun boring).

Cool but false

                  The Cinderella Myth encapsulates the lesson that Cinderella’s fairytale teaches us: women must be beautiful and compete with other women to be successful. Shows like The Bachelor pit women against each other to vie for a man’s affections. Despite many of these contestants being accomplished professionals, the context of the show diminishes their character to shallow and sexual.

                  These cheap female stereotypes damage our view of women’s place in the dating environment. They are a grown-up way of teaching us what we learned from Cinderella. That is a myth. In real life dating works on an individual level and requires more than a woman’s beauty to flourish.

                  Popular misogyny culture also pushes the idea that women compete against each other. There are theories like the “80-20 rule” which states that 80% of women desire 20% of all men. There is a lot wrong with that theory, but it is another myth that breaks down modern feminist advancement and pushes women to over-prioritize their romantic “achievements.”