The Bachelor vs. Real Life

“What is REAL?" asked the Velveteen Rabbit one day... "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When [someone] loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept.

"Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand... once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always.”
― Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit or How Toys Become Real

"When I get older, losing my hair, many years from now
Will you still be sending me a valentine, birthday greetings, bottle of wine?
If I'd been out 'til quarter to three, would you lock the door?Will you still need me, will you still feed me when I'm sixty-four?"                                                                ~ John Lennon and Paul McCartney     

The Paul of my junior high dreams...

He grew up and got old, just like I did.

     When I was in junior high school I had a terrible crush on Paul McCartney. He was The Cute Beatle, and I thought he was IT. My friend Sally and I sent a big package of stuff (mostly really silly stuff -- souvenirs from where we lived, a guitar pick, anything we could imagine might appeal to them) to the Beatles in care of George Harrison's sister Louise. Sally got her address from a teen fan magazine. We got an autographed photograph back from Louise as a thank you that both of us cherished. I would trace the penned signature of Sir Paul on that photograph with my finger, imagining over and over him signing it JUST FOR ME!

     Junior High girls are nothing if not dramatic and especially love lorn. Few possess the maturity to have mature relationships with the opposite sex, yet the desire to do so is there. They spend endless hours communicating their longings to one another (on the phone, texting, emailing, etc.) I think back to that time in my life and shudder... it was so angst-filled and dramatic!

     Fast forward to this past Monday night. We were visiting my son and daughter-in-law to attend the birthday party of my youngest grandson Will. On Monday, Lanny and I  kept the two children home from daycare just to play with them and enjoy being grandparents. We had a ball, but were as glad as any parents are to see them tucked into bed that night. Monday night is when The Bachelor is on ABC, and both Amanda and Matt got hooked on it this season. Neither Lanny nor I had ever seen an episode of this program. We are hopelessly out of the loop when it comes to mainstream TV-- both of us tend to either not watch TV or choose the PBS shows that are on...

     I will apologize to Amanda and Matt and to anyone reading this who enjoys these programs. I know there are lots of you out there, as I read comments all the time on Facebook and see the stories about the show in the grocery store check-out line magazines. But I was horrified. Stunned at the premise of the show. My feminist self was just aghast.

     The premise of the program is that one man, chosen by the producers of the show, has 12 women that he must choose from to find someone to propose to. These women live together in various locations and one at a time are courted by this man. They must outdo one another to impress him with their beauty, their charm, their intellect so that he picks them from the crowd. The camera man was everywhere, recording not just the dates and interactions of this man and each of the women, but with the women interacting with each other. Predictably, one or two of the women become the bad girls, and several more are the darlings of the group. There are "cat fights" between these groups. Each woman gets her turn to be with the man in romantic settings-- plenty of beach scenes, dinners in romantic settings by candlelight. Then, after he spends time with each he must eliminate the women from the contest one by one. They are shown sobbing in the back of a limo as they are driven away.

     I am horrified on so many levels... First, what does this say about the man? How can someone know after a few contrived dates, that he likes or doesn't like a person? How can he know that this or that woman is truly the one he wants to spend the rest of his life with? Or is he thinking about that-- what does this say about his idea of what marriage is? How on earth can he perform in front of a camera like he does in what should be intimate moments unless these moments really have lost all meaning? And the women... I really am so sorry for these women. They are all physically beautiful and dressed and made up so that they all look like beauty queens. They put themselves on parade just like they are at a beauty pageant, but the stakes are so much higher-- for one of them, it will mean a supposedly dream wedding to a dream guy. This woman will have "won". Really? Having a heavily produced courtship to a plastic performer of a man will produce a marriage for the ages? Of course not... It is impossible to keep up the fantasy of all this in day to day living, and once the producers and the cameramen and the beaches and candles are all gone, whatever is left will be all they will have.  She ought to run to that limo!

     And what of the "loser" women? Each of them sent sobbing away in a limo, their humiliation broadcast nationwide... left with only themselves, whoever that might be, and none of the fantasy? Gee, welcome to the real world, my dears. Where you must get training and education so you can get a job. Where you must earn the money to pay for the clothes and the cars and all the stuff of your fantasies... and where real men live, men who snore and forget your birthday and say silly things that hurt your feelings... and who will want to love you for who you are instead of the plastic image portrayed on the television.

     Just as I had to eventually grow out of my fantasy of Paul McCartney, I sincerely hope these women can grow out of this junior-high notion of a fantasy world and concentrate all their talents and intellect on growing into women who have self-esteem and intellect and inner beauty as well as the physical outer beauty they seem to have been so focused on.  And I hope this young man, who seems so plastic and contrived and stuck on himself in a fantasy world, can learn that real life is demanding and a good partner will make it so much easier-- a partner who choses him because she loves who she knows him to be, not because he represents her junior-high fantasy of who she wants him to be.

     A harmless fantasy TV show? Well, maybe. Certainly for my son and daughter-in-law. But there was a live audience on the episode I watched that was entirely made up of women, most were middle aged. They all seemed to be very emotionally invested in the goings on. That reminds me so much of junior high girls who are all so dramatically involved in the love lives of their fantasies... I hope these woman can each go back to their own life after the show taping and be satisfied that whatever it is, however imperfect and non-fantastic it might be, it is real. It is their own to make of what they can. Junior high is long gone. We gotta grow up sometime!