Marshmellow Fluff

If you are like me and have little to do on Monday nights and you like to watch uncomfortable train wrecks…then you probably watch the Bachelorette like I do.

If you haven’t seen The Bachelorette before, let me catch you up.  Ali, is from San Francisco and works for Facebook.  She was on The Bachelor with Jake, an overly polite possibly closeted gay pilot who chose Vienna, a reformed party girl who swears her bar dancing, one night standing days are behind her.  Ali left The Bachelor because she needed to go back to work.  Which means she is either terrible at filling out vacation requests or she didn’t give herself enough credit and only intended to be on the show for 2 weeks.  But she decided that she fell in love with Jake, wanted to come back but he moved on (remember, with Vienna, the reformed Spring Break slut) so Ali cried and fell down in the hotel hallway and went back to San Fran but stayed gainfully employed.  Now Ali has her own show and the time off from work, hopefully with more foresight this time.  She now spends her days, not at Facebook but sucking lots of face with lots of different guys.  Many of which, are creepy.  There is a weatherman who has a tendancy to cry (and so did Jake, so she may find this quality attractive).  There is a semi-pro wrestler with a broken foot and a secret girlfriend.  And there is a guy who, for some reason, talks like this:

Which reminds me of this:

And he is super creepy and got a super permanent one of these:

But instead of seeing these guys as creepy, Ali for some reason finds them all awesome.  And she displays her feelings for all of them by making out with them…so to recap: The Bachelorette this season is one big mono fest- a neverending game of middle school spin the bottle.  But instead of doing it in her parent’s basement, she’s doing it on helicopters, New York rooftops and walking on tight ropes between LA skyscrapers.

Looks like TV is catching up to what I have been painfully aware of since I was 12, being the best pick in a world of slim pickings makes for good competitive drama.

I still remember the pretty girls by name.  Kelly, Tania, Michelle, Danielle.  They made me wish I had a prettier name, straighter hair, tanner legs and better clothes.  They wore chunky sweaters with leggings and were fashionable.  I wore chunky sweaters to hide my body.  They had long pink nails they would paint to match their scrunchy sock.  I had nails  bitten to nubs.  Except when I saved up enough money to buy Lee Press on Nails, and then I had pretty pink nails too…stuck in my hair, to my pillow when I woke up and a few that came off when I dug through my backpack.  The pretty girls got to date the cute boys, the ones I would only dream of making out with (and by making out I mean kissing by the drinking fountain after school surrounded by the intimacy that only 50 on-lookers could bring). My only hope was the year when Sixteen Candles came out.  Molly Ringwald was gawky redheaded and awkward.  I did a quick inventory and found I too was gawky, redhead and awkward.  It only made sense that my day would come when I too could sit on top of a table eating birthday cake with Jake Ryan.  So I waited patiently.  Ryan and Kelly broke up, then he dated Michelle.  Michelle and him broke up so then he dated Danielle.  And then one day, when he and Danielle broke up…well, he went back to Kelly.  But I waited. Hoping and wishing that one day I would be able to make out by the drinking fountain, instead of pathetically just using it for drinking purposes, as I had for my entire junior high school career.

And then during my 7th grade summer I went away to camp.  A place where no one knew that my perm was something every guy at my school considered to be a poor decision.  It was a place where my baggy sweater was fashionable.  I found out the cutest boy I liked at camp had a crush on a girl and I was devastated.  Until I realized that girl was me. I was surrounded by glasses, headgear and acne.  Suddenly, I was the best pick in a world of slim pickings and overnight I became the girl the cutest boy at camp wanted.  Not because I was beautiful but because I was the best out of what was available.  And so became the discovery of what I like to call, the “Availability Factor of Attraction”.  It is the principle that happens in companies between co-workers, in schools, and on television shows, like the Bachelor(ette).

Take Jake, a 30-something year old man who is relatively attractive and successful yet hasn’t found a woman.  Common sense tells us there is a reason Jake has made it this far in life single.  But, when Jake is the only choice for 20 women to compete for, all of a sudden he becomes the center of their universe.  From the comfort of my living room, it was clear Jake wasn’t the biggest catch out there.  He laughed annoyingly, cried too much and seemed like a politician in his morality.  But it didn’t matter, 30 women still clamored for him as if he was the last man on earth.  Not because he was the greatest guy out there, not because he was “the one” for all these women, but because he was the only choice presented to them. Or take Ali, a girl who is attractive, but if she walked into a crowded bar she wouldn’t have 20 men competing for her attention-because no woman would. But suddenly men are competing for her, dying for a chance to go on a date for her, professing their love for her on camera after knowing her for two days.  Ali is the only choice available to these men so suddenly, she becomes the most attractive woman in the world.

Never on the Bachelor or Bachelorette has anyone declined a rose that was given to them.  No one competing for the love of the Bachelor or Bachelorette has said, “You know what, you really aren’t my type afterall.”  Because their judgement is clouded by the unavailability of other choices.  They are swept up in helicopter dates and competition.  No one walks away from them because they become the center of their universe, their existence relies upon their decision to keep them or let them go.

If we are going to have “reality TV” for dating, it should involve a first date filled with awkward conversation at Starbucks, driving away in a leased Jetta and driving home separately to rented apartments.  Then add in the cute UPS guy and the pretty receptionist at work into the mix, and after all that you are still attracted to one another, maybe you’ll have a chance at love.