Fans of The Bachelorette have a bone to pick with the producers behind the scenes. They say the show may have fallen into the category of double standards following a friendly competition of strip dodgeball.
Tuesday night’s episode of the popular reality dating competition with Clare Crawley featured the male contestants playing in a strip dodgeball tournament. The losing team walked away completely naked, per Crawley’s instructions.
“I feel like I want to up the ante here. I think we should play strip dodgeball,” Crawley tells the contestants. When host Chris Harrison asks Crawley to confirm the game ends when all on the losing team are completely naked, Crawley confirms by saying, “This is my game. These are my rules.”
During the game, Crawley and Harrison act as announcers and critique the men’s bodies. The Blue team loses and per the rules, they line up in front of Crawley to remove the final item of their uniform. Only one of the team members refuses to so do, telling Crawley, “I love you, but, I can’t.” The show blurred and censored part of the men’s bodies when necessary.
As noted by The Hollywood Reporter, many viewers and alumni are not happy about the game, citing double standard if the same game appeared on its brother show The Bachelor. The Instagram comments on the show’s official page consist of a lot of viewers criticizing the show for this.
“This show would be canceled if the bachelor asked female contestants to play strip anything,” Instagram user commented on a teaser for the episode under the official Bachelorette account. Others call the game “disappointing” and “wildly uncomfortable.”
Even 2011 The Bachelorette winner J.P. Rosenbaum added to the discourse, noting that he finds the scene “cringe-worthy.”
Rosenbaum said, “I realize this ‘date’ is gonna have a lot of critics, but can you imagine the flak the show would get if this was #Thebachelor and the girls were stripping down to their underwear? #sexist #TheBachelorette #dadbod.”
Ben Higgins, a former The Bachelor said on his podcast Almost Famous, “This is all fun and games until my buddies and I are naked on national television. They push the envelope every season, but this felt like a lot.”
Podcaster Juliet Litman, who hosts The Bachelor Party, said, “If it was women in that position, it would be completely unacceptable, absolutely scandalous and there would be this huge outcry. The double standard of objectifying mens’ bodies like that and asking men to be in that position really bothered me because I would not accept it for women.”
Photo: ABC
