Spoiler Alert: This article will NOT give away any details of Katie Thurston’s season of The Bachelorette. However, it may forever change the way you watch The Bachelor franchise.
The Bachelor is the definition of guilty pleasure: mindless reality television in competition format, with the promise of love and more than its fair share of petty drama. Most people watch The Bachelor, along with The Bachelorette and Bachelor in Paradise, completely ironically.
The last season of The Bachelor brought the franchise down to earth just a hair. When photos surfaced of a frontrunner on the show at an antebellum-themed party years prior, and the show’s host passionately defended her on national television in conversation with a former Black contestant, the franchise was forced to reckon with its poor record of representation and equity.
Writer and activist Emmanuel Acho hosted After the Final Rose, the season’s final episode, in what seemed like a turning point for the franchise. But the controversy turned out to be more of a distraction than a learning moment for the franchise, which announced two upcoming seasons of The Bachelorette sandwiching a season of Bachelor in Paradise in 2021.
Even the hosts of popular Bachelor podcast The Betchelor admit that the Bachelor franchise is at odds with activism. On a recent episode, co-host and comedian Jared Fried commented on Bachelorette Katie Thurston’s social media presence, “The activism stuff… it does feel like she’s running right, running left, running right.” Simply put, The Bachelor franchise seems to be the antithesis of activism.
But there is a humanitarian side to The Bachelor. The lack of contestant diversity is a central criticism of the series, but the problems go beyond who is on the show.
A Living Wage? Not For Bachelor and Bachelorette Contestants
The show’s lead– the bachelor or bachelorette– receives a paycheck of around $100,000 for their stint on the show. Meanwhile, the ‘contestants,’ those vying for the lead’s love, are not paid anything.
Even Jeopardy! pays its contestants to appear on the show ($2,000 for the first runner-up and $1,000 for the second runner-up). Losers of Survivor make thousands of dollars. So why aren’t Bachelor franchise contestants paid for their work?
Some might argue that the exposure and experience of appearing on the Bachelor more than make up for the lack of compensation. In fact, some (most) apply to be on the show with the sole goal of becoming famous. Don’t former Bachelor contestants get paid their fair share in Instagram fame? Aren’t sponsored social media posts and influencer status more than enough to make up for a few weeks of lost wages?
Most contestants are able to get time off from their jobs or otherwise to make a run (however long) on a Bachelor show feasible. But just because contestants can “make it work” financially doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be fairly compensated for their labor.
And being on The Bachelor is labor. Contestants must stay up late into the night to film “rose ceremonies.” Alcohol is readily available to help contestants loosen up. They have no contact with the outside world (read: no emotional support as they compete for love). Former contestants have admitted to spending thousands of dollars on new wardrobes for the show. Cameras are rolling 24/7.
Bachelor contestants should be paid for that labor. A living wage— the minimum income necessary to meet basic needs– is a human right. And living in a mansion with a fully-stocked fridge and the promise of Instagram fame doesn’t negate that right.
Maybe it’s the setup of the show that makes wage theft permissible– after all, it’s just a game, right? And the men who lined up to win Katie’s heart this season are contestants, not workers.
That same logic is used to justify not paying college athletes for their labor. College athletes and Bachelor contestants alike provide valuable entertainment– and should be paid accordingly. The potential to find love (and of course, most contestants don’t) doesn’t make up for the fact that Bachelor contestants aren’t paid for their work on the show.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, California is the top state in the country for wage theft by dollars, with nearly $2 billion in stolen wages per year. Who knew that figure could include those working in the Bachelor mansion?
Workplace Abuse is Abuse, Period.
Simply put, contestants on The Bachelor are emotionally exploited. The later they get into the competition, contestants find themselves potentially closer to love, but also very tired and alone. Whether their situation is abusive is up for debate, but it’s not right– not when contestants aren’t paid a cent, besides a sponsored goodie bag upon arrival, for their labor.
Just because Bachelor contestants choose to apply to the show doesn’t mean that they should be exploited. The situation of Bachelor contestants is similar to the complaints of first-year analysts at Goldman Sachs, who reported in March that they were working 100-hour weeks. Seventy-seven percent reported that they felt they had been victims of workplace abuse.
In response to these reports, many banks gave analysts bonuses and other perks– although Goldman Sachs did not. But at what point does one’s level of compensation not justify unsustainable, if not abusive, working conditions?
Both Bachelor contestants and investments go through intense application processes for their respective positions. But quite the opposite of Bachelor contestants, first-year investment banking analysts are paid very well for their labor. But does compensation make up for abuse? And why are Bachelor leads paid commensurately to investment bankers, while contestants aren’t paid at all?
Wage Equity for Bachelor Nation
While The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, the franchise’s foundations, feature an eligible (and well-paid) bachelor and bachelorette, with upwards of thirty contestants vying for their hearts, Bachelor in Paradise has a potentially more equitable format. Former contestants from the franchise’s main shows can re-appear, with equal numbers of men and women looking for love on the show. A recent podcast episode from Bachelorette alum Jason Tartick revealed that Bachelor in Paradise contestants can negotiate their pay to be on the show– Dean Unglert was initially offered $400 per day, and negotiated his pay to $600 per day, while other Paradise contestants make more than $1,000 per day on the show.
The main Bachelor nation shows should pay contestants according to a fairer version of the same formula– with every contestant earning the same amount for their labor based on how long they are on the show.
In 2017, The Bachelor reportedly brought in $86 million in advertising revenue. It’s time that some of that went towards paying the contestants that make the show possible. Love doesn’t pay the bills.
Would my time have been better spent writing an article about the labor exploitation of migrant farmworkers in California? Or the millions of people subjected to forced labor around the world? Perhaps. But you can read about those issues here and here, respectively.
The bottom line is that everyone deserves to be paid for their work– even people who take time off from their careers to be on a TV show. If injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, that includes aspiring Instagram influencers.
That’s the humanitarian side of The Bachelor(ette).
Do you watch The Bachelor and the rest of the franchise completely ironically, like I do? I recommend listening to the recap podcast Love to See It, which often presents a social justice perspective of the show.
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