Is prince charming a charm?

This post is based on a sermon podcast by Seattle's Mars Hill pastor, Mark Driscoll. I was listening to Mark talking about modern marriage and love.

He used the TV reality show "the bachelor" as an example. I have to paraphrase; I'd love to link to a YouTube video because he says it so well.

Mark describes the final episode of the bachelor, in which one girl is chosen to be the fiancée of the bachelor. Taken to a remote location, dressed to the nines and pampered, the final two women meet the bachelor one at a time on a picturesque mountaintop to find out if they are the final "one". The love of his life.

The one who is, cries tears of joy as she accepts a marriage proposal and a diamond ring, set for life with this man she has got to know over ten weeks. The unlucky one who isn't chosen cries tears of regret at missing out. The ring the marriage and the happy ever after aren't for her this time.

But how lucky is the 'winner' really? By examining the structure of the show, Mark shows how the bachelor gets to seduce not one but twelve women, then down to ten then six then four... Then two. Nights out, jacuzzi time, overnight stays, candlelit dinners, yacht cruises are the norm as we watch a pressure cooker romance occur. Women are sent home or kept,  depending on the connections they make or don't make with our always impeccably presented  bachelor.

Beautiful women stuck together in one house fighting over not only hair curlers, bathrooms, the need for recognition, camera time and personal space but a handsome bachelor... A recipe for disaster? Each of these women has been chosen on her looks, and she will fight to the death (or in this case the diamond) to be more attractive than than her competitors. More appealing, more accessible, more perfect than perfection, as surely the ruggedly handsome bachelor deserves nothing less.

When we get down to four women, the bachelor is invited to the family home of each of the four, to meet the parents. Mark's comment is something like "What does he say? 'so yeah, I'm dating your daughter. I'm also dating three other gorgeous women, and I'm about to go impress their parents too. I know you wont mind, even if I end up breaking her heart'. What parent wouldn't welcome him?" (sarcasm intended)

Then, once the final two have been reduced to one, we get the bride to be and her now-not-so-much-a-bachelor fiancée back in the studio to recap the twelve weeks. She sees her handsome fiancée for the Romeo he was, as the film clips show him kissing, holding hands, sitting with bikini clad women in the jacuzzi, holding, getting emotionally and physically close to all her now ex-adversaries. And she smiles, radiant that she won. Is her heart not breaking? Not even finely cracked watching this man whisper words of endearment to another woman? 

She has won such a prize. A man who tried to seduce a number of women. Who has held, stroked, kissed... been intimate with other women while she was at home getting ready to be the next one to win his affections. Can her heart bear this much excitement? 

Can her life bear this much in the future? Knowing what went on when she sat waiting? Any other woman in a normal relationship would kick this man out of their lives as a Lothario. Yet in the TV setting, the "reality" genre... We accept this, and even start to place bets on the women, hoping our favorite will win him over.
And meanwhile, what of our bachelor? 

Is he husband material? Is he daddy material? When she has a fever and snot running everywhere, a blotchy face and hair that hasn't seen a brush while she's been battling the flu...Will he hold her, make her feel like a princess THEN? 

Will he tell her she's beautiful even when she hasn't slept in days, smells like babypuke and hasn't showered... ? Will he kiss and caress her then? 

Will he make tea, clean the house, fill her car with petrol, tell her to have a night out with her friends, take her side and take night duty when there's a teething baby in the house? When her boss gives her a hard day at work? When her fat clothes don't fit? When the bank rings because the house is going to be repossessed....?

The world watched 'The bachelor'.... watched women submit themselves to being one of a number of conquests, alter their personality to "win", and keep going... for a man. 

How much unreality can we bear, really?

A book which has been storming the best seller lists world wide is '50 shades of grey'. Termed "mommy porn", the premise is a young woman seduced by a more worldly man. I haven't read the books, I have no intention of reading the books, so my perception is only from afar, from my work in a library, reading reviews and talking to readers. However...

Here we have a woman pining for a man, prepared to give up all she believes in to keep him. Apparently her world would fall apart without him and his gloriousness in it. This criticism isn't new. Stephenie Meyers' 'Twilight' series underwent the same scrutiny, with many people seeing the teenaged Bella cast into the role of hopeless female who can't survive without her man, prepared to sacrifice everything for him by becoming a vampire instead of remaining human.

I am far from being a feminist, or a staunch women's rights advocate, but really, women are prepared to watch and support this subjugation of themselves? This farce of romance and marriage encourages our young women to believe that to win the man and marriage  -at any cost - is the ultimate prize.

Our young women need to be taught instead that if they are to be married, they first need to find their man, the man who has been waiting all his life for her, faults and all. A man who sees her for the strong beautiful independent woman God made her to be. Courtship and marriage can be hard work. We need to be building resilience and inner beauty and strength into our young women. There is an old saying that the best women are at the top of the tree so men have to work harder to get them, rather than the easier to reach fruit.

We need to ensure our young women are clothing themselves in all things good, and filling their heads and hearts with things that matter. We need to be teaching our young men that there is more to a woman than how she looks in a dress; that she needs to be able to have a discussion about the contents of the first two pages of the newspaper - not just the social pages - that what and who she is is more important than how she looks. That to respect and truly love a woman isn't unmanly, it may be the manliest thing he can do.

The term 'reality TV' is in and of itself a misnomer. Knights on white horses - or rich bachelors - don't gallop up and sweep you from a mountaintop - Romance and marriage readiness can't happen in a public exposure incubator of ten weeks. I'm sure there are couples who have had successful marriages with short courtships, but it's the pressure cooker; the intensity and the falseness of 'The bachelor' that smacks of the false promise of a Disney happy ever after. 

Happy ever after is the result of years of shared arguments, children, brokenness, despair - as well as joy, sharing, learning, healing, laughter and fun. Of watching skin fade and wrinkle, of frailty and forgetfulness setting in, of seeing loved ones hurt, broken and dying, and still thinking the other in the pair is the best thing since sliced bread. And that needs a solid and true starting point. And reality tv isn't it.