I am a man. I watch The Bachelorette and The Bachelor. Every season. My excuse is that the show gives me an excuse to carve out time to spend with my busy bride once a week. We curl up on the couch together over a bowl of hot buttered popcorn with her huge laptop on our knees.
This year, the bachelorette, Ashley, seems to be very vulnerable. She is a beautiful girl with a bad case of insecurity. She thinks men like a big chest and Barbie-like features. Even though she is full of life and drinks it up in gulps, she somehow sees most other women as superior to her. I disagree.
One of the "suitors" on the show - Bentley - decided to take advantage of Ashley's inferiority complex and play her like a fiddle.
Some history: Before the show, Ashley received a text from the evil spider-woman from Brad Womack's second season, Michelle Money. You know, that woman that couldn't stop licking her lips, was crazy, had a serious motherly crush on Brad, and wanted all the monkey's to eat the other women on the show. Michelle's text revealed that Bentley was going to be on The Bachelorette and that he had an ulterior motive - to promote his business, whatever that was. She told Ashley that Bentley was going to mess with Ashley's head, make a name for himself, then leave the show after a few weeks (essentially two or three episodes in television time).
So, naturally, Ashley was skeptical. Except for the fact that the creators of the show love drama and decided to try and prod Ashley to give Bentley a chance. And give him a chance she did...and more! From the moment he stepped out of the limousine in the first episode, she was smitten. His hair was curly. His moobs were perfect, with just the right amount of flab. He wore grungy clothes at all the right moments and dressed up while dressing down in just the right nuanced ways. His eyes never met hers, dancing around the room, teasing her. Even the way he mumbled his words and smiled sweetly and boyishly made her grovel at his feet whenever she heard a whisper of his name. She gushed about him openly.
The problem: Bentley wanted none of it. In the first episode, after another suitor, William, went on an awesome date with Ashley, eating a romantic fish-bowl dinner on a famous Las Vegas fountain, and then returned, telling all the other guys about the exciting evening, Bentley said the following:
"I'd rather swim in a pool of pee than spend the rest of my life with that woman. She's not my type."
Then, he marched right up to Ashley, engulfed her in his arms, carried her to the fireplace and began kissing her. His goal was to prove that competition was better than finding love, no matter how stupid the platform for discovering that love may have been. He was in it to win it. Bentley wanted to prove a point.
Through the first half of the third episode, this was the way he worked. Whenever he saw some other man getting too close to the girl, he would jump in and "save" Ashley. And she was game for it. She was in love with him, the words, "I see Bentley as the man I am going to marry", jumping from her lips on more than one unsolicited occasion.
Then, Ashley hit rock bottom. William made a comment about her that brought her to tears and Bentley found her in a dark corner weeping. While telling the viewing audience that he hates it when women cry because it makes them ugly, he pulled Ashley to him and told her she was beautiful, saying all the right words. Ashley fell in love all over again. Bentley smiled above her hair and winked at the camera. He knew he had her hoodwinked.
The next morning, Bentley had had enough. He had been jilted by Ashley - she having given a rose to another man who held her hand and comforted her warmly and genuinely - and he was angry that he wasn't the only man in her thoughts and dreams. So, he packed up and walked into the room with all the other fourteen gentleman callers.
What he told them, and then later telling Ashley the same thing, has me boiling inside, even after a few nights to stew on it.
First, he informed us, the viewing audience, that he had duped everyone. He proclaimed that nobody had ever done anything like that before, forgetting shows like Survivor, which I despise, and Big Brother, which everyone despises, and WWE, which everyone says they hate, but secretly love to watch, late at night when the kids go to bed. Then, he told the other suitors that he missed his daughter terribly and that he needed to go home. Walking out of that room, he told us, the watching chumps, that all those other men were "tools" and that they were so stupid, having bought his "I miss my daughter" baloney. Then he went and did the same thing with Ashley. Having dumped her on national television, he said that Ashley, clinging to him in those last moments, made it clear that in a different life, he wouldn't have minded hooking up with her whenever he needed a fix.
I fear for his daughter. For a man to use his child as bait to "win" a game (in his mind) by breaking the heart of another woman and treating other human beings as pawns in his stupid little chess match, is unquestionably irresponsible. While I understand that the show is a stupid exercise in bringing a couple together (only being marginally successful in almost three out of twenty-six or so seasons), Bentley brought the treating of a woman by another man to a new low. He sees women as objects for his own sexual desires, saying, "She's not my type, she's not attractive at all, but she has a nice butt, and I wouldn't mind letting her tickle my pecker."
Bentley is a cad. I guarantee to all women reading this that all men are not that way. I'll swear on a stack of Bibles. Just ask my wife.
Now, hopefully, Ashley can move on and attempt to continue in her quest to finding true love, if that is even possible on The Bachelorette. Hopefully...even though Bentley said, "Don't make this ending a period, rather, more like a dot dot dot..." And then the ubiquitous cad line, "Can I call you?"
What a loser.
