Who’s to Blame for The Bachelorette’s Slut-Shaming?

I don't think that Nick meant to hit Andi below the belt by saying
why did you make love with me, if you were going to pick the other
guy two days later.  At that point in the game why would Andi sleep
with both of the men if she was going to pick Josh?  If I were Josh,
I would have had second thoughts about the relationship, if I found
out that my future wife slept with another man two days before our
engagement.

Fox News The Five cohost Bob Beckel called The Bachelorette’s
Andi Dorfman a “slut” on his show Tuesday. It’s a demeaning
and infuriating comment that caters to double standards for
women and men, but it’s also the kind that The Bachelorette 
thrives on.

Why did Beckel make the comment about Andi and not the dozens
of women on these shows that have come before her? For those of
you who don’t keep up on reality TV news, a sort of bombshell was
dropped on an otherwise dull season of The Bachelorette Monday:
the runner-up of this season, Nick Viall, broke an unspoken rule on
Monday night: he talked about sex.

Both The Bachelor and The Bachelorette walk a fine line between
 prudishness and salaciousness by implying sex without ever
explicitly discussing it. This tricky balance comes to a head in
the third-to-last episode of each season when that season’s
Bachelor or Bachelorette can opt into sharing the Fantasy Suite
with any or all of the three remaining contestants vying for his or
her heart. The two sleep in the same room (littered with candles and.
 rose petals, though apparently not condoms) overnight, and the
cameras stop filming. Sex is implied, but any footage or discussion
 of it is edited out.

Until Monday, on the show’s live after show. “If you weren’t in love
with me, I’m just not sure why, like, why you made love with me,
” Nick said to Andi on the show, mentioning that their night together
 was, to him, “fiance-type stuff.”

Andi responded that his question was “below the belt” but reassured
him that the feelings she had shared with him were real.

(N.B. Andi shared the Fantasy Suite with two of the remaining three
contestants. Most Bachelors and Bachelorettes will spend the night
 with all three.)

The immediate reaction on Twitter was that Nick was a crazy stalker
who just slut-shamed Andi as revenge. The secondary fallout, however,
has been pointed at Andi. Enter, Fox News.

“She’s a slut!” Bob Beckel said on his show. “I’m not kidding you.
She sleeps with someone else, and then doesn’t tell the guy about it.
This is what America’s come to, this crap.”

Panelist Andrea Tantaros responded with outrage: “Are you kidding
me right now? Excuse me, Bob. You probably sleep with a different
woman every night.”

“I’m not some Bachelor or Bachelorette,” he shot back.

“Those in glass boudoirs, Beckel, those in glass Boudoirs,” she replied.

Even if Nick didn’t intend to slut-shame Andi with his question,
others inevitably picked up on his very public revelation about
their reality TV relationship and did the deed for him.

And I honestly do believe Nick did not intend any harm. Nick’s
entire M.O. this season of The Bachelor has been being skeptical
of the process in the beginning but allowing himself to become
vulnerable enough to fall in love with Andi on his “journey.” The
show also teased that Nick was notoriously bad with breakups
(this one is no exception),  and he was visibly shaking during their
face-to-face conversation.  I would like to (perhaps optimistically)
believe that Nick was truly hurt and trying to be honest about his
 feelings when he asked Andi .that question, and simply disregarded.
the show’s concocted and unspoken rule that one does not talk
about sex.

And if Nick was a woman, this complaint would never be considered
some sort of insult to a male Andi. It wouldn’t reflect poorly on Andi
if she were a man who had had sex with both contestants.
We wouldn’t see complaints on Fox News.

However, Nick’s question has a problematic undertone: he is implying
that Andi ought not sleep with someone unless she is in love with him.

And even though this franchise has aired for 12 years under the same
 premise, we still don’t like to think about the fact that people are having
sex with multiple people on this show.

Correction: we don’t like to think about women having sex on the show.

After all, the men are allowed to be “players.” In the “Men Tell All”
episode before this year’s finale, it was revealed that one of the
contestants failed a lie detector test about the number of women
he has slept with, saying previously that he had slept with less
than 20. The audience laughed. When Nick asked his question,
jaws dropped.

It’s 2014, so Andi has the right—like any other Bachelor or
Bachelorette or human being—to have sex for a myriad of
 reasons besides love. Plus, the show is also constructed to make
her develop feelings for more than one man at a time, so it
shouldn’t be shocking that she kisses or sleeps with or does
whatever with multiple men.

Nick’s question actually reminds me of an incident from the last
 season of The Bachelor in which a contestant named Clare showed
up at Bachelor Juan Pablo’s room at 4 a.m. and invited him for
a swim in the ocean.  They swam—and then some. Again, the show
danced around the sex,
but it was heavily implied.

After the incident, Juan Pablo essentially slut-shamed Clare for having
sex with him—even though he consented at the time. “Maybe it wasn’t
right,” he told her on the show. “I have a daughter, I don’t want her to
see what happens, if she sees it.”

Clare (understandably) was mortified because she believed she was a
consenting adult having sex with another consenting adult. “I knew
when we were in the ocean, that it was a mutual feeling. If he didn’t
think it was right he shouldn’t have done it. I would have respected
that,” she said to the camera as she cried.

Again, the woman is blamed for seducing the man, for having sex,
for not waiting until she is in love. (Juan Pablo uses his daughter
and family as a weapon, contrasting Clare to a motherly figure
for his daughter and essentially calling her a slut.)

So if you’re a woman, it’s best not to enter the Bachelor universe.
Talk of sex is frowned upon, but inevitable. Though the show itself
doesn’t encourage slut-shaming—Juan Pablo did that all on
his own—clearly the audience wants to use the show as a platform
for slut-shaming, as happened with Nick this season. After 12 years,
tacit agreements about avoiding sex talk are breaking down. Will
 anyone try to  “pull a Nick” next season and bring up sex or even
use sex talk as a strategy? Will the producers embrace this brave
new world of candidness? If so, talking heads like Bob
Beckel will be waiting in the weeds, ready to cry “slut.”