Dumping Tan Julia Roberts: Controlling Black Female Sexuality on "The Bachelor"

ABC’s reality TV dating series “The Bachelor,” now in its 17^th season, documents one bachelor’s quest to find a wife among 25 women, women who all immediately “fall for” the carefully selected, successful, buff, “manly” man.  This season’s 29-year-old Sean follows the same casting patter “The Bachelor” has stuck with thus far: he is white.  With blonde hair, blue eyes, and a whitened smile, Sean is continually portrayed as the caring, sensitive, all-American “good guy.”  He’s lovable; he’s a catch; he’s every woman’s dream man! See for yourself:

Pithy sarcasm aside, “The Bachelor” re-mobilizes and re-enforces what Adrienne Rich coined “compulsory heterosexuality,” the idea that heterosexuality is viewed as this “natural” form of existence that bubbles up inside everyone.  “The Bachelor” sutures its story line to the idea of compulsory heterosexuality through overt iterations of the man/woman power binary, which by default disempowers women in order to bolster man’s power, control, and superiority.  When interlocked with race, gender becomes synonymous with sexuality on “The Bachelor.” 

Take, for example, 29-year-old poker dealer Leslie H.  She’s bubbly, she’s always smiling, she’s framed as a bit kooky.  With the catch phrase “Holy moly, batman,” she anxiously awaits coveted and precious one-on-one time with Sean (time only two women per episode are granted).  In Week 4, all of her wishes come true,--sarcasm intended--as Sean takes Leslie H. on a Pretty Woman inspired date.  Clad in diamond earrings (a pre-date gift from Sean), Leslie and Sean hop into a shiny gray convertible because, in Sean’s words, “Leslie deserves to be treated like a princess.”  In saying this, Sean frames himself as Leslie’s prince, in the position to make all of her (heterosexual) dreams come true because he is in power (by obtaining money from the show, by choosing her to go on the date with).

After Leslie is awarded with a new dress, handbag, and shoes on Rodeo Drive, she notes that Sean is a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Richard Gere to her “tan” Julia Roberta, finally pointing out the elephant in the room: Leslie looks black. And among the intensely white female cast, her Blackness clearly stands out and alone.

   

The show has chosen Leslie in particular to go on this date and they have consciously formed a plot line that could have been structured differently.  Thus, it is important to unpack the ways in which Leslie, viewed as a Black woman, is desexualized in the white man's eyes via Sean/The Bachelor franchise.  After the entire, elaborate, date that Sean planned to "enhance the romance," he dumps Leslie because the spark isn't there.  In tears, she leaves in the limo with no rose, as we look on, cringing because we as viewers saw the lack-of-connection the entire time.

This contemporary iteration of Black female sexuality comes from a history of white men, white women, and Black men mobilizing images that served to control Black female sexuality.  In Southern Horrors, Crystal N. Feimster reclaims the history of anti-lynching and anti-rape during the post-slavery era by revealing the hidden lives of Rebecca Felton and Ida B. Wells, two women who the author argues played foundational roles in these female-centered movements.  For Ida B. Wells, lynching depended on and perpetuated "a variety of racialized gender constructions: the chaste and dependent white woman; the sexually violent black man; the immoral and unredeemable black woman; and the honorable and civilized white man" (Feimster 103).  Because Black women were in essence doubly stigmatized by being Black and female within a patriarchal, racist society, they had little power in changing these mobilized stereotypes that rendered them powerless in controlling their own bodies.  Negative images of Black women justified rape and lynching to white-dominated society.  For example, the controlling image of the jezebel, who lured white men into sex via her almost magical, irresistible hypersexuality, worked to confine Black female sexuality by writing it as bad, amoral, and opposite pure, respectable, chaste white womanhood.  Thus, Black female sexuality, at least in Wells's eyes, is always in opposition to white female sexuality in order to bolster and justify white female sexuality and the implicit rules governing white women's lives.

Leslie H. is a modern iteration of this history of white-dominated society controlling Black female sexuality.  The Bachelor has been criticized for being racist, as there as never been a non-white bachelor, and Black/ethnic women only make it so far on the show before being cut off.  With this history, fans are primed to know that Leslie H.'s time is almost up when she goes on her "Pretty Woman" date, simply because she is read as Black.  What is crucial to look at here is the way that Leslie is dumped: Sean says that he "cannot allow" her to stay knowing that he's not the right man for her.  Further, in his break-up speech, Sean clearly implies that he's simply not physically attracted to Leslie, even though he does seem to be attracted to her personality, almost talking ad nauseum about what a "great" personality she has.  Let's back up a minute though, and return to Sean's words: "cannot allow."  This statement says a couple of things: (1) Leslie has now power in deciding anything about the relationship.  (2) Sean feels as though he has power over Leslie--I'm arguing not just because he is the almighty bachelor, but also because he is a white man.  This is the message viewers are getting, and we read it, whether consciously or subconsciously, as a racial power structure that leaves Leslie powerless, because of the history of the oppression of Black female sexuality, particularly during the post-slavery era.  Instead of being the jezebel, Leslie H. has been completely desexualized, almost an anti-jezebel.  This works in the same ways that the jezebel did, though, as it placates white fears about Black female sexuality.  Leslie can't take the white man away from the white woman because he just isn't attracted to her.  Problem solved!

So, The Bachelor shows us that we are not in a "post-racial" or "post-race" society just because Obama is President.  We still are part of a system that continually constructs Black womanhood and Black sexuality in ways that serve to bring down the Black woman's power at the same time that it increases the power, privilege, and justification of white womanhood.

And the show must go on...Sean will find his wife; she just won't be a tan Julia Roberts.