How to Watch The Bachelorette By FIONA MADRID For Ms. Dean

This Monday was a pretty good day for me. My dad watched my lacrosse practice and took a few kids to Capital Thai. I didn’t have much homework because the AP Calculus test got me out of all my classes—and we all know that no one studies for APs. The day was coming to a nice close. I lay sprawled on the common room floor, watching Jeopardy and answering some pretty tough ones if I do say so myself.

But then, I heard Ms. Dean’s voice down the hallway. Never have I ever felt so much disappointment as when Ms. Dean strolled into the common room, asked “Oh is Jeopardy over?” and changed the channel to the season premiere of The Bachelorette. My day, my beautiful day, was now going to end on a reality dating show.

I decided should sit on the couch, which offered the worst view of the TV in the whole common room so I could “do Latin homework.” But as my frustration with how Ovid depicted Polyphemus grew, I found myself looking at the screen. They had just begun to introduce the men, and so naturally, there was a shirtless man on the screen playing with a cute pup at the beach.

“Pup!” I squealed.

“No! He’s just using it as a prop,” someone else in the common room said. And suddenly, we all hated the man with a cute dog.The next man was showing us around his farm, pointing at his cows and saying things like, “these are the closest things I have to girlfriends.” This sparked an automatic response from the common room. On top of that, Ms. Dean commented that he seemed inauthentic. “What farmer wears a leather jacket with a scarf in a barn? This seems fishy.” It was a strange idea, that we could all pass judgements not based on the men, but based on the way they were trying to present themselves. This struck me.

And then I realized where I had seen this before: The Hunger Games (also, the race for presidency, but it be like that). The Bachelorette contestants use all the same tactics of getting fan support as the tributes use to get sponsors. Exploiting their family members, pets and traumas.

As I came to this conclusion, I began to imagine all of the girls in the common room wearing the crazy Capitol outfits. We were in The Hunger Games and the men were fighting to the death for a woman. It made watching the Bachelorette more entertaining, and after inserting myself in the alternate reality, I hated myself a little less for being so captivated by the show. My childhood self got to relive some excitement.