Using The Bachelor to Study Gender Norms w/ Desmond Cohen

Using The Bachelor to Study Gender Norms w/ Desmond Cohen

May 29, 2024

MTO therapist, Desmond Cohen, comes back on the podcast to provide commentary on how reality TV can be a vehicle to study gender norms. He’ll describe how the contemporary ideals of masculinity have changed over the years by analyzing different seasons of The Bachelor. Tune in for a humorous, yet poignant, look at how the media portrays men.

Episode Transcript:

1:03

welcome back to the show I’m your host Mark azoulay and I’m here with Desmond con he’s one of our great therapist at MTO

1:09

and I’m really excited for this episode because uh Desmond has this Pet Project where he’s been tracking gender Norms

1:15

through reality TV show and specifically The Bachelor um so I’m excited just to like Buckle in and like see be here for

1:21

the ride as we learn about kind of how modern masculinity is Shifting in the mainstream Desmond welcome to the

1:27

show thank you Mark yeah this promises to be a weird one um I love the weird on

1:35

so um so you said that you’re a total novice to the universe of the bachelor

1:41

right that that’s correct that’s correct yeah I’ve never seen a single episode so pitch it to me so the The Bachelor

1:48

series it’s a it’s a multi-show universe at this point media Empire probably um so it started in like

1:56

2002 it’s a kind of classic reality TV from that like it’s like the second

2:01

generation of reality TV you know we get the first generation back in the 9s from MTV this is kind of the the Next

2:08

Generation where they were evolving it into something even more outrageous um

2:14

so the I had fun geeking out about this before the show uh the Apparently what

2:19

defines reality TV is a crossover of documentary style film making with soap

2:27

opera style production and that is one of the big defining character characteristics of it um and this kind

2:33

of fits the bill perfectly for that um so the frame of the show is that uh the

2:38

original show was called The Bachelor and it was one guy and like 20ish women

2:45

um it’s kind of it’s kind of changed and evolved over the years U but there’s one guy and a lot of women basically and the

2:51

idea is he is supposed to meet these women through uh they call them cocktail

2:57

parties where they’re talking for like I don’t like five 10 minutes at a time with individuals and then they get to go

3:03

on dates periodically over the course of like a couple weeks basically um and

3:09

over the course of the show the contestants get Whitted down until there is um just a couple left at the end and

3:15

then the Final Act is a proposal um so that’s the frame of the show H

3:23

that the actual structure of it hasn’t really changed all that much in the like 20 plus years that it’s been on the now

3:31

um they have added The Bachelorette which flips the script and it’s one woman and a bunch of men uh then they

3:37

also have the they have Bachelor in Paradise where they take PE contestants who have usually been on the show

3:43

already um who have the right combination of attractiveness and

3:48

dramatic qualities and they just kind of put them together and blend them to make

3:53

dramatic stuff happen awesome great yeah Prime reality TV y y y um so it’s

4:02

funny that you I forget exactly how you said it when you introduced me as uh it’s like a pet project um so I got

4:10

introduced to this series uh in a way that a lot of people do and a lot of men

4:15

do actually which is by my partner who was female and uh the show originally

4:23

was targeting and still to this day was specifically targeting primarily like female audience um and

4:32

the I got pulled in from a desire to basically my wife wanted to share this

4:38

experience with me um and she got me into it by gamifying it so uh really in

4:46

like a tragic dehumanizing way uh basically creating stat sheets about the

4:52

contestants and seeing if we could like bet with each other about who was going to win uh the show win the show uh you

4:59

know be become the last contestants based on Broad statistics that we identified at the beginning and then

5:06

like broad AFF effect stuff that we could try to match shockingly accurate it’s fairly easy or used to be fairly

5:13

easy uh and there was a whole subculture of people who basically did this uh taking like kind of like sports betting

5:21

into the reality TV um era uh and it was

5:26

oddly fun um this was going on when I was in grad school and so there was this uh experience of

5:34

both like a cathartic dehumanization of other people at a time when I was being trained to be extremely empathetic and

5:42

put a lot of my effort and like energy into carrying about other people this was like the opposite where I was

5:47

basically being conditioned and told that I was supposed to be dehumanizing people which was weird

5:54

um um there’s some really disturbing aspects of the show historically uh they

6:00

it’s like it’s been extremely racist it’s been like the gender roles that historically they have prized have been

6:08

uh you know would say traditional but like pretty like very narrow and pretty

6:13

limited um and there’s been a kind of about a lot of backlash about that

6:19

especially in the last 10 years um originally the show was kind of there wasn’t a lot of effort or awareness paid

6:24

to this um but as the show was getting

6:29

more I don’t know if it was more viewership but definitely a changing viewership um people started giving

6:35

feedback that the contestants on the show didn’t feel like real people or feel didn’t feel like they were actually

6:43

like people who were attractive in the way that real people wanted to date anymore um originally these contestants

6:51

were supposed to be the like Paragons of their genders and sexual presentations

6:57

um the that kind of started to shift it seemed like at a certain point um and we

7:03

entered the era of uh what I would call the arms race where basically became focused like for the male contestants it

7:10

became focused on exclusive like physical attributes of like who could get the biggest and the contestants

7:17

became like football players and like a lot of pro athletes like Pro amateur

7:22

athletes um and then just like you know you’re like casual bodybuilders like the

7:28

the emphasis was put on people who looked a certain way but didn’t necessarily have like a depth of

7:33

life that would make them like a meaningful partner or like a even a sustainable partner and the a the this

7:40

kind of shows in the statistics for what happens to the relationships that are formed by the show which is like not

7:47

super positive it’s rare that the relationships formed by the show actually lead to a lasting marriage let

7:52

alone like a lasting relationship um so all this stuff became more and

7:58

more known as the social media presence started to get bigger uh the there became this like

8:05

back and forth cultural exchange and dialogue between the people who are watching the show and the production team who’s creating the show and so the

8:13

show started to evolve um I’m going to pause as the novice how how am I doing it explaining this so far no this this

8:20

makes a ton of sense and and it’s fascinating of how deep it goes and how engaged like the community is I think

8:26

that’s awesome actually like I love learning about little niches of like culture and society and like people that

8:32

like have these like deep rabbit holes and stuff so I love hearing that you were like you know creating stat cards for them basically right and like doing

8:39

the betting like that sounds actually pretty fun I think I could get into that myself um yeah I guess a question for

8:45

you before we move on you talk about that early era and my kind of understanding of like um you know early

8:51

2000s TV reality TV it was like it’s s like the South Park era where a lot of it was made like it was pretty racist in

8:57

a lot of ways right but it was was like I guess my understand is that real TV show was made to make fun of in a way

9:03

right like like the characters were were almost edited or created or whatever to be mocked uh but it sounds like that

9:10

change or that’s changing now where it actually they’re trying to say something or they’re they trying to be like a

9:16

message with it or yeah how would you maybe so I don’t actually yeah that isn’t a piece that I had thought of um I

9:22

haven’t seen a ton of the early Seasons okay um yeah my understanding was that

9:28

there is definitely like if you think back I guess my like Touchstone for this would be like the real world and like

9:34

that kind of era of reality TV where it was kind of like one part this

9:41

um uh this like Fantasy Life of like oh they’re living in a Manion and they’re

9:46

like doing cool stuff and like look at their cool like skateboards on the wall like how cool would it be it’s

9:52

aspirational for like the 13-year-old right that’s kind of who it was geared towards um and I think that that’s

9:58

probably where the show started too was this idea of like creating these Partners who are aspirational for like

10:04

teenagers essentially um but what started happening maybe is that those

10:10

teens started growing up and that’s like that was my wife’s experience is that she like got exposed to the stuff when

10:15

she was a teen and then like periodically would kind of like step back into it but you know she was

10:21

watching this in our mid 20s and so the things that are attractive to a mid- 20-year-old are going to be very

10:26

different than what’s attractive to like 14-year-old um and I guess maybe that’s the theory

10:32

is that they had to start kind of up aging it in a in a different way um

10:38

because a 25-year-old is going to see through a lot of the like shallow aspirational things of like a

10:44

20-year-old um so the show kind of like walked this weird line where they were

10:49

trying to cater to both um and they would have you know like 20-year-olds on the show who were like sparkly and so

10:57

like cut or like so beautiful in a very specific way but who had like no life experience and like no emotional

11:03

intelligence and like nothing to say Beyond like I’m here and I’m I’m ready

11:09

for love and it was like it became it did kind of shift into this like joke of like these people they all started doing

11:17

uh so here’s another shift um the the contestants on the show started becoming

11:23

people who grew up watching the show oh that and that was meta level to it yeah

11:30

so originally the contestants were like oh I’m going to go on a reality show that I you know don’t really know much

11:35

about um and you know they were usually like outof work actors and things and people who got like pulled off the

11:41

street or whatever um the but so they didn’t have this idea about how the show

11:47

was supposed to work so the production team basically got to like steer it towards whatever the heck they

11:54

wanted you start getting this change when pretty much everyone one on the

12:00

show or the vast majority of people on the show who are contestants are steeped in the larger reality of what this thing

12:07

is supposed to be and they’ve already been conditioned to respond to the

12:13

stimuli of the show in a specific way so it’s instead of showing up for a thing that’s going to be filmed documentary

12:19

style it’s like they’ve been watching the play from when they were 13 years old and now they get to be a cast member

12:25

in the play so they’re already expecting to act a certain way that’s when we get to

12:30

kayab which do you want to do you want to explain kayab to people who may not know what it is yeah I don’t know what

12:36

it stands for do you know you know what it stands for like what does it mean uh

12:41

I the Wiki page was funny uh there was like one theory that it was

12:47

uh I didn’t see that it was an acronym for anything

12:53

um the the closest thing that I saw was that it’s a carnival term okay um but I don’t know what it is like yeah I didn’t

12:59

see uh any like specific means okay yeah because I don’t know yeah the only thing I know is from from wrestling or like

13:05

WWE right I think that’s maybe where it came to popularity that’s where I heard about it first and kayab this idea that

13:11

like you’re always in character right because I I I think it was I mean proba was a big surprise to learn that

13:17

wrestling was fake right and that it’s scripted and that it’s like again probably similar to this where it it’s

13:22

real like it’s real Athletics but it is also that soap opera type thing that you talked about in the first segment right

13:28

um so the idea of kayfabe is that the characters like the rock or you know um I all these people right like they are

13:35

still their wrestling character in the world so when they go out to eat they’re still the character when they’re on

13:40

social media they’re still the character when they’re doing interviews they’re still the character like they don’t drop the the ACT you know versus like most

13:48

other actors you know if you see an an actor doing an interview promoting a show they’re just themselves right and

13:53

often they have like a different accent or whatever you’re like oh I didn’t know so and so was Australian you know

13:59

um and they’re just talking about their experience working on the show or on the movie whereas in wrestling the the

14:04

protocol was like you are always the character you know yeah so so this BS over into the bachelor I’m assuming yeah

14:11

that’s that’s basically what this started to take on was a a total parallel with wrestling where the show

14:18

itself became one stage but everything surrounding the show became an

14:24

additional part of the stage where you’re not supposed to be breaking character and the

14:29

what the the level of acting associated with being on the stage started getting

14:35

more and more complex and more and more tuned to be a certain thing and that’s where we started to see these um this

14:42

like really rapid and intense communication about what is the

14:47

aspirational gender role that I’m supposed to be portraying here um so the

14:53

well hold on can I ask you a questions about the the show so at this point is it is it like WWE like is it fake like

15:01

like are these people actors right are they given roles by these you know producers or whatever or are they like

15:07

extend or are they creating their own characters I know I’m curious like what the Yeah Yeah that’s part of part of the

15:14

unknown for me there there’s like apparently there’s books about this and there’s people like who have podcasts

15:19

just about the bachelor universe who talk about this one of uh my partner as

15:25

favorite games to play when we watch the show is what did the producers say to Prime the person to make them say that

15:31

line basically of like you know they have people speak in um full statements

15:37

of like oh I think Sally’s stupid and mean um and then so the game is like

15:44

what what was the producer’s question to get them to say that in a discreet way of like do you think Sally is stupid and

15:49

mean it could be as leading as that yeah um but that’s the part that starts to be

15:55

the like it seems like the art of the production for them is how how can we

16:00

cultivate this and steer this in a way to generate the narrative that we want while still making it appear to be

16:07

authentic and there are times it really es and flows there are times where it feels like they like the production team

16:13

seems to like hit a new level um and all of a sudden it starts to feel real in a

16:20

weird different way and there are times when it feels so stupid and so scripted um and I don’t know if it’s like the

16:26

specific contestants you can tell uh especially at the beginning of the season when there’s a lot of people who

16:34

is able to play the game and who isn’t yeah because you’ll have contestants who are like acting like normal people and

16:41

they’re on this and they’re like uh they feel like they’re crazy and they look kind of like they’re like the sane person in like the zoo um I had a funny

16:49

story I had a h a friend of a friend who was a contestant on the show and he got

16:55

almost no screen time he was a very sweet person uh really smart really funny uh but like a normal person uh and

17:03

like you know super attractive and he goes on the show he gets zero screen time and he’s eliminated after like

17:09

night one because he’s just not generating like drama or he’s not generating like yeah any kind of

17:14

intrigue he can’t he can’t insert himself really effectively and he’s not interesting enough that the production team wants to keep him around basically

17:21

I don’t know yeah and that’s what happens is you start to get there’s this weird

17:27

interplay between uh it’s like you know it’s like the horse racing thing where it’s like yeah who is being kept on the

17:33

show in order to find love with the contestant and who’s being kept on the show because they’re dramatic and

17:39

they’re allowed to basically have a narrative Arc and that because the show’s been going on so long people

17:46

start to Speck into this by themselves so you can see a contestant who goes on

17:52

the show who starts who starts thinking that maybe they’re going to be able to find love and they realize that they’re

17:58

not not going to be the person who wins the show so they start getting wackier and creating drama in order to stay on

18:04

the show longer so good and what this all comes down to at this point is followers

18:11

because that’s the way that you take this thing and turn it into something bigger is you monetize it essentially um

18:17

so your drama becomes directly monetized very quickly yeah it’s like a platform to make the like people’s personal

18:23

Brands right cuz yeah because I I know that there are some R TV show stars that like go on different shows right in my

18:28

that’s like their life is like being this wacky character that has a following um this is really interesting

18:34

we’re going to move to our first commercial break but we get back I want to dig into the gend Norms piece um and talk about kind of the male contestants

18:41

and what you’ve studied from there but this is a this is a really fascinating conversation Desmond I really appreciate you bringing it to the show um so if

18:47

you’re listening hang on in there and we’ll see you on the other side of the commercial

18:57

break

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21:18

welcome back to the show I’m here with Desmond con one of our phenomenal therapists at Mt and we’re just chatting

21:23

about the Bachelor man um I I really enjoyed kind of the background and seeing how deep the rabbit hole Goes

21:30

Around The Bachelor and around the viewership and their production team and yeah I mean it’s got my head spinning just on like the um I don’t know the

21:37

like Endeavor and the undertaking that this thing is you know to put on TV and

21:43

um yeah just like showcase relationships and Norms um but yeah let’s dive into our topic which is kind of tracking the

21:49

uh the male contestant and how gender Norms are are portrayed um through that show so yeah what what have you noticed

21:55

about that yeah so that’s been an interesting Evolution um even in the last five years there been a really

22:02

remarkable shift uh the so I kind of talked a little bit about this idea of

22:07

who the like aspirational contestants were for a long time and it started as kind of like a you know like a a

22:15

normal-ish person and then as the show got more advanced and got a bigger viewership and the production quality

22:21

got more and more complex um the contestants themselves started becoming

22:27

these kind of Larger than Life people people um and I talked about it as the

22:32

the arms race where it really became like a physical thing of like who is and

22:37

it kind of showed in the production too where it’s like they used like way more like shower shots where it’s like oh

22:42

every episode make sure you show like at least three minutes of the guy showering and like soaping up his body because

22:49

that’s who that’s how we’re marketing this like who’s the most jacked man like that’s the Apex masculinity yeah yes

22:54

yeah so Apex masculinity was really focused on looks and on muscles at this time um and the way that it was

23:02

presented outside of that or like it was was pretty limited and pretty shallow like they wouldn’t really push on

23:08

elements of being a human and being a man outside of like raw strength um so

23:14

what changed is my assumption is it’s the culture so there started to be a lot

23:20

of push back my assumption is probably viewership was either dipping or there was a lot of like online backlash

23:26

against what was happening because the contestants started to shift and evolve

23:32

and they became older for a little while we started to see instead of just people in their like early to mid 20s the

23:39

contestants started becoming uh like mid late 20s and then we started seeing some

23:45

in their 30s and the level of easy intimacy and emotional

23:52

intelligence just skyrocketed by having more mature contestants on this show the

23:58

like the depth and quality of the conversations was shockingly different and a lot of again my this is my

24:05

assumption a lot of viewers seem to be responding in a really powerful way to it because it really seems like that’s

24:10

where they started moving the show and it went two different directions um so

24:15

the first direction is that the the male contestants started becoming uh the the

24:21

arms race basically shifted from just physical like your physique although

24:26

that’s still important and start part of the Baseline you got to be jacked um but what they started doing was flexing on

24:34

each other with their emotional intelligence okay um it became the the

24:39

drama started becoming focused on who was like who was more aware emotionally

24:46

about what was happening and the language started shifting first of all there was like there wasn’t a lot of

24:52

language around this at first it was just like Bros getting in each other’s face and be like bro you’re stupid

24:57

you’re stupid like getting in stupid dramatic arguments and like storming off and like doing weird things now they

25:04

started talking about stuff and they would form coalitions and they would uh

25:09

it was like watching a developmental uh move up into like later

25:15

teen years or something which is still odd that we’re watching 20-year-old men acting like teenagers uh but that’s what

25:22

they’re doing um and it was an improvement over what was happening before because they’re talking with each other they’re trying to give each other

25:29

support um they’re uh they’re trying to offer emotional support to the female

25:34

contestants if they’re The Bachelor and the what so there’s always

25:39

been this uh this relationship between Who The Bachelor contestant is and who The Bachelorette men are because it’s

25:45

the bigger pool right and they usually or often draw The Bachelor contestant from The Bachelorette pool of men from a

25:52

previous season okay or at least recently so you get to watch this big pool of Men playing out variations of

26:00

identity and masculinity and all this stuff um and the bachelor men who were

26:05

selected out of this started being basically they they had to have

26:12

the ability to be emotionally supportive to the women and that then started rubbing off on their ability to be

26:19

supportive to each other when they were in The Bachelorette pool so you started seeing that the men who were successful

26:25

were the ones who could be who could create safety could create um like more

26:31

meaningful conversations who could reduce the drama instead of Ratchet it up um it’s it’s like they’re like the

26:38

coolers to like Roadhouse right that that kind of in some ways became the

26:44

version of masculinity except without the like assault components it was like an emotional cooler essentially of like

26:50

who can show up to these spaces and approach conflict and emotional like PE

26:57

people fear and insecurity which is all part of this and part of what the production team is trying to get people

27:03

to feel um by first of all sleep depriving them massively and feeding them as many drinks as they can drink um

27:10

that’s part of this is by by by the way um so you’re seeing people in extremes often and the people who could function

27:16

in those spaces and hold on to their capacity to be basically create safety

27:22

ended up becoming more and more successful um and you started seeing that the men who would have been like

27:28

Prime Bachelor men in the past were being less and less successful and were

27:34

getting like hounded out essentially and they would just like they would fizzle out and just like burn up really quick

27:40

um or they weren’t interesting enough anymore because they couldn’t compete on the same level um so that’s what we

27:46

started seeing in the last five years is this like interesting Dynamic where

27:52

sometimes uh it was like the the playing field started getting muddy all of a sudden so it wasn’t just the like super

27:57

ja guy with the like nice job who could like pretend like he was a really nice

28:03

guy who would be successful started becoming the people who could actually do that who were maybe more likely to be

28:09

competitive longer term and then they started winning and then they started becoming the bachelors and this

28:16

culminated in the most recent season with this guy Joey who was The Bachelor

28:21

and the uh the apparently the online feedback was extraordinary because this

28:27

guy my respon respon when I watched him first as a bachelorette contestant and then as a bachelor I was like he talks

28:34

like a therapist is he supposed to be doing that like that’s my job like why is he supposed to be doing that in a

28:39

relationship um this guy was able to basically show up and provide the type of emotional support that these women

28:46

have been craving for a long long time and that was part of my wife’s feedback when I when I said that was like this is

28:53

this is the bar has been so low for so long that this looks out out of place

28:58

and yet this this ideally is the Baseline and that’s that was part of the feedback is like we want that more um so

29:07

that was one path that the show went is basically this construction of masculinity that basically required men

29:14

to be able to talk about feelings both their own and then be supportive of other people’s feelings and like not

29:19

just like say it in a in like a a shallow or accepting way but they had to

29:25

be able to engage with it in a meaningful way and help people like feel validated and then also prove that they

29:31

had done their own depth work as a part of it um which was also fascinating

29:36

because then how do you prove you’ve done your depth work and watching people struggle with how to do that on TV of like this is my trauma and I have worked

29:44

with it in this way uh we joke about it as like your sob story if you’re a if you’re in the contestant pool the big

29:50

pool um you have to have your so story and it has to come out at the right point because if you do it too soon then it doesn’t hit hard enough if you do it

29:56

too late then you might not get get enough intimacy so you got to hit it all right and it’s got to be the right kind of s story it’s got to hit just it can’t

30:04

be that it like floods them right but it can’t be like too lame that people are like really that’s your that’s your

30:11

thing right yes and it has to be uh yeah that’s part of it uh it has to be um

30:19

healed enough that you’re a great partner now but not so healed that the

30:24

person can’t still be supportive for you because you’re creating an opportunity for to be supportive for you it’s insane

30:30

um but it’s like like like I like I went through this I mean when I was doing a lot of online dating right after being

30:36

in therapy for like whatever six seven years at the time I was like when do I talk about my childhood right when do I

30:42

talk about like my addiction like when do I do the big reveal about like my trauma so like I like I get this right

30:49

because it’s like it’s like important to me but also not that important to me but also like you should tell somebody about

30:54

it but maybe you don’t want to tell them about it in the wrong way I don’t know right but like I I I get that struggle

31:01

you know um so that’s what I’m curious about I was talking about this with a bunch of my guy friends recently and

31:07

that was part of the feedback was it was about dating and they were like yeah the my experience of online dating in the

31:13

last year has been that women only want to talk to me if I’ve done therapy yeah um and they were like but how do I do

31:20

that how do I like communicate that in a way that feels meaningful and how do I know that they actually like is that

31:27

just performing on their part too where it’s just like another check box of like how much can you lift bro um I guess be

31:34

curious yeah what’s your perspective on that like the this is kind of I guess this is where the the conversation kind

31:40

of leads is like now that mental health is going mainstream we’re seeing it in reality tv as part of this

31:47

relationship what is the relationship between therapy as like

31:53

performative uh competition versus performative as like you

31:59

ful help um there’s this kind of interesting gray area there and I’d be curious about your perspective both as a

32:05

therapist and as someone who’s in the dating pool more recently yeah I I I Think It’s Tricky right I think it’s

32:11

kind of what you’re saying is there’s a difference between saying oh yeah I went to therapy and here’s like my graduation

32:18

certificate I can talk about my trauma and like not cry but maybe cry just enough but like still be open right

32:23

there’s like that threading the needle and then there’s what I think is more important what you’re saying is like actually showing up in the present

32:30

moment right like when the goes bad cuz it always will like leaning into

32:35

that conflict stating your needs showing up for your partner when you know they suffer a loss right like actually

32:41

demonstrating it I think is more what women want right because they want to feel emotionally safe and they want to

32:46

feel protected in all Dimensions right including emotional um and I think but

32:53

you have to you have to pitch it right because dating is performative right it is like like showing off some of the

32:59

best aspects of yourself and trying to be attractive right and like stimulate romance like there is like a be yourself

33:05

aspect but when I tell my guys that are dating it’s like be yourself times like 2.5 right like try to like you have like

33:11

accentuate yourself a little bit especially in the beginning because you only have a limited amount of time and

33:17

rejection is really easy these days right because there’s always another person to swipe on right it’s like very

33:22

high stakes especially especially for men because I think there’s there’s tends to be way more men in the pool and

33:29

the the women I mean it’s it’s a whole gender Dynamics but the women that are getting dates there are many women that

33:34

don’t get any dates which is up but there the women that are getting dates which are the ones that you’re dating have like a ton of Bachelors

33:41

right that they can go to at all times right um they’re often talking to multiple people they’re often dating

33:47

multiple people like their their issue is like filtering right where the men’s issue is like getting in front of you

33:54

know the woman that you want to date um yeah so yeah probably similar to the game show I

33:59

mean similar to the bachelor and bachelorette like you’re talking about like you only have a limited amount of screen time to talk about your stuff um

34:08

but you know that’s kind of like a rambly answer but I I do think buy and large I think it’s good I it’s good for industry I think like you know Tik Tok

34:15

mental health is toxic in a lot of ways but I think in this way it’s actually very helpful where like women are

34:21

starting to ask like are you in therapy have you done your work right like I think it’s way more mainstream to ask

34:27

that question and to see therapy as something good for you not that you’re like crazy or a drug addict I mean I

34:33

think that’s been like a major shift especially with the younger generation um but yeah I Think It’s Tricky I mean

34:41

what do you think about it well I wrote down a note in what you said so I didn’t want to forget it which is that question

34:46

of have you done your work and I feel like I’ve heard that a lot and we talk about it it’s it’s really getting a lot of cultural uh play right now but it

34:54

hold it kind of encapsulates a lot and it seems like it’s it’s it’s also one of those like gray things as a term and I

35:02

was reading Esther perel’s book recently ma in captivity and it seemed like she kind of tapped into this I think that

35:08

book is like 15 or 20 years old now or something um but she was kind of tapping into this I Dynamic at seemed like a

35:16

much earlier stage that we’re also seeing now which is the work is the idea

35:22

that we especially men of this generation like you’re and my generation

35:27

we didn’t get to learn this stuff from previous generations this wasn’t something that was modeled to us um and

35:34

because of that we have to go outside of those historic spaces to find access to

35:40

this skill set and that for us generally seems like it’s meaning therapy but that’s one of the only places we can go

35:46

to get access to these tools um and that seems like the work is like learning how to yeah it’s like learning how to be how

35:53

to talk intimacy instead of just do intimacy and I think that you and I have

35:58

talked about that you’ve talked about it I’m a lot on the podcast um the one of

36:03

the strengths of men is often our ability to do like physical intimacy so

36:10

whether it’s sexuality whether it’s like shared labor shared experiences that is

36:15

one of the ways that men have bonded for a long time but it’s not one of the ways that women are often socialized to

36:21

accept intimacy and to communicate with intimacy and that’s been one of the big conflicts that Pell talked about a lot

36:28

she’s talking specifically about how this plays out with uh sexual

36:33

relationships um but it seems like it’s it’s kind of showing this gulf that’s

36:39

existed for a long time where women have been basically doing both trying to

36:47

operate in both languages so getting socialized to communicate through talk

36:53

through emot experience their emotions and share their emotions through talk and Lang anguage and men are getting

36:59

socialized to do it through our bodies primarily and women have been doing the work of bridging to the physical world

37:07

as often as they can often and now men are starting to do that same work in bridging to the social side and ideally

37:14

we get to a point where everyone is able to do both and we’ll obviously have our proclivities and our Tendencies and all

37:20

that inside of it but um yeah hopefully we get to a point where it’s just two languages to

37:28

we can we can have more tools ideally right we have more tools and I think for men we get needs met that we didn’t even

37:34

know we had you know because I I do think men need to be emotionally intimate right and we need to talk to

37:39

each other about and we we need that even though we don’t have the tools for it so I think by expanding these

37:45

definitions of masculinity and building out more tool sets we’re getting we’re starting to become better healthier

37:51

people in general right which will make the world a better place um so there’s lot talk about here we have to move to

37:57

our next commercial break when we come back I want to talk about you know wrap up the bachelor talk about some ideas

38:02

around like emotional labor cuz that that’s where was going through my head of like what that means you know for for men and women um and going through like

38:09

what the next step might be for a guy who wants to build these tools and become um The Bachelor in his life you know become this version of modern of a

38:17

modern man so um more stuff on the other side of the commercial break hang on in there and we’ll see you

38:26

then

38:56

e

39:26

e

39:56

e e

40:49

welcome back to the show uh we’re talking about the bachelor you know before we move on I was curious as you

40:55

were tracing kind of this evolution of masculinity right going from what you call the arms race which I think is awesome like the most jacked raw

41:01

strength dude to a more emotionally intelligent emotionally aware emotionally supportive man I’m wondering

41:09

did the way that the women talk about the men change like like how are they perceiving this shift whether on The

41:15

Bachelorette or or on The Bachelor yeah I think it’s an important question and it’s definitely something

41:22

that uh has had its own like gray area of evolution where you see people kind

41:29

of pushing back and forth inside of that as the general Trend seems to be a shift towards identifying these traits uh

41:37

overall um but you see people still uh you know feeling attraction to uh just

41:44

someone’s appearance and someone’s career and someone you know all these other Hallmarks that are a natural part

41:49

of Attraction um that this other one just started to basically play more and more of a role as people started seeing

41:56

the impact that it had on both their feeling in relationship and then potentially the longevity and

42:02

sustainability of the relationship after the show um it started to play a greater and greater role in more and more

42:08

contestants but it wasn’t just like a black and white overnight thing um I think one of the ways that it really

42:14

stood out to me was the contrast again between the older and the younger contestants when they started having

42:20

people on the show who were 30 years old interacting with like 20 year olds and 22 year olds they would sometimes like

42:27

make comments about that where they’re like you’re a child or like I feel like I could like chew you up and spit you

42:33

out not in like a mean or aggressive way but just like this recognition of the huge Gulf that existed developmentally

42:40

between them and you started seeing people getting treated differently as a

42:45

part of that where the the super

42:50

cute person with the who’s the airline pilot or whatever it was who like again

42:56

used to be more competitive would just kind of start to fall as an archetype would start to kind of fall further and further behind and be less and less um

43:04

invested in both by the production team and then also by other contestants um so

43:09

that’s a big part of this is that there is this relationship between the producers and what they think the

43:15

audience is wanting and the contestants themselves and what they are trying to

43:20

tap into with their real authenticity um of following genuine

43:25

attraction when it does exist um so there’s this constant back and forth I

43:30

think that answers your question it does yeah yeah yeah it sounds like it is being taken up and whether it’s probably

43:37

both right it’s like both creating a narrative and responding to a cultural narrative that I think is happening in

43:42

our culture where there is much more of this um yeah just like preference on

43:47

emotional uh intelligence you know um and it makes me think as you were talking before about this idea of

43:53

emotional labor which I think came out of uh either the current wave of feminism third wave feminism this idea

43:58

of specifically women doing a lot of emotional labor in a relationship and I think women are getting tired of that

44:05

right and I think I’m curious your thoughts my definition of emotional labor is you know kind of stereotypical thing of the woman asking a bunch of

44:12

questions of the man be like being his therapist right and the guy being pretty much like a ston wall not being able to

44:18

express himself maybe not wanting to express himself um or the woman like managing a complex social dynamics in

44:25

you know at a party or at a u know kids school or something right like basically them doing all the emotional work in a

44:32

relationship and the guy either being um naive and ignorant which I think a lot

44:37

of us are and and because we just don’t know we like don’t know that that skill set um or willfully kind of just pushing

44:43

it away and dismissing it so I think like with the rise of social media mental health there’s been this like big

44:49

backlash against doing any kind of emotional labor so I think when a woman can see a male partner picking up some

44:55

of that I think it’s very attractive to them you know because I think that’s been a huge part of a relationship a

45:00

heterosexual relationship that like is has not been talked about you know um

45:06

that that is a huge role that traditionally women have played in a relationship that hasn’t really gotten

45:11

much um credibility you know true yeah there’s there’s been uh again coming

45:19

back to the the franchise as a interesting barometer of this we saw that where the male contestants are

45:26

showing there there’s this tension in the early seasons of first

45:33

um first just being strong in the face of anything you know like the classic like numbed I am either I’m happy or I’m

45:40

nothing um and then we start to see this push into being able to express sadness

45:48

about something and able to receive support in the face of that so that’s when we really start to see this push

45:54

into the women who are picking up the emotional tab for these men that the

45:59

Hallmark then of an emotionally mature man at that time looked like being a

46:05

client to a therapist where your your your partner your dating partner is like your mom or your therapist or like your

46:12

nanny or whatever it is um which is a super fatiguing position to be in but was like that was the bar at that point

46:19

and then we start to see this greater depth associated with that and we start to see men asking trying to like equal

46:26

the playing field a little bit of like oh let me support you as well um sorry that was always there from the beginning

46:31

of like the man is there to like help you you you went through this hard thing

46:37

and I’m here for you as as a strong man um so I don’t need to show my emotion you show your emotion and I will be the

46:43

wall for you um so then we start to see this shift back to the other direction or sorry this continued evolution of the

46:51

man basically offering more and more vulnerability and more and more ability to engage with the emotional content and

46:59

that’s really where it starts to shift um again in the last like 5 10 years in

47:04

a big way um where we get to again we get to Joey here Who’s acting like a

47:10

therapist for the partner but also being able to receive that support so it’s

47:15

bilateral and that was really what stood out to a lot of especially women um but it seems like a lot of people who are

47:21

watching the show broadly was this experience of watching this guy be a role that was seemed rare in Men in

47:30

particular yeah I I wonder do you have any stats on like the gender breakup of

47:35

the production team because when when I think about this I don’t yeah okay yeah yeah right because because like when I

47:41

think about like the arms race piece it sounds like that is men being like Oh

47:46

what do women want right they want a jacked dude because I think as men we are very visual right and like that’s

47:52

our first thing that we go to is like oh you know um like there a added right

47:57

it’s like usually when um a man gets dumped the first thing he does is go to the gym you know cuz he he’s like oh

48:03

it’s because I wasn’t dripped enough right it’s because I wasn’t fit enough it’s because I wasn’t strong enough yeah right like that’s that’s kind of where

48:08

we go to because we’re we’re also visual but really we should be going to therapy true right because because I think that

48:14

is what we’re learning with this new seasons of The Bachelor where it’s like oh it’s not that you’re not like physically attractive enough it’s you’re

48:20

not emotionally attractive enough you know and there’s like blocks or emotional red flags probably actually

48:26

more like that are pushing women away from you you know yeah that was that was one of the

48:33

most I think disturbing aspects of watching the show they’ve really toned it down lately but when I first started

48:39

watching it with my partner one of the Hallmarks of the show is that they would

48:44

always have one or two people on the season who had pretty significant personality disorder tendencies that

48:51

would basically get activated and then ratcheted up and then filmed and that was like part of how they would generate

48:56

the Dr and it was you know it on on the surface like oh that person’s so crazy

49:01

like look at them acting like being insane but the reality is like they’re taking someone who’s pretty mentally ill

49:08

and putting them into a position to like ratchet up the Acuity and then fil it for profit and that seemed awful and

49:15

there definitely seemed to be a push back on that over time as again the contestants started queuing into this

49:22

fact of like this person shouldn’t be on this show like you’re you’re you’re

49:28

sleep depriving people and feeding them alcohol and then putting them into an extremely

49:33

competitive uh high stress situation uh and expecting them to do

49:41

whatever um that it’s it’s it’s pretty cruel to do that um and so there seems

49:47

to be again a backlash against that to some degree where people are a little bit more prepared to be in that space at

49:54

this point and aren’t having the same level of like fullon high Acuity breakdowns that have happened

50:00

historically um although of course it’s the bachelor so you always have to have a little bit of that like a little like

50:05

dash of crazy right to like get people watching yeah yeah it’s like the emotional Hunger Games or Battle Royale

50:11

or something yeah it is that’s exactly what it feels like and again to the like budding therapist and me I was like this

50:18

is insane you get to watch uh so much Humanity get played out in a really

50:23

bizarre context it’s like a human zoo and really tragic way um that’s yeah

50:30

it’s bizarre I wonder and it keeps going on more guess logistical questions like

50:36

I know the show is not live I imagine they shoot a couple episodes and then they go like do they shoot the whole

50:41

season and then they air it or is there like a a point in which the contestants are aware of like how the community is

50:48

responding to them you know what I’m saying like like can a contestant go on while the show is being filmed and like look on social media and see what the

50:54

comments are cuz that adds like a whole another metal lay of seeing like oh this is how like the viewers are now

51:01

responding to my Antics from episode 3 or whatever you know yeah um I don’t

51:07

know what it is historically my understanding is that the structure now is that they basically isolate everybody

51:13

on the show um so if you are kicked off the show then you’re I think you’re

51:19

still supposed to be like basically like media siloed and they have you sign like an NDA until the show is released um

51:27

but so that I think that’s the point of that is it’s supposed to protect people from doing this like back and forth

51:32

feedback of like oh you liked me being crazy I’ll do it more right exactly exactly yeah so it’s it’s really kind of

51:39

like it’s it’s like it they pack it and they take it with them in their suitcase they’re like I’m gonna be this type of person um or they

51:46

like yeah there’s a there was a funny um thing that happened a couple years ago

51:52

where someone was caught with a bachelor guide basically someone had handwritten

51:57

for them in their suitcase and it had all these these things about like how to be successful on the show which broke

52:04

the kayfabe you know you’re not supposed to talk about how there’s a ton of rules and norms and expectations and ways that

52:13

you can game this system in order to be successful um but they did they did put

52:18

it into the uh the Final Cut which was interesting um again coming back to what you said probably to make fun of it um

52:26

but the the reality is probably everybody going on to that show has some version of that already stored in their minds they’re getting coached they’re

52:32

getting trained they’re watching the show they’re taking notes um it’s yeah

52:37

that’s my assumption I don’t know but but probably right I mean it’s sounds like it’s I mean it’s a very high-profile show at this point right so

52:43

it’s like yeah a big deal that’s interesting I would love to interview somebody from that show that like went

52:48

in intentionally and like saw um what the strategy was like like how do you win the relationship game um you know in

52:56

the in the whatever weird context it is but yeah we have to start to to wrap up I guess as we’re ending here what would

53:03

you say to our listeners that like want to build more this emotional intelligence to kind of bring it back to therapy or something like where where

53:09

should they start if they want to be you know the Joey in the world yeah yeah

53:16

um I think we kind of talked about it a little bit but the idea is if we have access to it through uh through

53:23

community Through like intergenerational relationship of any kind then we tap into it um for many of us we we didn’t

53:33

get it transmitted to us in our childhoods and so it seems like the ways to get access to that so we have to like

53:38

we have to choose to seek it out which is hard and it takes effort and that’s obviously part of why we are doing MTO

53:45

why you started this um and I think yeah it’s therapy it’s it’s

53:51

support groups it’s learning it’s talking to our partners and asking for genuine feedback about about this stuff

53:57

because there’s obviously we are all different and we all have varying levels of uh skill and maturity in the face of

54:04

this stuff um but as a as a general rule women in general are getting a lot more

54:10

of the stuff socialized into them early on and we can learn a ton about how to do this more effectively by asking for

54:17

feedback and responding to it and being a little bit more fluid with how we respond a lot of it’s like behavioral

54:24

stuff we have these old ages like fake it to make it it and a lot of it is just starting with that figure out like what

54:30

can I say in order to help someone feel safe and work with that and then we

54:36

create an ideally enough safety and familiarity with that and we start building up from there yeah I think that

54:42

that’s well said right it’s like just try it and yeah I love the your say like asro feedback because they know and yeah

54:47

I guess to the guys out there like the bars being raised which is good for everybody including us even though it can be intimidating sometimes like it’s

54:53

good for everybody so I think it’s really worth learning the skills whether it be in therapy or from a mentor or a

54:59

friend or you know an older family member like it’s it is really critical um soond thanks so much for being on the

55:05

show where can people find you if they want to learn more about you um I uh I

55:10

guess I have a psychology today profile um you can find me on the MTO website uh you that’s that’s pretty much

55:17

it my MySpace doesn’t exist anymore Myspace you’re number one Bachelor fan

55:25

Myspace my Bor bracket right no this has been a really great conversation

55:30

humorous and yet poignant you know I mean there’s there’s a lot there there’s a lot there and it’s important I think to study this stuff because like you

55:37

were saying this is what the youth is being exposed to right this is like what the how the Norms are actively being set

55:43

in our culture so it’s really important to pay attention to this kind of thing um so Desmond thanks so much for being

55:48

on the show and I know you’ll be on again in the future next reality TV show we’ll find

55:53

it we’ll do it and listeners thanks so much for tuning see you another episode of the men’s therapy podcast