Matty J: spoiled for choice

You must be living under a rock if you haven’t heard the controversy surrounding
Channel Ten’s The Bachelor AU. The extravagant show is brimming with bitchiness and
opulent dates, and let’s not forget the one poor sod with a six pack in the middle of it all.
I suppose the show isn’t missing much in terms of reality television and its shallow
conventions. The one thing it truly lacks?

Exhibit A: Diversity
It’s been a long running criticism of the show and its producers who have casted mainly
white women as serious contestants, with only a select few non-white Australian
women being included with only one condition: to never walk away with the heart of
the Bachelor. The show has been gracing our television screens since 2013 after the
soaring popularity of its US counterpart, it has become exceedingly clear that there is a
certain template one must follow to be considered a real candidate for the show. For
example, it is an absolute must that the typical Bachie contestant is tally, leggy and
blonde – a classic beautiful Aussie bombshell, if you will. With this being the general
stereotype, I suppose The Bachelor can be commended on one feat of diversity – they
also cast brunettes. Ignoring years of criticism about the systematic white-washing of Australian television, these warped principles were of course preserved in this years’
season where Matty J’s search for love was limited to only a fragment of women a very
multicultural and Indigenous Australia had to offer.

According to the Australia Bureau of Statistics, more than a quarter of the Australian
population has been born overseas, with China, India and the Philippines being among
the most popular countries of birth. However, if this were truly the case, then why are
we not seeing a more realistic representation of the many Indigenous and multicultural
peoples that share Australia on reality TV? How can we possibly make those who are not
the typical Aussie beach babe feel welcome when Channel Ten doesn’t even consider
women of different sizes, cultures and appearances on The Bachelor?
Even the bachelor himself has stated in this video that while he did have some input into
the kind of women he wanted on the show, he claims he never intended for every
contestant to be white. Without asking too much, Matty J told producers he preferred
“intelligent, kind and ambitious women who loved the outdoors” – characteristics
evident in women of all sizes and ethnicities. To compliment his statement, the show
dreadfully milked the chemistry between Matty J and Elora Murger who is Tahitian,
notorious for her scandalously late entrance with a fire dancing performance.
Subsequently, this sultry performance had earned her the title of the ‘sexy Exotic girl,’ a
contestant Channel Ten thought to be representative enough of other ethnicities.
Channel Ten’s choice in casting Elora and coaxing her into sexualising her ‘exoticness’
seemed to highlight the horrible trend in capitalising on women of colour for sensuality,
casting them as girls only worthy for flings and not marriage. Regardless, Elora’s casting
was not enough to erase Channel Ten’s lack of diversity when the show’s auditions were
surely brimming with a much more diverse group of women.

Having grown up with a multicultural heritage, I was always very conscious of how
different I looked to my girlfriends in school, many of whom were white Australians and
girls I felt were more beautiful than I was because of that. Television during my
childhood and developmental years were very much the same, with my favourite shows
lacking role models looked even remotely like me. As I’ve grown older, I had always hoped to finally see more multicultural and Indigenous representation in Australian
media and television, yet shows like The Bachelor keep popping up. In totally
disregarding an enormous portion of Australian women, Channel Ten has conveyed the
message that the standard they have put forth on the show is the kind of woman a
typical Australian man would want. In saying this, were there truly no ‘worthy’
candidates for viewing other than the slender white Australian model? What does this
mean for the modern Australian woman, whose size, skin and background is more
varied now in this century than ever? What does this mean for all the kids who deserve
to see themselves on television and wish for more representative role models, like I
had?

In a time where the call for cultural representation in television is mounting in
desperation, The Bachelor has systematically erased Australia’s history of immigration
and Indigenous cultures to the point where women can no longer resonate with the love
story Channel Ten has been trying to sell. As an Australian reality show in 2017, it’s time
for The Bachelor’s producers to wake up and celebrate the cultural diversity Australia is
known for.