Watching The Bachelorette: Seriously Frivolous – Frivolously Serious?

Watching The Bachelorette is one of those guilty pleasures that we do not list in our CV―unless we end up writing a scholarly article about it, as I did for the recent issue of the Canadian Review of American Studies. Yes, reality TV shows are frivolous, often formulaic, and yet we cannot completely disregard them. Millions of people tune into these shows, including many a student, as political scientist David R. Dreyer observed: “Regardless of how many academic books and journal articles are assigned in an undergraduate class in a given semester, some students will likely spend more time watching reality television than reading.”