Can Anyone Predict the (Quality of the Show) Age of Love?
Written by: Blondtgr, Special to CC2K
Have you noticed that in the past few years there have been a plethora of “experiment” reality TV shows? Joe Millionaire (where girls competed for a man they believed to be a millionaire and later found out they were duped), For Love or Money (where, ultimately, there was a choice between ‘love’ and money), and even shows like Big Brother (with many people trapped in one house with no entertainment but each other), have spawned a new sort of show that leaves viewers intrigued and also mildly disgusted.
The newest such show is perfect summer Monday night programming- Age of Love, a “scientific dating experiment” where a man must choose between twenty-somethings and forty-somethings. Now, this seems like an interesting premise for a show, IF it was done correctly. For example, for it to be an accurate experiment, he shouldn’t know their ages. Yet, they told him their ages upfront, which completely shocked him from the get-go. Also, the women would be evenly matched in intelligence, looks, personality, success, etc. This is also not the case as the twenty year olds have beautiful young bodies, yet they completely lack any sort of intelligence and are nauseatingly inarticulate. The forty year olds, however, are also gorgeous (thank you, cosmetic surgery), but they are intelligent and also highly successful women.
Now, you may be thinking that this is unevenly tipped in the forty-year olds’ favor. That would be incorrect. So far, this show has proven that men are shallow, and they really do care about age, no matter how much they say it is “just a number”. (Yet another reason to believe that this “experiment” is not accurate as believing this would be an incredibly depressing thing for us women! We can’t assume that all men are like this 30 year old tennis pro, certainly.) He was impressed by the forty-year old women he met, until they uttered the words, “Can you believe I’m 45?”Again and again, he was “let down” by the fact that the women he was meeting were all older than him.
When the twenty year olds entered the picture, he was thrilled to finally have prospects similar to the women he usually dates (he has only dated women younger than him). But when the forty year old women meet their much-younger competition, their faces instantly drop and they all become insecure- even though, overall, they are better than these young women in every way. Later, the 20 year olds talk about the “old women” and how much they must sag. They also comment many times on how they are of child-bearing age and how he “couldn’t have a family” with the 40 year olds, which is certainly not the case. It truly is disgusting to watch at times.
This show is really a strange commentary on dating in society- especially since you don’t know how the show has been edited, what the producers have urged the bachelor to do, etc. All I can do is continue to watch, and root for the real women on the show (the forty year olds). Hopefully, in the end he makes the choice that’s right for him. My bet? He’ll choose a twenty something after all and claim it is because he wants to have kids of his own, when in fact, its simply because he is looking for a hard body trophy wife. “Age of Love” is on Mondays at 9 pm on NBC.
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