Are you in your ‘golden years’ at 60?

What I’ve learned from one episode of The Golden Bachelorette

OK, I am far from a TV reviewer, so if you’re looking for a proper episode recap, I suggest going elsewhere. But this was too fun for me not to write about.

I am not a big lover of reality shows. But I’m not one of those people who claims their tastes lean too highbrow to ever go there, either. I’ve watched my share of Below Deck and The Great British Bake Off (does that qualify? Not sure, but I love it). I’ve never seen an episode of Love Island, but I have watched a fair few Bachelors and Bachelorettes over the years. I also thoroughly enjoyed the recent NZ show My Mum Your Dad, a group dating show where people in their 40s and 50s were matched by their young adult children. It sounds terrible, but it turned out to be surprisingly touching and wholesome and the kids were just delightful humans.

So when my sister invited me over on Sunday to watch the first episode of The Golden Bachelorette – a version of the famous franchise featuring participants in their 60s – I was in. This was going to be good! What a great idea, and about time, and won’t it be good to see post-menopausal women shown to be embracing life and sexuality and love etc etc.

So: we’re on the couch, ready to go. Opening credits, and here we have our Bachelorette. Her name is Joan Vassos, and she is 61. We see Joan walking through a field; Joan walking through the snow. Joan getting dressed in a golden gown (see what they did there) and golden stiletto sandals that made my feet ache in sympathy inside my sneakers. We hear the truly touching story of Joan’s husband, who died of pancreatic cancer. John sounds like a hard act to follow. Joan seems lovely. She’s lived, loved and experienced joy and loss.

Joan, it turns out, is already part of the Bachelor universe, having appeared in The Golden Bachelor last year. A man version of this show has already happened! This sparks an immediate flurry of Googling on the couch. It hasn’t been shown on TV in NZ – but why not? We need answers.  

The Golden Bachelor, it turns out, was a man called Gerry Turner. But you know what? There were some differences between the Golden Bachelor and the Golden Bachelorette.

First, The Golden Bachelor was 72. If there was such a thing as an age appropriate to being called ‘the golden years’ – this might be closer to it, do we think?

Second, as mentioned, Joan – 60 at the time, so twelve years Gerry’s junior – was one of the contestants. Wikipedia tells me that this was the most common age of the female contestants on that show, with a smattering of older women and just three older than Gerry.

The Golden Bachelorette didn’t get the same treatment though. Shelly, my sis, is yelling at the screen by the time the last few contenders disembark their limousines (or in one case, a horse) to meet Joan. “Where are the younger guys?!” she wants to know. She wants to see Joan paired with hot guys in their late 40s. Instead, the youngest of Joan’s suitors is just four years younger than her at 57, and he’s the only one under 60. The oldest is 69.

I think some younger men is a reasonable request, and a missed opportunity.  Joan, of course, looks like she could be in her 40s. She has that American reality-contestant appearance: she could be anywhere between 45 and 65. She is Hollywood thin: stick-like arms; all bone and sinew; perky boobs and implausibly flat stomach. Long, golden blonde waves (of course) and an unlined face that has us taking guesses at the procedures she has had done. “You realise we are body-shaming her”, I say to Shel.

We feel bad (sorry Joan; you do you, and down with the patriarchy), but also disappointed, as we speculate on whether Joan eats. Wouldn’t it be refreshing to see a woman with grey hair and a realistic body size on this show. Joan looks like any other Bachelorette contestant before her in her body-hugging dress and TV makeup and perfect teeth. Though she has got to be getting super sore feet from standing there for hours and hours.

Joan’s 24 potential love matches also all look like they could be in the movies. They’re a handsome bunch, very American-politician, and all tall – maybe Joan asked for that - but they are, at least, allowed to show signs of age. There’s grey hair, wrinkles and a range of body shapes and sizes. Men can have a belly and still be silver foxes. They do start to blend into one after a while – “this is boring”, says Shel – but there are some standouts, mostly due to wardrobe and/or annoying traits. There’s Pascal, who is French, prompting a bit of side-eye from the other contestants and speculation that he is faking the accent. There’s Kim, the retired navy captain who shows up in his uniform. There’s Jack, a caterer, who wears a pink jacket and sings My Way to Joan when he hops out of the limo. Make it stop.

After all the intros and backstories – there are a few tearjerky tales of lost spouses; I guess that makes them able to relate to Joan’s widowhood – we get into some one-on-one chats, and there are the usual cringey moments: there’s a truly terrible poem; an inexplicable race on what look like mobility scooters; gifts of chocolate and chicken soup (seriously) and lots of Joan talking about looking for her next adventure.

“What are you looking for?” asks one man who is lucky enough to get a one-on-one where they are not forced into a random activity. “Someone kind; a gentleman; someone ready for adventure”, Joan says, and my ears prick up. How I long for the next words out of her mouth to be “I really want to try a threesome” or “Here’s my sexual bucket list”. Sadly, if she said that, it was edited out. Joan gives her ‘first impression rose’ to Keith, who, she says, makes her “feel safe”. Oh Joan.

It looks like there will be plenty of opportunity for sexy time in future eps, though, goddess willing. After Joan has handed out many roses and jettisoned six of her potential lovers – by which time it must be near sunrise, surely - we see a preview of the rest of the season, showing all the Bachelor greatest hits: exotic locations, intense conversations, kisses, swimming pools, sunsets. I’m here for it all.

The term ‘golden years’ - mentioned multiple times - gives me the ick, especially when it is applied to people who are only a decade or so older than me. All the people I know in their 60s are vibrant participants in life, work and society, not sitting in retirement homes. So there’s definitely an ageist vibe about this. And there’s clearly some gendered ageism at play in how the men vs. the women are presented. You can only be a Golden Bachelorette if you are conventionally hot, thin and appear younger than we might guess you are, it seems.

On the other hand, it is good to simply see shows featuring older people - and only older people - in a context where we’ve only seen young people before. Joan and her stable of stallions (as one of the men described them, seriously) are the youngest of the Boomer generation, and we know they’re going to live another thirty years or more, most likely. So it’s about time we saw more content about them that isn’t just talking about how they’ve screwed everything up for other generations.

 I can’t wait for the GenX Bachelorette. Please let that be coming. But she’d be messier than Joan. She’d likely be divorced, for a start – no tidy widowhood for us – and she’d likely still be actively parenting. She’s also be peri-or newly menopausal, so she would have a lot less tolerance for bullshit than the serene Joan appears to have. And there’s no way they’d get her to wear those shoes.

Would you like more Golden Bachelorette episode recaps? Let me know! The Golden Bachelorette is still being aired in the US, but I’m doing my best to avoid spoilers as it airs here in NZ a month late. You can watch on Three on Sundays or on Three Now.