A few years ago when Bacheleor-esque reality shows were all the rage, one stood out for me in particular, Average Joe. The premise of the series was like most, you take a beautiful woman, often a model, give her twenty suitors to choose from, have them do outlandish and somewhat humiliating activities to get her attention and if they were lucky they might get to make out with her in the hot tub. Unlike the other reality shows, however, the men the former model had to pick from were average. And I must point out the show used average in the broadest sense, ranging from mildly attractive to a slovenly mass of hair and fat or pocked skin and bone.
Seeing what she had to choose from the model would politely greet her suitors before retiring to her room where she dramatically collapsed on her bed and bursts into tears (as if this is a fate worse than death) or cursed the producers for lying to her. As she gets to know the men, however, their cute and awkward personalities start to come out and to her surprise she finds herself falling for them! But just as she is able to digest her unattractive beaus there’s another twist. The producers, showing some mercy, throw a bunch of macho obnoxious jocks into the mix. The Joes (looking fatter and uglier than ever) are dismayed, the beauty is annoyed and slightly intrigued by her new visitors, and the jocks are too busy admiring their own bodies to pay anything but their rockin’ abs much attention.
Finally as the show progresses and the group is whittled down, the beauty is forced to choose between the average Joe and the jock. She has a much better connection with the average Joe and the jock has a much better body, a hard choice isn’t it? It comes down to the dramatic finale and she calls each one of them out for perhaps the last time. As always I’m on the edge of my seat, convinced that she will choose the average Joe but with tears in her eyes she bids him farewell and flies off into the sunset with her jock.
This scenario played out exactly the same throughout every season of the show. We’d root for the Average Joe, she’d choose the jock. Finally, one beauty gave her Average Joe a “maybe”. It wasn’t a ring, or even a fake reality show commitment but a promise to stay friends and see what developed. As far as I know, nothing ever did. The producers, probably realizing that was as good as it was going to get, made that the last season.
I realized today that I was the Average Joe. This year I finally got my “maybe” from my own beauty. Yet like so many Joes I was “eliminated” not because of who I was but for what I was…average. I was given twigs with which to create that spark and ignite some fiery passion, while my “competitors” were given flame throwers. I always hoped that once in a while the beauties did choose the beasts, and that what was inside someone (good or bad) could offset anything you saw on the outside (good or bad). I’ve finally started to lose faith in this myth.
I remember an episode of the series when the Jocks sabotaged a date between the Average Joe and the beauty by shooting a hole in the boat the two were on. And I remember how helpless the Joe felt as his boat sank and his date was ruined. He joined the many other average fish in the sea while the beauty furiously walked out of the pond and into the arms of the jock, her anger quickly turning into unbridled passion. It broke my heart to see it happen to him, and it kills me to have it happen to me. Yet part of me still holds out hope that the Average Joe wins in the end...in fact, I'm counting on it.
