Last night, on my way to Law and Order, I saw something I don't remember ever seeing on television before: a pimple.
Actually, there were several. They were on the face of a woman on The Bachelor. Her name was either Tina or Christina or Valentina or Heather. She had blonde hair, blondish with precise lines of darker blonde hair or what is also known as brown.
But this doesn't really matter. What matters is the pimple. The pimples. At first, I thought I was seeing things. Then I realized I was, and those things were pimples.
The television make-up wasn't covering them, wasn't making them invisible. I found this incredible as I was living under the impression that television make-up or any cosmetic that requires a co-signature to purchase could do anything. It could even out skin tone, brighten the complexion, transform a pepper-type nose into a pert little nose, clear up broken hearts. I know it can't make you look 10 pounds thinner because television adds 10 pounds, but it can remove that extra 10 pounds, at least from your face, so you look like yourself, your way-below-average-weight self.
My point is that the pimples were there. This woman did not seem to comprehend her role as a groundbreaker, a television first. She looked like an attractive woman (though not my type) with a couple of bumps. Maybe three. Four tops.
She looked like so many other attractive women, women with occasional pimples, the kind of women you see everyday. She looked an awful lot like the other women on the show, even though they were not displaying their skin problems.
At the climax (I guess) of the show, the Bachelor gives out a rose to each woman who has made it to the next round of televised dates. He slowly picks up each rose, one at a time, from a Pier I-like twiggish placemat, looks down at it, seemingly lost in thought. Then he looks up at the women. I think this is the Bachelor who is the grandson of the founder of Firestone Tires. What would his grandfather think of all this? Is this any way to sell tires? he might think.
Anyway, when he looks at the women, the directors, producers, writers, etc. knew this to be a good time to mix in shots of each woman, perched on these sofas, waiting to hear her name, some version of Tina or Heather.
The woman who had the pimples was there. By now they were cleared up. Who knows how much time had elapsed since the break-out and the perching. Days, weeks. Who knows the treatments she endured. The exfoliating, the ice, the Preparation H, which I read is good for drying up pimples.
Who could blame her for breaking out? The scene with the pimples was during a dinner with her family and this Bachelor. Her father called her "his little girl" while her mother and sister gamely made small talk while their every move was watched on television.
Well, maybe not their every move. Those pimples were not big at all but they were pimples, unseen by the television viewing eye up to now.
As someone who has broken out many, many times I momentarily considered this woman my hero. I felt validated anyhow. Me and my skin -- we don't have to hide anymore -- we are not freaks, we are not animals. We are human.
This is a reality show after all.
Reality came slamming down though. I mean she wasn't picked by the Bachelor. She didn't get a damn rose. When the Bachelor and she, the Unchosen, had their goodbye she bravely, confidently told him he was making a big mistake, �the biggest mistake of your life.� He sort of agreed. He said something, something, �maybe I am, but I'm just following my heart right now� something, something.
Ouch! That had to hurt considering that his heart was following the only three other women on the show. Yet, when he said it he really looked in her eyes (bluish-brownish with perfectly emphasized eyelashes, neutral eye make-up, well-waxed brows). He really looked at her face. He really looked at her skin. Maybe it was the first time he had seen her since the break-out and he didn't know those things clear up and she was perfect again.
Still, they might come back. She might get stressed out again or whatever. Whatever causes those things he doesn't know. The Bachelor might be thinking that if this does turn out to the biggest mistake he makes he can always watch the reruns of this particular episode of his life.
The question remaining though is was she unchosen because of the pimple? We'll probably never know.
I'll never know. I'm not watching that show again. This whole thing happened in the space of about four minutes, maybe five, in that time between show starts. When I clicked on the channel with the Bachelor, my cable company kindly popped up a little box of information about the show: the title and the time it runs. What caught my eye was that the show ran until 10:05. I was operating under the impression that the television world ran strictly in half hour or hour chunks. This was my first first of the evening, pre-pimple. In some of the Bachelor-watching minutes I wondered if we will get our clocks reset so that 8:17 becomes as meaningful as 8:30 or 10:00.
After the choosing or the unchoosing, I was glad to finally get to Law and Order, to the perfectly segmented and organized world of crime committed by perfectly skinned freaks, like you and me.
DAH-DAH.