Ben Is Bad Vibes

Photo by: Eugene Gologursky/Bravo

I got some unexpected attention on my previous essay — thank you to everyone who read it, and hi to my new subscribers! This free Substack is a place where I write essays, or sometimes funny listicles, usually about reality TV. (But occasionally random stuff like the purgatory that are electric-toothbrush-minutes.)*

For this essay, I wanted to zero in on a topic that I’m seeing debated a lot on Threads: Is Ben a misogynist or simply direct? You can probably guess where I netted out based on the title.

I’ll get this out of the way — 

I don’t think Ben is (again, necessarily) an abuser. (Should I change the name of this newsletter to “Not Necessarily An Abuser”?) But I do think he subconsciously sees women as less than men, and that seeps out in the ways he interacts with them. Allow me to build my case.

What initially perked my ears up was Ben’s confrontation with Bailey after her “joke” at Amanda’s birthday dinner bombed. After weeks of hearing the story about how Ben and Amanda went skinny dipping in Italy, Bailey said — while Ben was going on about Amanda’s eyes and smile, mind you — “Ben’s gonna talk about how he definitely wants to sleep with you… I know the story.”

Make no mistake — It was a bad joke, phrased poorly, and she botched it. In fact, it poured ice water on the whole mood of the dinner. If I were Bailey, I’d be replaying this comment in my head every night at 3 a.m. until I die.

But I found it interesting how Ben dealt with it. When the guys are recapping the dinner, Ben is confused. He’s mumbling. He says, “I don’t know what’s going on, that’s the weirdest f*cking circle of saying something nice I’ve ever been involved in.”

He expresses incredulity that Bailey would imply that “I want to fuck my mate’s missus,” and the guys dissolve into laughter. Ben even chuckles too. He says “I can’t deal with you guys,” laughing, and walks away. Notice what he doesn’t do: He doesn’t say, “Guys, come on, this is serious.”

I have seen people say that Ben talks to Bailey the way he talks to other men and it’s being viewed as aggressive because he’s not talking down to her. I disagree. He laughs it off with the men; he gets all serious with women.

See, when he talks to Bailey, he is not laughing. And to an extent, I get it — she’s the one who actually said the out-of-pocket comment. Maybe it took him some time to process. However, interspliced with his confrontation with Bailey, he tells the camera in his interview that because Amanda is “in the friend zone,” he feels safe to be flirty with her. He explains that when Bailey said that comment, he got nervous: “Does it look like that? is everybody thinking that?”

Oh, so it’s okay to purposely flirt with your mate’s missus, but god forbid anyone pick up on it.

Then, during their actual conversation, Bailey apologizes (which I can admit left something to be desired because she just says, “I apologize if it’s not my joke to make”). But Ben keeps hammering her with, “I just don’t think you’re joking. I think there’s something going on here.” She denies that there’s anything bigger at play and he keeps asking. He even asks her if she’s jealous. We as the viewer know the answer is yes, obviously — but what does he get out of having her admit her crush? Right, he gets to publicly embarrass her.

He then tries to cut her off and leave while she’s apologizing. Even Mia, who is watching this all go down, says Ben stormed off. Ciara says (jokes?), “Ben got anger issues,” and Mia agrees.

The very next episode, the house plays spin-the-bottle and Ben jokes about married people having to follow the same spin-the-bottle rules as everyone else. So he’s still making these jokes (“jokes”?) about hooking up with Amanda, but if anyone notices it, it’s a problem.

Case in point… an episode or two later, when Amanda apparently jokes to Sabrina off-camera that Ben is in love with her. At golf, Ben takes Amanda aside to tell her that he didn’t appreciate the comment and that she should apologize to Sabrina. Again, was it a weird thing to say? Definitely, and not appropriate. Upon re-watching, I actually thought Ben’s tone was pretty gentle — and believe me, I went in there looking for reasons to say he was scolding her. This time, though, it was now how he said it but what he said that rubbed me wrong.

Ben tells Amanda, “I’m positive and give a lot of compliments out and I know you’ve had a tricky start to the summer,” but it doesn’t mean anything deeper than that. He says, “I want to squash this because it keeps coming up.” Right. You know what would be the most effective way of squashing this recurring plot point? Stop doing it. But rather than change his behavior, it’s the women’s fault for pointing it out.

To quote the great philosopher Chief Keef, that’s that shit I don’t like.

I don’t even want to get into the Sabrina of it all, because upon re-watching I think that Ben’s visibly less-than-enthused energy toward her could be due to the fact that she keeps trying to push their relationship milestones on camera (asking him for a smooch in the middle of a conversation, forcing his hand into talking about her visiting Australia at the Soft Bar launch, also forcing his hand to recount how she said the next girl he’d bring home would be the girl he’s marrying). I can give him the benefit of the doubt that he was just caught off-guard, and is probably still trying to play it cool like he didn’t have a girlfriend the entire time he was on the show so he doesn’t get axed.

If I really drill down and strip away the tone, which I didn’t like but I can acknowledge is subjective, I’m left with the content. And the content is that he wants to be able to flirt with Amanda and have nobody remark on it; when the men laugh about it he joins in, but when the women try to joke about it he feels the need to put them in their place. It gives me bad vibes, and I have a feeling if he continues on the show we’ll see this kind of bias come out more and more. But I think he’s boring and lied about having a girlfriend so I don’t particularly want to see him on the show.

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*I’ve been struggling with what to do with this newsletter — keep it strictly reality TV takes, just whatever’s on my mind, something else? So if you have thoughts, let me know!

Upcoming shows: I’ll be hosting Spritz & Giggles at the Motto Hotel in Chelsea on Thursday at 8pm! You can still get tickets here.

What I’m reading: The House Built on Alligator Bones. Really good Southern gothic with evocative descriptions and twists and turns I didn’t see coming.