The World's Most Eligible Bachelor

Phase 3: Swimsuit Competition

It turned out that lunch was catered for us since we had just met Harry. He was planning on trying to mingle for the whole afternoon so he could get to know each of us a little. I couldn't imagine the pressure of trying to pick several women to send home after knowing them for only a day. That wasn't how love worked. It was one of the reasons I had never been interested in Most Eligible Bachelor, because the situations were too contrived to let real love happen over the course of time. Now that I was here and had met Harry - although he seemed untouchable by the fact that he was a world-wide superstar - and the other women, it was scary. 

Scary, because for the first time, I realized that people were going to get hurt. Sitting at home, watching this unfold on the television screen, viewers were detached and could trick themselves into thinking these people were just actors. Or thinking that, once someone was sent home, they would happily go back to their normal lives. It was simply out of sight, out of mind. But women legitimately had their hearts broken season after season, after being manipulated into thinking that they had the best chance of winning the bachelor's heart when he was actually trying to choose between so many people.

I'd been processing the scenario since Harry first appeared, and although part of me was still in shock - like, a big part of me - I could see the potential for so many things to go wrong. 

From my understanding, in the previous seasons of MEB, the bachelors only had limited amounts of time with the women, only when they went on dates or other planned activities. The fact that Harry was spending a day and a half of unstructured time with us was apparently a big deal. Still, everyone seemed overly eager to get his attention, not considering the fact they had a generous amount of time to at least make an impression. Those who were sitting close enough to talk to him at lunch monopolized his attention the whole time, and those who weren't close enough were whispering about it to the women near them and casting pouty looks in his direction.

Alcohol was flowing freely, with waiters coming around every ten minutes, it seemed. I had refused a drink at least seven times, and then finally went for a small glass of wine to help calm my nerves if nothing else.

When lunch had been cleared away, Harry stood up and addressed all of us. "I don't know about you, but I'd like to check out the pool. Have any of you taken a dip yet?" 

He suggested we meet poolside in half an hour. I wasn't sure what to think. Maybe he legitimately loved sun and swimming, but part of me felt like this was the swimsuit competition in the Miss America pageant, a chance for him to see what was underneath the clothes we were currently wearing. Was he planning on using this as one of his primary criteria for choosing who would stay? 

I changed into the two-piece that Allegra had practically forced me to buy. It looked good on me - I couldn't argue with that. Regardless, the cover-up was pulled over my head because I wasn't ready to flash everything to a bunch of strangers. I fished out a pair of matching flip flops and as I slid my left foot in, I noticed that the polish was chipping. "Shoot, I'm going to have to re-paint them later," I grumbled to myself. And then I laughed, thinking that Allegra had succeeded in brainwashing me with her standards of beauty. To be fair, my toenails did look nice polished in Essie Come Here coral. I could see myself wearing open-toed sandals for work, as long as they looked professional.