I have a confession to make. This is not easy for me to admit. It is something I have lived with for years and I simply cannot bear to carry this burden in silence any longer. I, Nicholas Edmond Charleton III, watch the Bachelor. Nay, I am hopelessly addicted to the show. I know it seems out of character for someone who cultivates such a tough, masculine image, but it is the honest truth. It all began with a few ironic viewings with a group of friends – we would watch and make jokes about the idiotic contestants and the foolish underlying premise of the show. Soon, however, I found myself pulled in to the intense drama. Contestants seemed so desperately in love after only a few moments with the prized Bachelor/Bachelorette that they were willing to lie, cheat, and backstab in order to get a rose at the end of the week (and move one step closer to “true love”). I was hooked. Just like the poor, lonely souls on the show, I had fallen head over heels for something that initially seemed so farfetched and I simply could not resist coming back, week after week.
Why am I telling you all of this? Why would I be so willing to expose one of my deepest and darkest secrets to each of the seven readers of Ultra Vires? It is not just because the first step to recovery is admission (I have no plans for rehabilitation any time soon, considering a new season just kicked off). I am coming forward because there has been an injustice that has been weighing on my mind since I became aware of it late last year and I may be the only person in the world who is able to right this wrong. I may be the only one with the requisite combination of garbage TV knowledge, law school-induced cynicism, and a distinct inability to get over a grudge. Trust me; the Venn diagram of those things has very little overlap. So, here goes nothing.
On the last season of the Bachelor Canada, there were 25 attractive young women who, for whatever reason, had chosen to take their search for love to the next, most humiliating level. Among these lovely ladies, there was a contestant named Gabrielle who quickly emerged as the ‘flirtatious and evil’ one (a standard character archetype, if you are familiar with essentially any reality TV – or reality, for that matter). Gabrielle pretty much fit the bill for the show – early 20s, attractive, relatively fun – but one thing that really set her apart from the rest of the bunch was her bright future as a lawyer. Gabrielle proudly listed her occupation as “Law Student” on the Bachelor website and she was never shy about sharing this tidbit with the rest of the cast, including Brad Smith, the eponymous Bachelor.
Generally, a sassy law student with questionable morals would definitely garner my support. I was especially excited when I heard that this particular sassy law student was currently attending our own University of Toronto law school! But alas, something was amiss.
I would never pretend to know every student currently attending the law school – I barely know the people currently living in my apartment (Justin McLarty). Still, I have been told that I am reasonably gregarious and, as I have just confessed, I have a secret passion for the Bachelor series; a secret passion that burns with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns. Thus, you can imagine my surprise when I saw her bio yet had heard nothing about this minor celebrity walking the warped halls of Flavelle.
I began my search.
I combed through Stalkerbook and even Googled, but turned up no records of Gabrielle’s attendance at our beloved institute. Nothing that would suggest that she had shared awkward experience of getting to a space in the middle of the Moot Court Room, no evidence that she had ever had the displeasure of sitting in one of the squeaky seats in BLH, not even a shred that showed her attendance at one of the meetings of the “Let’s Play Board Games” club. I eventually came to the sad realization that Gabrielle had lied.
Now, let’s get one thing straight: I am not necessarily against lying. I am okay with the kind of small-to-medium-sized fibs and fabrications that keep you out of an argument with your loved one or keep your parents from knowing that you slept in a bank; everyone has stretched the truth on a resume to get a job or on a first date to get a second one. In fact, I am probably more pro-lying than most responsible citizens ought to be. Nevertheless, what I find truly unacceptable is a bad lie. The kind of lie that is so easily uncovered yet is broadcast to literally dozens of people on Canadian television.
This lie was of the special sort that could mislead an impressionable (hypothetical) young man watching at home, deceiving him into falling head-over-heels for a sultry law student (hypothetically). Indeed, a tale this tall could single-handedly shatter a nation’s perceptions of the wholesome morality of a show centred around 25 women who are simultaneously dating a man and having their every movement tracked for the voyeuristic enjoyment of viewers at home in order to find true love. True love.
What’s more, Gabrielle’s lie was so woefully misguided that I am not actually sure whether it enrages me or depresses me. Any person that has spent a moment in law school – especially at U of T – should know that being a law student does anything but make you an attractive potential life partner. We are a soulless, dour, and cynical bunch (if you do not agree, please note that you are reading a 1000-word diatribe in our school’s newspaper haranguing a woman for lying on reality television). Plus, when we graduate we will either be too consumed by articling to give the former Bachelor/Bachelorette, and current loves-of-our-lives, the attention they surely deserve, or we will be unemployed and much too debt-ridden to live lavishly on the meagre salary of a CFL player or children’s hospital event planner (real jobs). I have it on good authority that Gabrielle could not have chosen a less attractive fake occupation. As someone who regularly pretends to be a forest fire fighter and/or a professional skydiver, I can attest that even people who worked their tails off to earn the honour of going to U of T law refuse to publicly admit what they do with their days. We are all very impressed with ourselves for getting here but we are all also smart enough to realize that we are probably the only ones who are.
While Manti Te’o or Lance Armstrong may go down in many books as this year’s most heinous liar, Gabrielle Dipersico will stand out for me. Ms. Dipersico was able to pull off something somehow more improbable than finding love on television. In a single line on her biography, this young lady sullied the only 3 things I still hold dear in this world: the Bachelor, law school, and lying.
