Like the “good girl” I am, I’ve been refraining from the MAFS Australia spoilers until it released here in the UK. No easy feat, given the explosive nature of the show — though Channel 4 did soften my impatience slightly by offering screeners ahead of the release.
Of all the entertainment I cover, reality TV is my bread and butter. I can tolerate chaos, manipulation, even the occasional staged meltdown. But within minutes of the first episode, I had the ick.
Not because the contestants were particularly shocking, but because they sounded eerily familiar. The men on MAFS Australia didn’t sound like villains. They sounded like Reddit threads.
In confessional after confessional, grooms outlined the values they prioritise in a wife, the worst thing they could encounter at the altar (apparently a woman who isn’t thin), and what they need in a marriage. But all I heard was Andrew Tate this, incel commenter that, Reform-branded creep rhetoric everywhere.
Contestants don’t just hold sexist beliefs anymore; they now sound like the comment sections that incubate them. And that’s what makes it unsettling. The scariest thing about MAFS Australia isn’t the misogyny. It’s how normal the language now sounds.
Reality TV isn’t inventing misogyny anymore. It’s translating internet radicalisation into dinner-party dialogue.
Look, I know it’s been bad for a while. Last summer, I wrote about the manosphere creeping into series 12 of Love Island. A few weeks ago, I watched women doing the patriarchy’s work for them in Love Island: All Stars. And season 10 of Love Is Blind even managed to weaponise Pilates, when a man broke up with a stunning, slim woman because she didn’t work out every single day.
But dare I say it, this season of MAFS Australia feels worse.
Channel 4
Because now the quiet part is being said out loud, without embarrassment. Somehow, there’s no longer any shame attached to parroting manosphere ideology. It’s just… normal.
One groom is introduced by announcing: “Looks are massive for me — it’s not all about personality, surely.” Moments later, he cheerfully adds, “Fat people? No go.”
Sorry? These aren’t just preferences. They’re ideological talking points that have migrated from obscure corners of the internet into prime-time television.
These aren’t relationship styles, they’re relationship traps
Part of the reason these ideas travel so easily is that the language has been softened. The old misogyny was blunt. Women belong in the kitchen. Don’t get fat. Know your place. The new misogyny comes wrapped in pastel language: feminine energy, traditional values, high-value men.