Last week, Victoria and I talked at length about the Bachelor(ette) and the Reality Dating Phenomenon. One aspect of this phenomenon is the sheer number of people The Bachelor jettisons into the spotlight, and the industry of influencers and general hot-people-about-town it creates. One of those people is 28-year-old Tyler Cameron, a former football player and general contractor from Jupiter, Florida, who rose to fame during Hannah Brown's season of The Bachelorette in 2019. Besides being one of the hottest men to ever grace the show, he was also known for standing up for Hannah, placing her at the center of conversations, and reminding other guys that this is Hannah’s experience, and that they needed to respect her decisions. Even though he was the runner-up on The Bachelorette, Tyler has stayed in the news pretty consistently, most notoriously for dating model Gigi Hadid.
And now, for some reason, Tyler has a book. It's called You Deserve Better: What Life Has Taught Me about Love, Relationships, and Becoming Your Best Self. The literal SECOND I knew that this book was a thing, I pre-ordered it. How could I not? The whole premise is absurd. I thought it would be silly and fun, and I would get background info on his time on The Bachelorette and also have a good topic to write about for this lovely little newsletter. As they say in football, "It's worth a shot." (I don't watch football.)
Reading You Deserve Better pretty much gives you the exact same experience of dating a straight man for about three months. You gain insight into his family life, past relationships, and life goals, but there’s still something missing. You haven’t really deepened your relationship in any real way, and maybe you haven’t even decided to be exclusive yet. It’s fun, you’re attracted to each other, and you’re not overthinking it. And then it’s over, and you’re sad but also kind of relieved, because something wasn’t quite clicking. I think this book definitely has its moments, and I’ll talk about a few of them below. But overall I couldn’t help but want more: either more about his time on the Bachelorette, more about his life, more...something. This book feels like it hasn't quite figured out what it wants to be yet, and I think the same can be said of the man who wrote it.
One of the reasons that Tyler became such a fucking phenomenon in a way that most contestants don't (at least not for positive reasons) is that he always stood up for Hannah and defended her choices. Okay, duh, is maybe what you're thinking, and good for you. But the bizarro, traditional-leaning Christian fantasy world of the Bachelorette does not typically produce a lot of men who are like this. During his season, he found a foil in a contestant named Luke P., who was very aggro, masculine, hyper-conservative and hyper-Christian. He got insanely jealous of everything Hannah did with other men, like bungee jumping in her underwear (which, by the way, is par for the course in The Bachelorette), and generally made the vibes in the house terrible. Tyler challenged him a lot, which led to good TV, but also a media frenzy about this "Woke Bae."
In You Deserve Better, Tyler devotes an entire chapter to how the media responded to what he was like on the show. It’s called How I Became An Accidental Feminist Icon:
As soon as that episode aired, the press started calling me a feminist icon. I was dubbed ‘Respectful Woke King’ and all these stupid nicknames. I am a feminist, of course, and believe that all genders should have equal rights in all ways. But even today, I don’t think anything I did or said was worthy of that much praise.
What truly surprised me about this is...his reaction! And how stupid he knows this “feminist icon” framing is, and how low the bar is for men! When I saw that this chapter was in the book, I was immediately annoyed, because I was not looking forward to reading about some dude talking about how great of a feminist he is, and capitalizing on his “woke points” or whatever. Color me happily surprised when he called out the insanity of it all, and instead dedicates the chapter to how easy it is to support and respect women and how everyone can do it. I mean this as a compliment: this chapter feels half-assed. It’s like when you have to do a work assignment that you don’t agree with but it’s your fucking jorb, so you do it anyway with bare minimum effort.
The other part of this book that really stuck with me is his chapter on navigating fame, What Fame Taught Me, especially the meteoric, overnight, straight-to-the-moon kind of fame that he experienced almost immediately from millions of people. (Truly, millions. He currently has 2.1 million followers on Instagram. This is nearly double what each of the last three Bachelor leads have!) He writes about being followed everywhere, and being photographed constantly, and the mean things that people write about any of the women he is spotted in public with. He talks about having a crash course in the optics of any situation through the lens of social media and public speculation. And although he has support now, when he was fresh off the Bachelorette he had nothing. Celebrity status without the support of the entourage of publicists, media consultants, image consultants, and social media managers that normally accompany this level of fame. What Fame Taught Me was honestly incredibly depressing and sad and made me think about how celebrity culture is garbage and fame is a curse.
Tyler leaving Hannah's apartment early in the morning, a veritable media frenzy ensued.
Overall, the book is a quick, easy read that I found more interesting as a treatise on the nature of reality TV, media, and fame than any one aspect of Tyler Cameron’s life. Although the best part about the book, in my opinion, were the chapters that were letters written about “The Real Tyler” from his dad, brothers, mentors, and friends. His high school guidance counselor, Mrs. P, writes an incredible letter. She opens it with: When I met Tyler, he was a mess. A true, true mess. A great start to an essay. She writes about helping him find his footing during high school, and how she remained fairly close to him after graduation. She took him out to eat on his twenty-sixth birthday because he didn’t want to celebrate because his dad was sick. She texted him after seeing him on the first episode of the Bachelorette and said “Tyler, throw those pants in the trash can!” Mrs. P is absolutely my favorite authority on Tyler, and probably anyone else for that matter.
Every once in a while someone will end up on The Bachelor/ette who isn’t an hour away from a full mental breakdown or trying to build up their Instagram following so they can pursue their music/acting/influencing career. Tyler is that guy, as far as I can tell. There was always something relaxed, easy, and genuine about his manner. The most endearing thing about him is that he doesn’t do that fake modest thing of pretending like he isn’t insanely hot anywhere in this book. He knows he’s hot, and he acknowledges it as a part of his life. At the end of the day I just want more of this energy in the world, especially from hot people.
We should all be Tyler Camerons.