Boer zoekt vrouw, the long running dating programme for farmers in search of a wife, attracts more than 5 million viewers each week. Why, asks philosopher Eva-Anne Le Coultre in Trouw.

Boer zoekt vrouw is about finding love, insists presenter Yvon Jaspers. But Le Coultre, an avid watcher of the programme herself, thinks authenticity seems to be the recurring theme, or rather people’s interpretation of it. She jotted down a few scenes in which to find – or not to find – yourself determines the person’s success in netting a spouse.
In one of the programmes Sonja is being sent home. She’s crying: ‘I don’t understand it. I have been myself all this time.’
Jaspers: ‘Yes, you’ve been honest all along.’ As if ‘being yourself’ is a guarantee of success, Le Coultre writes.
Farmer Frank is also looking for authenticity. With the stable as a romantic backdrop he says to Judith: ‘You just have to show me your truth. Can you do that?’
Judith: ‘Well, perhaps not completely, it frightens me a little’.
Frank: ‘But this is you, right?
Complete picture
Yvonne, a guest at farmer Gijsbert’s farm, hopes she can ‘be herself’ but admits to being insecure. This does not go down well with Gijsbert who says she has every chance to be herself but that she ‘needs to grab that opportunity.’ Gijsbert, obviously a stickler for fairness, can only make an informed choice if he has ‘the complete picture.’
Yvonne fails to make the spontaneity grade and is sent off. But what if she’s just shy, asks Le Coutre. Isn’t that part of her personality? What it really means to be yourself on Boer zoekt vrouw, she says, is to be fun and spontaneous. If you are grumpy, shy or angry you plainly cannot not be yourself.
Romantic
The idea behind authenticity comes from the romantic notion that we possess a well of pureness deep within ourselves. Once we discover that well we will be happy, Le Coultre explains. According to Jean Jacques Rousseau we should listen to our inner voice which is all but drowned out by the corrupting influences of culture and our need to be loved and admired. Our self love has turned into selfishness and greed.
Boer zoekt vrouw is a perfect example of Rousseau’s natural state: here is the simple life, just a man and a woman working hard and loving each other, far away from the moral rot of the big city.
Farmer Gijsbert is a romantic. It’s Feelings that count, he says. And so he chooses a woman who lives far away and has a child. It has to be said that Gijsbert comes with a condition: the woman has to come and live on the farm so he is no stranger to practicality.
Role playing
The romantic image that Gijsbert and others have of themselves hides a fundamental truth, Le Coutre says. Humans are not romantic beings. According to German philosopher Helmuth Plessner man is not corrupted by culture; it is the making of him. Man is an animal which ‘has broken free from the animal kingdom’. The price we pay is that we can never be truly part of nature again. Man can only be himself if he finds a role to play, like mother, son or policeman and while these roles which will not coincide completely with the self they will show bits of it.
The contestants on Boer zoekt vrouw are in no-mans land, says Le Coultre. They have no clear role, no script, no words. They have to find a role for themselves and so they become characters in a play.
Spoiled
Farmer Richard, on his German mega farm, takes on the blustery, I don’t care what happens persona. But he has a secret: he is in love with Annemieke, one of the contestants, and has visited her outside the programme. The other candidates don’t stand a chance. He has spoiled the drama and presenter Yvon Jaspers is angry when he owns up. But Richard has found a mate and Annemieke has found her role as farmer’s wife, surely the object of the programme.
The next day on De Wereld draait door, Jaspers piqued by a comment on the programme, said: ‘Football is a game, Boer zoekt vrouw isn’t’.