Here for the Wrong Representation: The Misuse of Diversity in the Bachelor Franchise

Season Nineteen of The Bachelorette (2022) proved to be one of the most "dramatic seasons ever." Deviating from the show's typical format of having one bachelorette, this season featured two bachelorettes, ICU nurse Gabby Windey and pilot Rachel Recchia, sharing the same pool of potential suitors. Throughout the season, fans unearthed "dirt" on multiple contestants, but the most notable includes a racist high school yearbook photo in which white contestant Erich Schwer donned Blackface. Bachelor fans waited with bated breath for the franchise to hold Erich, Gabby's final pick and fiancé, accountable at the live post-show reunion, but that moment never came. Instead, the franchise spotlighted a text message conversation between Erich and his former girlfriend in which he describes that he applied to be on the show for a career change.

Alt text: Bachelorette star Erich Schwer pictured in blackface and a wig resembling an afro with a direct quote from him, "It was swell" from a high school yearbook.

This refusal to acknowledge Schwer's racist past sparked outrage from fans, past contestants, and former leads. Former contestant of both The Bachelorette and Bachelor in Paradise Thomas Jacobs expressed his frustration on Instagram: "To have a scenario like this and to just not even bring it to light, especially after everything that's happened bringing us to this point over the last three years . . . it's pretty disappointing."1 Rachel Lindsay, former Bachelorette and the first Black lead of The Bachelorette, also critiqued the franchise's strategic silence on the matter, arguing that "they really missed the mark on a necessary and important conversation that was initially not conveyed. This was an opportunity for @Erich_Schwer to put action to his IG post rather than hide behind it. Unfortunately not all of us can hide in the same way when we are so highly offended by it."2 The show's refusal to invite Erich into a discussion about his Blackface added salt to the wound that emerged from how former host and executive producer, Chris Harrison, minimized and excused photos of former contestant Rachael Kirkconnel dressed in Antebellum garb at a plantation-themed ball and in costume as a Native American woman with a headdress and short dress for Halloween.

Alt text: Rachael Kirkconnell posing in Antebellum garb in a selfie with two friends (left), in a group picture surrounded by other girls in Antebellum dresses (middle), and in a Halloween costume as a Native American woman (right).

In all honesty, I was an avid viewer of The Bachelor franchise. I loved watching Bachelor Fantake recaps on YouTube. I consumed every morsel of dirt found on the contestants in The Bachelor subreddit. I felt envious when I never had the opportunity to cross paths with any former contestants like so many other fans. Being a feminist, anti-racist scholar, I always received questionable looks and disapproving reactions to my obsession. These reactions were perfectly understandable given that the franchise has  a misogynist and racist history, but I believed that the franchise might actually make amends and change for the better after their 2020 statement on how the franchise "can and will do better to reflect the world around [them] and show all of its beautiful love stories."3 I wanted to give the franchise another chance and I did, only for it to protect whiteness, as seen with Erich.

Alt text: Diversity statement from the executive producers of The Bachelor

While the franchise has increased their diversity in casting, it still refuses to engage in substantive changes such as thoroughly checking each contestant's history and publicly stated viewpoints. The increase of diverse representation is a step forward, but we cannot disregard the ways that the franchise has used people of color for social capital. Sociologist Nan Lin defines social capital as "investment in social relations with expected returns in the marketplace," a statement neatly summed up by The Bachelor and its use of diversity as a marketing and narrative device.4 The executive producers published the above diversity statement during a time of increased protests demanding justice for George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, as well as increased violence against Asian Americans at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The timing suggests that The Bachelor franchise likely hoped to avoid completely alienating their viewers of color, a strategy they likely hoped would translate into increased numbers or, at the bare minimum, stable numbers. Much like "rainbow capitalism" where some corporations brand themselves as allies despite financially supporting homophobic and transphobic politicians, The Bachelor franchise uses people of color to appear not racist while crafting narratives that maintain harmful stereotypes.5

The treatment of former contestant Abigail Heringer illustrates how the franchise creates narratives that simultaneously signal the franchise's supposed virtues and uphold harmful stereotypes. Heringer, a biracial white and Korean woman, appeared on Season Twenty-Five of The Bachelor (2021) as a potential suitor of the first Black male lead, Matt James. Abigail is deaf but can vocally communicate and hear using her cochlear implant. She quickly became a fan favorite when she opened up to James the first night about the likelihood of her children also being deaf and how her father's exit after her diagnosis contributes to her concerns that she may not be a worthy or desirable person. James assures her that he admires her and that he sees a future with her. James later awarded her the coveted First Impression Rose. However, the viewers hardly see her throughout the rest of her time on the season.

In fact, the audience sees Abigail only for a fraction of the total screen time. This is unfortunately a pattern that extends to most contestants of color. To better understand how the franchise features white contestants over non-white ones, we can look to the Bachelor Data Instagram account, which provides breakdowns and infographics on various aspects of the show including screen time, keywords, and Instagram follower growth. In the first infographic, featured screen time for Episodes 1-6 is organized by the contestant and color-coded based on their race.6 Abigail received a little over 10 minutes of screen time, whereas the four contestants with the most screen time were eliminated before Abigail. Interestingly, the most screen time was allotted to white contestant Sarah Trott, who accrued almost triple Abigail's screen time despite quitting the show in Week 3. In addition to Abigail, her fellow contestants of color received similar treatment. First runner-up Michelle Young and second runner-up Bri Springs both received less than white contestants Victoria Larson and Anna Redman, who were both eliminated in Week 4. Notably, Bri received a similar amount of time as Michelle despite Michelle's introduction in Week 3.

Alt text: Infographic on featured screen time of Season 25 Bachelor contestants by time and race from Bachelor Data.

To further illustrate the franchise's bias against contestants of color, Bachelor Data provides a breakdown of casting versus screen time of Episodes 1-6.7 Many viewers celebrated and praised the producers for Matt's season being the most diverse season with 65% of contestants being non-white. However, the franchise falls short when contrasting the representation of non-white contestants with white ones. White contestants only comprised 35% of the cast, but were overrepresented in screen time at a whopping 54%. The contestants of color received less than half the screen time despite being the majority of the cast.

Alt text: Infographic comparing the racial demographics of the Season 25 Bachelor cast versus their screen time from Bachelor Data.

Abigail's representation on the show is not only quantitatively, but qualitatively different from white contestants. We do not see Abigail again until Week 7 when she raises concerns to James that she has yet to receive a date. James explains that he did not select her for a one-on-one date because he wanted to explore other relationships, after which he sent her home. Unlike some of the white contestants, Abigail's whole time on the season is reduced to three key interactions, the first two of which happen in the first episode: night one's one-on-one conversation with James, receiving the First Impression Rose, and being sent home. This limited screen time does not allow us the joy of learning about Abigail as a person outside of her disability. We learn about other contestants' history with relationships and love, their expectations of Matt as a future husband, and their hobbies. Yet all we learn about Abigail is her insecurities.

The franchise's lack of race- and ability-conscious editing hides interesting aspects of Abigail, such as her great fashion sense, goofy personality, and/or her commitment to being an outspoken advocate for deaf people — aspects we can only learn if we follow her on Instagram. I am in no way advocating that the producers should have manipulated James into asking Heringer on a pity date. However, I am suspicious that the show did not even show glimpses of the two flirting on group dates or other one-on-one conversations before the rose ceremony. By tokenizing Abigail, the show patted itself on the back for being socially conscious for having a deaf, biracial Asian woman win the prize of the First Impression Rose (a first for the franchise), while also reinforcing the narrative that disabled women are not as desirable as able-bodied women. The treatment of Abigail highlights the key problem of representation as the answer to racism, ableism, and other systems of oppression: historically and systemically marginalized people are rarely valued outside their identity. Simply put, marginalized people are only valuable for the ways they can contribute to diversity via a checkbox or the narrative through dramatic tension, but not for who they are as people with hopes and dreams.

Does this mean seeking representational equity is bad? No, it can be a great first step into race-conscious and other marginalized/minoritized group-conscious casting. But it cannot be the only step. The Bachelor franchise and so many other reality television series — like Survivor, Big Brother, and Real World — must reckon with how they portray contestants who are not historically represented well in media and popular culture. It is not enough to have representation. Producers and editors must examine how their content can reinforce stereotypes and other dominant narratives in which marginalized people are portrayed negatively while generally framing contestants with systemic privilege more positively and with far greater nuance. For example, The Bachelor often perpetuates that Black women, and sometimes other women of color, are always angry and the aggressors. We see this in Matt's season when Sarah felt she was bullied by the contestants of color: Katie Thurston, another white contestant and the subsequent season lead of The Bachelorette, came to her rescue and tried to protect her, appearing as a nuanced savior. How differently would audience opinions differ if the show highlighted individual interactions with Matt during group dates, rather than sleekly reducing or grouping people into narratively convenient and dramatically manipulatable types? 

These narratives carry outside the season as well. Consider how Rachel Lindsay shares an unforgettable moment on her season in which she was labeled as "angry" despite the lack of evidence suggesting that emotional state. After rejecting her runner-up, Peter Kraus, Rachel reveals how Chris Harrison stereotyped her: "When I came back from commercial break, the host said to me, 'Rachel, you seem angry.' I looked and I said, 'That's a strong word.' And he said, 'Well, you seem upset.' I hadn't raised my voice, I hadn't yelled, I hadn't said any type of curse word."8

If increased representation of marginalized contestants perpetuate and maintain narratives of "the angry Black woman," "the undesirable disabled woman," and many others, how then can representation be the change that the franchise needs?

Although Abigail received some redemption by being the first contestant to enter Season Seven of Bachelor in Paradise, the editors and producers still failed to provide a positive narrative. Instead, we see her framed as cold and as refusing to return the affections of a perfectly good man. In reality, however, Abigail and Noah Erb are very much in love and love being goofy with each other as seen in their Instagram stories and TikTok videos. At the end of the day, if The Bachelor franchise is indeed about love, how remarkable it is that we rarely see marginalized contestants in love and being loved.

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Dr. Anne Y. Van (she/hers) is a lecturer in the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department at The Ohio State University. Her research interests include popular culture, beauty, and women of color feminisms.

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