Bachelor Nation

by Amy Kaufman

  Robinson’s experience speaks to why so many applicants are nervous about going on the show: the likelihood that something they do on television will affect their reputation in their chosen field. So many former participants I emailed said they didn’t want to talk to me because they wanted to distance themselves from the franchise in an effort to maintain their careers.

  “I’ll be honest, I’ve tried (and sort of accomplished) staying away from all things Bachelor-related since my last run,” two-time Bachelor Brad Womack very politely responded to me when I reached out to him about an interview. “It’s not that I have a bad taste in my mouth about the experience; in fact, in many ways I thoroughly enjoyed it. I just simply want to focus on my career and am desperately wanting anonymity.”

  Ben Flajnik, who was a winemaker when he became the Bachelor, has also tried to distance himself from the franchise. These days, he’s holding down a corporate job at Yelp and has launched his own distilled spirit, Fernet Francisco.

  “As many people as there are that love the show, my spirit is a niche bar product, and industry folk that work in bars and restaurants are not watching the show,” Flajnik said. “If they get some association that this is the former Bachelor’s fernet, most of them will say, ‘Fuck that guy. He’s probably a douche because he did that thing.’”

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  But there are plenty of Bachelor stars who decide to never return to their old jobs after the show. Andi Dorfman, who was billed as a prominent defense attorney when she was cast as The Bachelorette, decided to leave her position after her season ended. She moved from Georgia to New York, where she wrote her first book, It’s Not Okay: Turning Heartbreak into Happily Never After, in 2016.

  In the book, Dorfman acknowledges that a “major reason” she was even selected to be on the show was because of her job, which producers told her provided “great packaging material.”

  “While some women set themselves apart with tragic stories, dramatic pasts or single mother status, I had my job,” she wrote. “Other than that, I was pretty much just your run-of-the-mill single woman.”

  Because her career was such a big plot point on the show, Dorfman said that fans frequently come up to her on the street and ask why she went on reality television when she had a respectable job—and why she abandoned it when the TV stint ended.

  “I find myself feeling incredibly defensive and insecure when these questions get flung my way,” she admitted in the book. “What I really want to say in response is: ‘Fuck off! Are you still working your first job? Oh, you’re not? How dare you make a career change?’”

  She goes on to vent about the fact that, in her opinion, no one is above reality television—and that her “status as an attorney” didn’t make her “superior.” She went on the show, she explained, because she was tired of being so “responsible.” She wanted to be “reckless” for once in her life. And she hasn’t returned to law because, even though she enjoyed the work, she didn’t enjoy the pay—$57,000 for 60 hours of work a week. Apparently, she’s making more than that now, though it’s not entirely clear how; her second book was just released, however.

  Books, television shows, advertising partnerships—these are all the new opportunities that can arise after you are a participant on The Bachelor. But choosing which gigs to take can be treacherous. Let’s take an obvious example: Dancing with the Stars. The ABC show has become home to so many Bach castoffs, including Melissa Rycroft, Trista Sutter, Jake Pavelka, Sean Lowe, and Nick Viall. It’s an easy way to make some money immediately following a run on The Bachelor—and it keeps the fame train moving for at least a few more months.

  But partaking in DWTS isn’t always the best move for couples in burgeoning relationships. For one thing, it furthers the uneven power dynamic between the star of the show and the person they picked. And it also occupies a lot of time, keeping the newly engaged pair apart during the time when they’re supposed to be embarking on a new stage in their relationship.

  When Sean did DWTS, Catherine Lowe was miserable. She spent most of her time holed up in her temporary apartment, surrounded by all the bags she’d packed to move from Seattle to Dallas. Because Sean didn’t want to have sex before marriage, they had to sleep in different units.

  “I was alone for ten hours a day,” she said. “I pretty much hung out with his dance partner’s roommate every day. We didn’t really do anything. We kind of toured the city, which was a lot of fun, and went shopping a lot. And when you sit in the audience on Dancing with the Stars, you’re supposed to look pretty. So I didn’t really have anything else to do but look pretty. I didn’t really have any sense of—not worth—but I didn’t have anything to do, because I’d quit my job.”

  She kept thinking: “When do I get my time with Sean? When do we get to start our relationship? I’ve already passed one test, and now I have to take another one.”

  “I felt kind of gypped, I guess,” she said.

  Still, she stuck it out, and eventually the couple moved to Dallas. But the reality television opportunities kept chasing them there. First came ABC’s Celebrity Wife Swap, which also didn’t go well. The show finds two families with different lifestyles and asks them to swap wives for a week. The Lowes were partnered with another couple from Bachelor Nation—Jason and Molly Mesnick.

  When Molly turned up in Dallas, she seemed bothered by some of the chores Sean had asked her to complete: a to-do list that required her to iron his socks and cook him a bland, low-calorie meal each night. Fans were so disturbed by the way Sean appeared to treat Catherine that he eventually decided to respond on social media, saying he knew he looked like a “jackass” but that editing was to blame for the negative portrayal.

  “I guess that’s the risk you take when you agree to take part in something like that,” he wrote on Instagram.

  Despite the negative experience, the Lowes agreed to participate in another reality show the following year: WE tv’s Marriage Boot Camp: Reality Stars. The idea behind this show is to put a bunch of reality stars with marital woes into a house where they undergo intensive therapy to strengthen their relationships.

  “Oh, Marriage Boot Camp was my fault,” said Catherine, laughing. “Sean usually says no. He’s a money guy, so he sees opportunities for what they are. It’s like, this is a week of our time and we’ll get paid this much money. But he didn’t want to do the show, and I kept saying, ‘A Christian couple is leading it, and it’s about love and working with your relationship. And we should be in counseling anyway! Let’s just do it!’ And stupid Catherine—the one time I feel OK about it, it goes horribly wrong.”

  So what happened? Catherine said her fellow castmates—couples from shows like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo; Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta; and Basketball Wives LA—made the show “really raunchy.” And their fighting only escalated while they did the show. At one point, Sean lobbed this zinger at Catherine: “My wife is gone. This soulless person who doesn’t give a shit about anything is here.”

  Ouch. Not surprisingly, the couple has largely stayed off TV since—though Sean did co-host the Bachelor in Paradise after-show on ABC in 2016. Catherine has since launched her own high-end stationery business, LoweCo., and the couple makes additional money by posting advertisements on their Instagram accounts.

  “As much as I don’t want to do the ads, it’s like, ‘Well, I have a beautiful home and a child that I have to pay for, and I don’t have to go to an office every day,’” Catherine said. “If that security goes away, then I have to get a nine-to-five, which I would be happy to do. But it’s kind of that inner monologue of: ‘Shoot, do I do it and look stupid, get paid a lot of money, and hope people forget about it the next day? Or do I keep my pride?’”

  Pride? I think that went out the window the second you went on Marriage Boot Camp, babe.

  Why I’m a Fan

  JASON RITTER

  I’m not that both
ered that I’m a guy that watches The Bachelor, but it would be amazing if dudes talked about it the way they talk about a crazy football game: “Oh, wow, did you see that play?” And I’m like, “Oh yeah, man, wow,” and I name one of the three stats that I looked up to get through a conversation like this. I think The Bachelor does accomplish the same exact thing that any sport does, where you have the playoffs and the semifinals and the finals. The way that it’s set up is very much like any kind of sports game.

  There should be signs so you can suss out other Bachelor fans. I feel like I should wear a rose on my lapel or something. It’s not the same thing as coming into work and asking, “Everyone watch Game of Thrones last night?” Because I don’t watch Game of Thrones, so it’s doubly embarrassing. “I didn’t see that, but Alex was being a little aggressive on The Bachelorette!”

  I go back and forth on how I feel about the show. Sometimes, I feel like: “This show is a very hopeful show about the power of love.” And other times, it feels like a scientific study: “Look! We put two twenty-year-olds in a magical place and give them alcohol and they think they’re in love! It’s so not true! Love is not real and it’s chemicals.”

  I feel like it becomes a reflection on your own issues surrounding romance. [My fiancée] Melanie [Lynskey] and I have gotten into little fights about the show. I’ll be using Nick Viall as a punching bag but actually be talking about myself and how I feel. I’m like, “He’s just trying to be honest! It’s complicated!”

  I feel like the most confident, cocky people get rewarded on the show, even if they’re lying. Those dudes who are super smooth and say all the right things. The people who are like, “I’m a little bit more complicated and am not 100 percent sure, but I’m at least being honest with my feelings”—they don’t get rewarded. I get all worked up about this, because I identify with those people more. I would much rather be honest about what I really feel than be like, “I’m all in and I can’t wait to start our lives.”

  As a person who has come to feel like the ugly truth is better than the pretty lie, I can never stop thinking: “Are you guys still going to be in love when you’re going on dates that don’t have helicopters and boats and fireworks going off and when you’re the only person in the castle?” That’s a lot of money to rent out an entire castle or wine cellar.

  But I do enjoy watching that, because it’s a nice reminder of how big and crazy the world is. Every once in a while, I’m like, “That’s a good idea!” Some things you can’t do, like ride a horse down Rodeo Drive. But this is also what we’ve been trained to think of as romantic and incredible. It’s that weird thing where you think: “This is reinforcing gender roles. . . . But, aw, what if someone said that to me?”

  —Jason Ritter, actor (Kevin [Probably] Saves the World, Parenthood)

  CHAPTER 11

  Riding the Coattails

  FabFitFun. SugarBearHair. DIFF Eyewear. MVMT watches.

  If these brands sound familiar, it’s probably because you’ve scrolled past advertisements for them roughly a gazillion times on your Instagram feed. They’re just some of the companies who have sought out high-profile Bachelor contestants to shill their products on social media, where #SponCon—sponsored content—has become unavoidable.

  Yes, SponCon has become so prevalent that it’s seriously possible for Bach alumni to make a living off Instagram these days. Contestants going on the show can almost guarantee their social media followings will increase dramatically as a result of their newfound fame. And those numbers translate into big bucks.

  During Rachel Lindsay’s season of The Bachelorette, one of the members of my Bach Discush crew made a point of noting how many followers the male suitors gained while the show was airing. Dean Unglert, for example, started off with 24,000 followers and ended up with roughly 500,000 by the finale.

  How much can you actually make off Instagram? For the answer to this all-important quandary, I turned to Ashley Iaconetti, who appeared on Chris Soules’s season of The Bachelor and then went on Bachelor in Paradise twice. As a result, she has accumulated more than 600,000 Instagram followers—and she hasn’t had to get a day job since.

  The first company to approach Iaconetti about posting an advertisement on her Instagram account was FabFitFun, a seasonal gift box that arrives in your mailbox with beauty and lifestyle products four times a year. At first, they weren’t offering her much: $250 to post a picture. But as her following continued to grow, more companies reached out to her, and she got an agent to help her sift through the offers—DJ turned talent manager Paul Desisto, who has somewhat of a monopoly on representing those from Bachelor Nation.

  Nowadays, Iaconetti would never post an ad for $250. She’s figured out, roughly, how many followers translate into how many dollars. 250,000 followers = $1,000/ad. 500,000 = $2,000/ad. And if you have 1 million followers? You’re probably getting at least $10,000 per ad.

  Each company gives her different instructions on how to post its ads on Instagram. Some want specific captions and hashtags, while others are open to the creative ways in which she decides to feature their products. She doesn’t get too much backlash from her followers over the posts anymore, though fans were unhappy when she partnered with a med spa in LA called DoctorFatOff.

  “People gave me a lot of shit for not promoting a healthy body image,” she said. “I’m like, That’s kind of silly. Everything is to help us feel better about ourselves. I feel like that’s the same as saying, ‘Don’t buy mascara.’ It’s all the same.”

  At this point, Iaconetti said she feels comfortable posting about two ads per week. “And I know people are going to read this and say, ‘Oh, this is so ridiculous that these people are making money and don’t have to work,’ but that’s not how I look at it,” she said. “Yes, I get money from ads, but I’m also working every day on jobs that don’t pay anything.”

  The kind of jobs she’s talking about are usually media appearances—she’ll turn up on Access Hollywood to recap Bachelor episodes, or write about the show for Cosmopolitan.com. Even if the gigs don’t pay, she feels like they’re helping her forge a broadcasting career, which is what she was hoping for when she got her master’s degree in broadcasting from Syracuse University. Slowly, she’s gaining traction—she recently covered the Fifty Shades Darker premiere and the Snatched film junket for Access Hollywood. She also hosts two podcasts, including one with former Bachelor Ben Higgins for iHeartRadio, and she is paid for those because they feature advertisements.

  Another source of income comes from club appearances, which Desisto also helps her book. These tend to be less lucrative than Iaconetti’s Instagram gigs. For instance, she recently flew to Mohegan Sun, a casino in Connecticut, to party with fans. She was paid $3,000 for the appearance, about $500 of which went toward her flight. Part of the reason she takes those jobs, though, is to hang out with her friends from Bachelor Nation, at least a few of whom typically share the billing with her at nightclubs.

  “And guys from The Bachelor get more money through appearances, because guys are what girls want if they’re going out for a night,” she said. “Girls get more through ads, because obviously females are our demographic, and females follow us on Instagram and are more apt to buy what we’re selling.”

  Meanwhile, Iaconetti has become adept at figuring out how to get free trips. She’ll often reach out to different hotels to see if they’d be interested in hosting her and her friends in exchange for social media posts. Last year, the Atlantis resort in the Bahamas agreed to put her and four others from Bachelor Nation up after she sent their marketing team an email.

  “They responded so quickly and were like, ‘Yes, of course! What time? When do you want to be here?’” she said, noting she still had to pay for her flight and a certain amount of food. The group agreed to post one Instagram, tweet, and Snapchat per day, tag the resort, and the deal was done.

  Iaconetti will also attend charity e
vents thrown by Bach alumni, but she’s not paid to go to those. Even though her hotel and travel are provided, the incentive there is almost entirely to chill with others from the franchise.

  “And I really enjoy talking to the fans at those events,” she said. “The word ‘relatable’ comes up with me all the time. People share stories of heartbreak or tell me how they found The One to give me hope that I might find The One too. I think it’s awesome that people feel like they can talk to me so openly because I’ve been so open and expressive on the show.”

  I wanted to see Iaconetti and the rest of the crew in action, so I started keeping my eyes peeled for various Bach-related events. Fortunately, there’s usually at least one happening per month. I decided to kick things off with a bang, so for my first event, I flew to Kansas City, Missouri, for a charity event being thrown by Jade Tolbert. Jade is married to Tanner Tolbert, and the two met on the second season of Bachelor in Paradise. They’re another one of the rare couples in Bachelor Nation held up as an example of what the franchise can create—they got married on TV and welcomed their first child in 2017.

  Jade seemed stoked that I wanted to attend: “I am actually really excited my event will be getting covered by you for your book!” she emailed. “I’ve been scraping this together on my own, so hopefully it will turn out all right!”

  What she’d been planning was an event with about a dozen former Bach contestants, all of whom had agreed to come to Missouri for an evening to benefit Project Future Light, which is rebuilding an orphanage in Thailand. General admission tickets went for $48, but those who shelled out an extra $20 got to pose with the entire group for a photo.

  But it seemed that even those who didn’t spring for the VIP tickets ended up with pictures, because the Bach alumni all spent nearly the entire night posing for selfies. By the time I arrived at the One Light Luxury Apartments—a high-rise in downtown Kansas City’s Power & Light District—little lines of camera-toting fans were forming in front of each contestant. Because the event was being held in the building’s rooftop pool and bar space, most of the reality stars were holding court in their own cabanas.