Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Bachelor Nation Inside the World of America's Favorite Guilty Pleasure by Amy Kaufman Bachelor Matt Just Confirmed He’s Back Together With Rachael After Her Racism Scandal. Bachelor Nation members want to know if Matt and Rachael are back together after The Bachelor and their breakup following Rachael’s racism scandal. Matt, a 29-year-old real estate broker, and Rachael, a 24-year-old graphic designer, met on season 25 of The Bachelor in 2020. At his Final Rose Ceremony, Matt gave Rachael his final rose, but told her that he couldn’t propose to her but would like to continue dating. At the “After the Final Rose” special, which was held four months after Matt’s Bachelor was filmed, he revealed that he and Rachael had split following her racism scandal. Rachael came under fire in February 2021 after photos resurfaced of her attending a plantation-themed Old South Antebellum party at Georgia College in 2018. Around that time, a TikTok user also accused Rachael of bullying her and other classmates in high school for dating Black men. (Read more about Rachael’s racism scandal here.) Reality Steve revealed at the time that Matt had broke up with Rachael after Valentine’s Day. During the “After the Final Rose” special, Matt confirmed that he ended his relationship with Rachael due to the controversy. “We’re not [together],” Matt told guest host Emmanuel Acho. “It’s heartbreaking. If you don’t understand that something like that is problematic in 2018, there’s a lot of me that you won’t understand. It’s as simple as that…You know what was a long time ago? Plantations.” Fast forward to a month later, and it looks like Matt and Rachael could be back together after their Bachelor breakup. Read on for what we know. Are Matt and Rachael back together after The Bachelor ? Matt confirmed in an interview with People on April 28, 2021 that he is “pursuing” a relationship with Rachael after their breakup. “I’ve seen Rachael a handful of times,” he said. “I’m not pursuing any relationships right now outside of that. I said I was going to focus on my relationship with her and that means focusing on it.” When asked if he thinks Rachael is educating herself after racism scandal, Matt responded, “That’s something you could talk to her about.” Matt’s confirmation came after Reality Steve reported on April 6, 2021, that Matt and Rachael are “not over” and were seen together in New York City, where Matt lives with his best friend, Tyler Cameron. “It’s been a while but here’s some news: Matt and Rachael? Yeah, they’re not over. They’re currently in New York together. FYI,” Reality Steve tweeted. Instagram account @DeuxMoi also posted photos at the time of Matt and Rachael walking around Williamsburg, Brooklyn. At the time, Matt and Rachael haven’t commented on their relationship, but Rachael did post an Instagram of herself in April 2021 with the caption, “one happy camper ☻.” The caption seems to be a 180 from the Rachael fans saw on the “After the Final Rose” special, so it could be a result of a major change in Rachael’s life (a.k.a. her reunion with Matt.) During the “After the Final Rose” special, Matt confessed that his feelings for Rachael didn’t “go away overnight” and he still has hope that she can change. “You can still really care about somebody and want them to do better,” he said at the time. “I don’t think that anybody’s irredeemable. There’s a lot of processing that I have to do, and it’s just not a situation that I think that I would help. [That’s] why I stepped back and let her do the work that she’s committed to doing.” Bachelor Nation by Amy Kaufman. To get more of an inside scoop, check out Los Angeles Times writer Amy Kaufman’s book, Bachelor Nation: Inside the World of America’s Favorite Guilty Pleasure , for a deep dive into the Bachelor franchise. The book uncovers the secrets of Bachelor Nation, from how much the Bachelor and the Bachelorette are paid to the rules contestants have to follow, that producers don’t want fans to know. It’s a must-read for any Bachelor Nation member. Our mission at STYLECASTER is to bring style to the people, and we only feature products we think you’ll love as much as we do. Please note that if you purchase something by clicking on a link within this story, we may receive a small commission of the sale. Cookie Consent and Choices. 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The STD that keeps most contestants from competing on ‘The Bachelor’ Los Angeles Times staff writer Amy Kaufman’s new book, “Bachelor Nation: Inside the World of America’s Favorite Guilty Pleasure” (Dutton, out March 6), pulls back the velvet curtains on one of the highest-rated reality shows on television, ABC’s “The Bachelor.” And it’s not all rose petals and champagne flutes. Kaufman reveals that the show’s supervising producer, Scott Jeffress, would motivate the other producers with cash, keeping a wad of $100 bills for anyone who delivered the goods. “The first producer to get tears? A hundred bucks! You get [the bachelor] to make out with the right girl? A hundred bucks! Catch a chick puking on-camera? A hundred bucks!” The conditions in the “Bachelor” mansion set the stage for a chaotic, stressful environment: Contestants “sometimes sleep 12 to a room in bunk beds,” and they aren’t allowed to leave the property, listen to music, read books or magazines, work out or catch up on the news. “It’s all part of a well-designed producer strategy called ‘The Bubble,’” writes Kaufman. “Inside the bubble, all that matters is the show.” But how do you get into the bubble? In this excerpt, Kaufman reveals who gets on “The Bachelor.” After filling out an extensive application and submitting five to 15 pictures of themselves, applicants must produce a “well-lit” video of themselves “dressed as if going to a nice dinner,” showing off their apartment, their pets, and talking about what their ultimate fantasy date would be. If the producers decide they’re interested in a potential contestant, that person would be invited to come to LA for one of two final audition weekends — all expenses paid — to meet the production team in person. A 150-question personality test is filled with multiple-choice and true-or-false questions: Do you have out-of-body experiences? Do you think you can control things with your mind? Have you ever wanted to kill someone? Some of these questions would be asked several times, with different wording. The next day, a Saturday, they would be escorted to a room to have a one-on-one interview with a producer. There would likely be candles and mood lighting. After 20 minutes of speaking with the producer privately, they would be walked to an adjoining room, where they would be greeted by roughly two dozen producers sitting stadium-style. The producers would have the potential contestants sit down and would start asking them questions, rapid-fire. Had they watched the last season of “The Bachelorette”? Did any of the guys stand out? What were they looking for in a man? What was their dream job? If they could have that dream job if they cut off one of their limbs, would they do it? Would they rather have a DDD bra cup or write a cover story for Vogue? Just as the questions started to become more outlandish, the producers would wrap up the session and a handler would take the person to meet with the show’s therapist. From 2002 through summer 2017, that was Dr. Catherine Selden. ‘We lose a lot of great potential characters because we’re so tough and stringent … Anyone who has any sort of borderline personality disorder or instability … we just can’t take the risk.’ According to the California Board of Psychology, Selden is a state-licensed psychologist who graduated from Pepperdine University and has no disciplinary actions against her license. She was always made available to contestants throughout the season — she was not a presence on set but emerged any time she was requested — and cast members were supposed to meet with her after they were eliminated. But contestants were first acquainted with Dr. Selden during the casting process. So she would be in possession of the personality test they had previously filled out and would spend roughly an hour asking questions about it. At times, she would get personal: Had they ever cheated on anyone? Did they have a history of mental illness or depression? Did they ever drink too much? Did they ever get into fights when they were drunk? Next, the handler would bring them to a private investigator. This person would be trained to dig up any skeletons in the closet — partly to use for their storyline but also to get ahead of any tabloid stories that could come to the surface if they were on the show. Had they ever been arrested? Had they ever sent nude photos to anyone? Had they ever made a sex tape? Had they gotten a DUI? Finally, the potential contestant would be taken for a medical examination. Samples of their blood and urine would be collected. These samples would be tested for drugs and sexually transmitted diseases. They would fill out their medical history and answer questions about their health. If they were on any medication, they would tell the medical professional, who would want to know whether they would need their pills during production. If it turned out the person had an STD, they would be taken out of the running immediately. And apparently, that’s the top reason applicants don’t make it onto the show. “As soon as the medical tests came back, you’d see that herpes was the biggest thing,” said Ben Hatta, [creator and executive producer] Mike Fleiss’s old assistant. “And sometimes you’d be the first person to tell a contestant that they had herpes. You’d be like, ‘Uh, you should call your doctor.’ Why? ‘We’re not going to be able to have you on our show, but you should call your doctor.’ “Then they’d realize they’d been denied from ‘The Bachelor’ and now a bunch of people knew they had herpes.” As for the psychological testing, Fleiss likes to say that “The Bachelor” has some of the most thorough background checks in the business. “We’re really careful about who we let on the show,” he said at the Banff World Media Festival in 2012. “We lose a lot of great potential characters because we’re so tough and stringent . . . Anyone who has any sort of borderline personality disorder or instability or any sort of past involving contemplation of suicide — we just can’t take the risk. We just don’t.” But according to numerous producers who have worked on “The Bachelor,” the rules aren’t always that strict. “There’s psychological tests they have to pass, but there’s a window of the pass, do you know what I mean?” insinuated Michael Carroll, the producer who got so close to contestants that he even crashed in their rooms occasionally. “You’d know there’d be a possibility of [someone] being kind of unhinged — like, she passed, but just barely. You can see it at the casting events during the interviews: ‘Oh, this chick is going to go ​‐ f–king nuts. She’s amazing.’ ” Say, for example, Carroll told a woman to describe her first love. You don’t want the girl who says her first boyfriend played lacrosse and went to Harvard. You want the girl who dated a guy who rode a motorcycle and was the bane of her parents’ existence. “You want the girl who’s like, ‘Oh, he was super cool and we would go f–k in his parents’ pool,’ ” Carroll explained. “You get the feeling of who pops on TV and who’s coming unhinged and who’s gonna go for it.” Rozlyn Papa ABC. Rozlyn Papa, an infamous “Bachelor” villain, recalled her session with Dr. Selden being particularly troubling. The psychologist asked Papa if she had ever struggled with mental illness, and the single mother was candid about her battle with depression. Even though she wasn’t feeling low at the time, she was honest about the fact that depression was an ongoing issue in her life. “If they were really trying to protect you, you’d think that would be sort of a red flag and they would say, ‘Well, maybe this is someone who can’t handle this kind of pressure,’” said Papa, who ended up getting kicked off Jake Pavelka’s season in 2010. “But instead, it was almost like, ‘OK, perfect. You’re perfect for the show. You’re going to cry. You’re going to say some really screwed-up stuff.’ Looking at it, I can see why I should not have been a candidate.” Contestants sign contracts in which they must agree to be filmed up to 24 hours a day, seven days a week. But this may also be “by means of hidden cameras and microphones,” according to the contract — meaning they’re likely going to be caught, at some point, in a less-than-positive light. They should have “no expectation of privacy.” Furthermore, because this is a reality show, contestants must acknowledge that “elements of surprise” will be included. They must be “prepared for anything,” including “twists” and “surprises.” “Producers or others connected to the show,” the contract reads, “may intentionally or unintentionally make misrepresentations or omissions concerning the Series.” Basically: The producers can mislead the contestants, and that’s totally kosher. And then there’s this clause: I UNDERSTAND, ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT PRODUCER MAY USE OR REVEAL PERSONAL INFORMATION WHICH MAY BE EMBARRASSING, UNFAVORABLE, SHOCKING, HUMILIATING, DISPARAGING, AND/OR DEROGATORY, MAY SUBJECT ME TO PUBLIC RIDICULE AND/OR CONDEMNATION, AND MAY PORTRAY ME IN A FALSE LIGHT. In other words: If you get drunk, naked, or just downright bitchy, come off looking terrible, and then lose all your friends and your job? That’s on you. Even worse, anything embarrassing that you do on the show — whether you were “clothed, partially clothed, or naked” or “aware or unaware” of being filmed — is owned by the franchise forever. Even though everyone on the show is advised to “refrain from all forms of violence and intimidation,” you might be in “close physical proximity” to contestants who could exhibit “physical or verbal aggression.” In the year following the finale of your season, you must be available to take part in a “reasonable number” of interviews, photo shoots, and chats for publicity. You also have to agree to take part in any special episodes of the show — like “After the Final Rose” or other reunions — for three years. Roses before being handed out to “Bachelor” contestants Getty Images. And if you make it to the end of “The Bachelor” and decide to get married within the two years following the show, the producers own the exclusive rights to your wedding. If they exercise those rights, they’re only going to pay you $10,000 per hour of televised programming about your union. As for the ring given to you by Neil Lane? You don’t own it — and therefore can’t sell it — for two years. Given all these guidelines, the question remains: Why would anyone agree to go on this damn show? Don’t the risks very obviously outweigh the benefits? There are plenty of former contestants who admitted, outright, that they simply didn’t read the contract. They wanted to be on TV and figured, “What the hell? How bad could things get?” Rarely, it seemed, were past contestants honest about what drew them to be on a reality show — likely because that would mean admitting to being unhappy with the monotony of their off-screen lives. “Think about it,” reasoned Papa. “The majority of girls on that show either don’t have a job, or they have a job where they can leave for six weeks. You’re looking at women who aren’t really in a solid place in life, and probably have issues with identity or love or self-esteem.” Adapted from “Bachelor Nation: Inside the World of America’s Favorite Guilty Pleasure” by Amy Kaufman, to be published on March 6, 2018, by Dutton, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2018 by Amy Kaufman. Bachelor Nation : Inside the World of America's Favorite Guilty Pleasure. For sixteen years and thirty-six seasons, the Bachelor franchise has been a mainstay in American TV viewers’ lives. Since it premiered in 2002, the show’s popularity and relevance have only grown—more than eight million viewers tuned in to see the conclusion of the most recent season of The Bachelor . Los Angeles Times journalist Amy Kaufman is a proud member of Bachelor Nation and has a long history with the franchise—ABC even banned her from attending show events after her coverage of the program got a little too real for its liking. She has interviewed dozens of producers, contestants, and celebrity fans to give readers never-before-told details of the show’s inner workings: what it’s like to be trapped in the mansion “bubble”; dark, juicy tales of producer manipulation; and revelations about the alcohol-fueled debauchery that occurs long before the Fantasy Suite. Kaufman also explores what our fascination means, culturally: what the show says about the way we view so-called ideal suitors; our subconscious yearning for fairy-tale romance; and how this enduring television show has shaped society’s feelings about love, marriage, and feminism by appealing to a marriage plot that’s as old as the best of Jane Austen. Отзывы - Написать отзыв. LibraryThing Review. The American television show The Bachelor seems to be a perennial favorite as it and it’s various franchises are still going strong after some nineteen years. I admit to being an occasional viewer . Читать весь отзыв. LibraryThing Review. Honestly I thought I'd love this book. I'm a Bachelor fan, I've read other books about and by former Bachelor contestants and this one fell short. It seems like Kaufman didn't really have a direction . Читать весь отзыв. Some of the Juiciest Nuggets From a Delicious New Bachelor Nation Exposé. Alongside the debut of The Bachelor came the birth of the Bachelor Nation behind-the-scenes gossip industry. Today, with almost every card- carrying member of Bachelor Nation publishing tell-all books and hosting podcasts of their own—not to mention a TV drama, UnREAL, created by a former Bachelor producer — we’re spoiled with insider details about the journey to finding everlasting reality TV love. But Los Angeles Times film writer Amy Kaufman is about to spill the *most* tea to date. Kaufman, a Bachelor superfan and super-sleuth (she’s the gal on Twitter who broke the news about the Corrine/DeMario BIP incident), has actually been banned from ABC’s press events due to her v. candid coverage of the franchise; the ban came into effect after she wrote a no-holds-barred post about her experience at the Women Tell All taping for Ben Flajnik’s season finale. And while Kaufman admits in her new book to writing snarky recaps, we have to ask, what Bachelor fan DOESN’T get a little sassy? Thankfully for us—though perhaps not for her relationship with ABC—Kaufman dug up some of the franchise’s biggest secrets for her new book, straight from the mouths of former show leads themselves, as well as past contestants and producers. For those who just can’t wait to buy the book (in stores today), we’ve got your back. Here are some of the juiciest things we learned from Bachelor Nation: Inside The World of America’s Favourite Guilty Pleasure (Dutton, $34). Producers decide what “role” each cast member will play before filming even begins. Former Bachelor producer Michael Carroll said that producers would create a headshot board and figure out what roles cast members would fill even before they stepped out of the limo on the first night of filming. Carroll said their nicknames would consist of things like “the fat one, the hot one and the crier.” WTF, ABC? Their lack of diversity caused a lawsuit. It took 15 years for a Black person to be cast as a lead on The Bachelor franchise. Before Rachel Lindsay graced our TV screens in season 13 of The Bachelorette , there wasn’t a single Black woman on The Bachelor between 2009 and 2012, and no Black men on The Bachelorette between 2009 and 2011. Former producer Scott Jeffress, who stopped working on the show in 2005, says that when The Bachelor casts POC, it’s strictly tokenizing. “It’s absurd. It was very upsetting to me,” he told Kaufman, also claiming that the show was afraid of losing its audience by casting too many people of colour. Jeffress adds that creating a more diverse cast would not only have made the show more interesting, but it would have sparked a much-needed conversation about race. “When some guy from the South is racist as shit and he becomes bros with some Black dude and says stupid shit? That’s talking about race, which we need to do today,” Jeffress told Kaufman. A class-action racial discrimination lawsuit was brought against The Bachelor in 2012 when two Black men, Nathaniel Claybrooks and Christopher Johnson, applied to be on the show and realized that no POC had been featured. They argued that The Bachelor was “making the calculation that minorities in leads roles and interracial dating is unappealing to the show’s audience.” Eventually, the lawsuit was dropped when a judge ruled that the show’s producers had the right to control their own creative content. Date selection (for the *wrong* reasons) Ever notice how the adrenaline dates are always given to the contestant who doesn’t want to do them? If someone has a fear of heights, they’ll probably be rapelling down a building. If someone’s afraid of flying, you bet they’ll be strapped in the tiniest, flimsiest plane the show can find. According to Kaufman, the crew looks through each cast member’s casting questionnaires to see who is afraid of what, so that producers can plan outings accordingly, and not in a good way. Contestants are then manipulated into feeling like they have to go on and enjoy their date. In their interviews, contestants always say they’re on the show to grow and take chances, thus, there is no room for chickening out. Um, hi manipulation. What really goes on in the Fantasy Suite. Kaufman gets into the most buzz-worthy part of The Bachelor— the overnight dates, of course, and she puts to bed a longstanding rumour that ABC doesn’t supply its contestants with protection. Former Bachelorette Jen Schefft confirmed that there were, in fact, plenty of condoms in her Fantasy Suite. “It was like ‘Oh, OK , so we can be safe if we want to be. But honestly? We don’t need a whole bowlful,” she told Kaufman. But, not having sex altogether happens a lot more than we’d think, too. “Schefft, for one, said she was so tired by her third Fantasy Suite date that the idea she’d stay up all night having some crazy sex romp was laughable,” Kaufman writes. Pushing for L-bombs and marriage. Why do contestants say they love their leading man or woman after only three weeks of intermittent conversation? Both Clare Crawley and Brooks Forester (remember this cutie-turned-vill from Desiree’s season?!) had producers try and convince them to tell their respective Bachelor/Bachelorette that they loved them by threatening that if they didn’t drop the L-bomb soon, they risked being sent home. And if you think the pressure to say “I love you” is big, the pressure to get engaged is even bigger. Sean Lowe and Catherine Giudici told Kaufman that the night before they got engaged, Lowe came to Giudici’s room, mid-meltdown, and asked her a bunch of make-or-break questions at the last second so he could be sure he wanted to propose. Additionally, Jesse Csincsak, the snowboarder who became engaged to Deanna Pappas in season 4 of The Bachelorette , told Kaufman that producers picked him up one day without warning and told him they’d be going ring shopping. Csincsak threw up. (Same.) Schefft revealed to Kaufman that she when she told producers she didn’t want to marry anyone, they told her she’d come across as “a really cold, bitchy person” if she didn’t accept a proposal. And when Flajnik competed as a contestant on Ashley Herbert’s season of The Bachelorette in 2011 , he proposed to her because he thought it would be “a fun chapter in his life” and said he “liked her enough” to give it a shot. Thank you for reminding us why we hated you, Ben. How much those engagement rings really cost. Many of us know the how iron-clad Neil Lane’s ring contracts are by now, but what we don’t hear as much about is how much these rings are actually worth. Since 2009, Lane’s Bachelor engagement rings have skyrocketed in value and grown astronomically in size. For instance, the first ring (because remember, he proposed twice) provided to Season 4 lead Jason Mesnick was valued at $65,000 and had 170 stones surrounding a 3.18 carat diamond—extravagant, yes? Kaufman says that by the time Ben Higgins was ready to pop the q to Lauren B in Season 20, he was bequeathed with the show’s most expensive ring, a sparkler with 240 round baguette-cut diamonds circling a 4.25-carat diamond that rang in at a cool $100,000. Ben doesn’t seem so boring now, does he. And that’s just the tip of the salacious iceberg. Pair Kaufman’s book with a glass of rosé and your comfiest pair of sweats, and thank us later.