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Do you think the whole lesbian love story of the „Bachelor in Paradise“ is real or just PR? I think it’s real.

What a loaded question, anon!

Honestly, I have been thinking on this very topic since it all started. But to preface my response, I’ve never watched any incarnation of these shows before, only the scripted parody, Burning Love. Which I don’t think made me the expert I was hoping, heh.

I think…it’s as real as anything on these shows can be?

Some things, like an engagement this early, and how streamlined issue resolution tends to be, those things might be more convenient for the drama, but that’s not specific to them.

On the one side, we’re so predisposed to think anything f/f comes with caveats and all the more so if it seems too good to be true but I really, really, really do not want to say, I think this bi woman is doing it for the attention. The connotations of that, the meanness implied in that suspicion of her as a person and of her orientation, nah. But, I can’t deny that I didn’t wonder it privately at times, in a totally non-judgmental, get-that-money-while-normalizing-f/f good-for-them kind of way, in that, well, if it WAS fake, who am I to deny some great scripted TV? That would only make it even more up my alley. If this were a movie or fictional show, I would be there first ep.

But the more I watched, the more real it seemed. I didn’t know much about Kristian before but it seems even more unlikely to me now that she’d just be willing to go along with a totally fake TV romance. And there are just so many moments of real, genuine same-sex processing and insecurities and awareness. And affection! 

Ultimately, we’re supposed to suspend some disbelief while watching these shows, for all the couples, and I’m fine with doing that much and just going along with things. It doesn’t make me a smarter viewer to be cynical about this and go in disbelieving it. 

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I’m all for Demi and Kristian because I’m just desperate for any and all of wlw couples in the media but I still can’t get over the fact that Demi didn’t know how Nelson Mandela was. Like… that’s seriously one of the most cringe moments that my brain could only translate to “ah, white American” and I hate that I was forced to be so judgmental.

Heh, anon, that was so unfair to you. But judgmental to, like, the system that created the situation, right? I don’t really blame people for not knowing things, you never know how they grew up, and it’s really difficult to not know…what you don’t know. I grew up switching between different school systems and you’d be shocked at how much I never learned.

What I might have side-eyed her for is if she’d responded in a “who cares?” kinda way but I think her response was pretty solid? 

Explained it, owned it, and apologized for it.