‘Bachelorette’ Jenn Tran highlights why women of color deserve better on reality TV

Spoiler Alert: This article will discuss the season finales of season 21 of the Bachelorette and Season 6 of Love Island USA.

One month ago, the season finale of “The Bachelorette” aired with 2.9 million viewers tuning in to see whether Jenn Tran would find love. What they were treated to instead, though, was the live airing of Tran’s heartbreak.  

What could have been a momentous season of “The Bachelorette,” with a happy, optimistic ending with representation of young Asian girls as a romantic lead for the first time, became a messy, disgusting and outright racist finale all because the producers failed to protect Tran.

Though the season ended in heartbreak for Tran, this incident was merely a microcosm of the struggles that so many other women of color have faced. 

Jenn Tran was named by ABC to be the next Bachelorette and became the first ever Asian American lead in the franchise’s 22-year history on March 25. Tran, a University of Wisconsin-Madison alum, had finished fifth on the previous season of The Bachelor and was now ready to find love and break barriers after having her heart broken. 

But immediately after her name was released, she was thrown into a cycle of internet discourse, with many lamenting her being the pick and wondering why fan favorites Daisy Kent or Maria Georgas weren’t chosen. 

Many speculated the two had turned down an offer to be the next Bachelorette, with both continuing to perpetuate the rumor. Suddenly, this became the dominant narrative, despite Tran saying that she had been speaking to producers and being vetted for months before the reveal. 

The damage had already been done though. Before her season had even begun, Tran was already being viewed as a third choice — a backup. 

“Growing up, I always wanted to see Asian representation on TV, and I feel like it was really sparse,” Tran told host Jesse Palmer the night she was announced as the next Bachelorette.

She lamented how Asians in film and television have constantly been shunted into a side character role and that she had felt boxed in by that stereotype. 

“To be here today, sitting in this position, being like, ‘I am going to lead my own love story. I am going to be the main character in my own story,’ I just can’t help but think of how many people I’m inspiring and how many lives I’m going to change,” she said.

In the press tours and podcast appearances before her season aired, Tran was constantly forced to defend her casting against those who wished it wasn’t her or didn’t see her as interesting enough to lead the show — exactly the stereotype she was seeking to disprove.

"The show has been going on for years and years, 21 years of this show specifically, and every season there are multiple people in contention for the role. It's never really you until it's you. I came back from filming, and there was a lot of people wanting somebody else or wishing that I was American.” Tran said on the podcast “Call Her Daddy.” 

In fact, Tran’s Vietnamese American and Buddhist identity made for some of the best moments in the franchise’s recent history, as she was able to learn about other cultures and teach the men she dated about hers. 

But though she led the season, it seemed like Tran was still an afterthought.

While greeting the men in episode one, she was “on cloud nine,” but near the end of the episode became emotional as the realization of being the Bachelorette sunk in. 

“It was really hard for me to believe I was everyone’s first choice,” she said in the scene. “I felt like I was in somebody else’s shoes.”

Unfortunately, the men would do nothing but disappoint her. 

Contestant Sam McKinney, who was given the first impression rose and seemed to be a potential finalist for much of the show, admitted live on air during a date at Radio New Zealand that he had been disappointed to see Tran cast as the Bachelorette. 

"This girl is not my type,” he said of stepping out of the limo on the first night. “I thought the Bachelorette was gonna be Daisy or Maria." McKinney was sent home that same episode and in a confessional said that Jenn brought “very dull” energy. 

And, in the so-called “most dramatic finale” in the franchise’s history, Tran was left sobbing on stage as she was forced to watch back her proposal that ended in heartbreak. Her ex-fiancé Devin Strader had “ghosted” her just weeks after getting engaged and broke off the engagement months prior. And, she revealed, Strader followed Georgas on Instagram the day after he broke off the engagement. 

“He said he didn’t love me anymore,” Tran said at the Finale. “He denied having ever been in love.”

Strader had, throughout the season, made enemies out of fellow male contestants due to his often aggressive pursuit of Tran, giving no regard to the other men. 

Weeks after the finale, it also came out that a previous girlfriend of Strader’s had taken a restraining order out on him, begging the question of why contestants, especially for leads of color, are not being vetted more thoroughly. 

Her other finalist, Marcus Shoberg, was unable to tell her that he loved her even in the days leading up to their potential engagement. 

“Watching the current season of ‘The Bachelorette’ has felt like a horror movie to me. Men fighting over possession of Jenn Tran instead of — I don't know — talking to Jenn Tran,” NPR podcast host B.A. Parker said in an episode of “Code Switch” that looked at race and romance in reality TV.  

Tran also had only one Asian suitor, who spent more screen time puffing his chest than, as Parker said, pursuing Tran. 

“I can’t really speak to the casting process and the decisions that were made,” Tran said in an interview with Glamour Magazine, “but it is unfortunate that there weren’t a lot of Asian men this season.”

Put simply, Tran was set up to fail from the beginning. Her men were hoping for another woman, specifically a white woman, as were many viewers. She received no support from production or fans, and her most devastating moments were played as drama for viewers. 

In the season where she should choose a husband, it seemed like none of her men chose her. 

An easy — and practical — solution here would be for UW-Madison, and the city of Madison, to ban these men from ever stepping foot in this town, a la Becca Kufrin’s home state of Minnesota. But the far harder thing to do here is interrogate the realities of how women of color are treated on reality dating shows. While absolutely heartbreaking for Tran as an individual, this incident was merely a microcosm of the struggles that so many others have faced. 

“The Bachelor” franchise, specifically, continuously fails to protect its leads of color. In [year], when Matt James was announced as the Bachelor, in the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement and just weeks after the show had promised to have more diverse casting, the woman he proposed to (and is still with to this day) was discovered to have attended an Antebellum South-themed plantation party in college. James, who is a black man, called the photos “incredibly disappointing” at the time, and urged then-Host Chris Harrison, who stepped down from his role after defending the photos against the “woke police,”  to reconsider the racist history of the Antebellum South. 

Rachael Lindsay, the franchise’s first lead of color, has constantly advocated for more diverse casting within the franchise, especially after one of the contestants on her season was revealed to have made racist comments on social media in the past. Additionally, she said several of the men of color on her season did not have a history of dating any Black women, which has led her to call for diversifying those behind and in front of the camera.

This situation also isn’t seen just in Bachelor nation. “Love Island USA” winner Serena Page and fellow finalist JaNa Craig, who are both Black women, spent the entire season facing multiple microaggressions. 

During the midseason ‘Casa Amor,’ where men and women are split up and introduced to new singles to test their connections back in the villa, many of the men were unfaithful. At the end of the week, when Kenny Rodriguez and Kordell Beckham Jr., who had been coupled up with Craig and Page, respectively, brought back other women, Craig and Page were rightfully dismayed and angry. 

When Page snapped at Beckham, multiple men in the villa asked him whether that was how he wanted a potential future wife to act, as if her being angry at him betraying her trust was an overreaction. Page was immediately thrust into the racist ‘angry Black woman’ stereotype despite other contestants being allowed to react in that same manner without criticism.

And for Craig, she was constantly having the validity of her relationship with Rodriguez being questioned, as if she was somehow undesirable or unworthy of his love. Earlier on in the season, the man she had been coupled up with had left her for a woman far lighter than she was, and then proceeded to make fun of Craig with the woman he was now in a couple with. 

It was just another confirmation that women of color are damned if they do and damned if they don’t on reality TV. Their white counterparts are allowed to be fiery, messy and implicitly understood as attractive, while women of color have to fight to show they deserve love.

Jenn Tran deserved love. Jenn Tran deserved so much better than she was given. And future women of color on reality TV deserve more.

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