
This season of The Bachelor is all about The Mean Girls.
There are three of them.
And last night, Shannon – along with the rest of the country – decided they weren’t all that funny. So she decided to call them on it.
Romy, Cat and Alisha have, during their week on television, laughed about how other contestants look and dismissed at least half the group as not being ‘competition’. According to them, everyone is either ‘beige’, ‘basic’ or a ‘bitch’.
They’re the first to yell out “How embarrassing,” or “Ew,” or label another woman “desperate” for doing precisely what they were put on the show to do.
And last night, while they sat around laughing at the expense of a woman who wasn’t there, Shannon and Blair stopped them.
“I have heard her say,” Cat said, referring to Vanessa Sunshine who had had a date with bachelor Nick Cummins, “she’s not that into him…”
From their tone, to their body language, to the fact that Cat explicitly said to camera that she didn’t think Vanessa deserved to be there given she was not yet ready to profess her love to a man she’s spent all of 45 minutes with – it was clear all three women were about to launch into a scathing bitch session.
Blair, visibly uncomfortable with the dynamic, basically argued: “Er, fair enough”.
But Cat didn’t like that very much.
As anyone who has ever had an interaction with a Mean Girl would know, they have a litany of tactics in their arsenal. And Cat chose to use a number of them.
First, she hardly had to open her mouth. The women either side of her were more than willing to defend her.
Second, she decided to make Blair feel like she was, well, a little bit crazy.
“Why are you getting your back up…?” she asked, acting genuinely perplexed.
“I just feel like you’re getting really aggressive,” she continued, “… this isn’t meant to be a conversation like that.”
You see, Cat, and only Cat, gets to decide the terms of the conversation. And never mind that just about every one of Cat’s utterances thus far have been laced with aggression.
Top Comments
These scenes of nastiness make me feel so uneasy when i watch them but also so relieved not to know any women like this in my life. I don't understand how you can feel good by making others feel like shit. High five to Blair and Shannon for calling out the textbook mean girl behaviour.
The truth is that Shannon represents everything those girls wish they could be. Shannon is the genuine, slightly dorky, effortlessly beautiful, girl next door. Cat and Romy are the girls who “speak their mind” but can’t understand that no one actually wants to hear what they have to say.