Contestants on the “Bachelor” franchise are not known for their cultural sensitivity.
When Bachelor 24 was airing in 2020, viewers discovered a photo of contestant Victoria Fuller modeling a White Lives Matter t-shirt. The same year, Hannah Brown, the lead of Bachelorette 15, said the n-word on an Instagram live. During Bachelor 25, an old photo of contestant Rachael Kirkconnell at an “Old South” themed ball resurfaced online. In 2022, Bachelorette 19 winner Erich Schwer was outed for having worn Blackface in high school. A matter of months later, viewers found old tweets from Bachelor 27 contestant Greer Blitzer in which she defended someone (not Schwer) for wearing Blackface. And that’s just a sampling of incidents!
So it’s not really surprising that Bachelor 25 contestant Anna Redman would post an OOTD to go visit Auschwitz. Yes, you read that correctly.
Here’s what happened:
Last week, Redman posted a notes app itinerary of her upcoming trip to Poland on her Instagram story. The screenshot showed the stops on her trip as well as a photo of the outfit she planned to wear each day. On one slide the 28 year-old wrote “The best packing ‘hack'” and “Is somebody gonna match my freak?” Her events listed on that slide? A visit to Krakow one day, and a morning visit to the Nazi concentration and extermination camps Auschwitz-Birkenau the next.
Yikes.
A word to the wise: Maybe don’t ask someone to “match your freak” at a Nazi death camp. And perhaps don’t post about the outfit you’re planning to wear to the site where 1.1 million were murdered.
Clearly, others were offended by her Instagram story. (Though the outfit she planned to wear to Auschwitz — a black dress, bag and white sandals or sneakers — is itself not inappropriate.) On Reddit, a user posted the story in the “The Bachelor” thread and comments back to pour in criticizing Redman for being “tone deaf” and “disgusting” and “thoughtless.” The Daily Mail also reported that users began to criticize Redman in her Instagram comments section. Those comments now seem to be deleted.
All of the criticism is compounded by the fact that this isn’t the first time Redman has been called out for bad behavior. On her season of “The Bachelor,” the copywriter-turned-influencer was eliminated when Bachelor Matt James heard that she had spread a rumor about contestant Brittany Galvin being an escort.
Regardless, the former “Bachelor” contestant apologized in her Instagram stories on Friday. “I’m severely sorry for any pain I caused when sharing my packing notes story. I understand how flippant it came off labeling that day with the trip we are taking,” she wrote. “I understand that heaviness of visiting Auschwitz and have been planning accordingly since we added it to our travel plans.”
As far as social media apologies go, Redman seems to be genuine. She identified her error, recognized the weight of visiting Auschwitz, explained how she tried to rectify the situation and expressed remorse. Her statement could’ve used a little more specificity as to what she did wrong and steps she’ll be taking to prevent something like this from happening again. But, you know, baby steps.
Here’s hoping Redman learns from this experience and her visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau.