Being On The Bachelor Is Good For Your Career — If You’re A Lady

TV

Being On The Bachelor Is Good For Your Career — If You’re A Lady

11:30 am, May 22nd | by Sarah Devlin

Well, this is embarrassing. I am a longtime viewer of The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, and even the summer abomination that is Bachelor Pad. While I believe that the franchise in general is a joke/bad for feminism, in my sad tenure of watching the show I have accumulated some not altogether useless knowledge. One of the patterns that I’ve noticed, in particular, is that being a Bachelorette can be very good for a lady’s career (within a rather narrow field, but it’s a boost nonetheless). Of course, in order to be a Bachelorette you have to first appear on The Bachelor, and in most cases get dumped. If you can make it through that, however, there are rewards to be had, rewards that are curiously unavailable for the men who assume the role of The Bachelor season after season. If you are on Bachelor Pad, generally speaking, there is a very little hope for you.

Those of you lucky enough to be unfamiliar with the Bachelor franchise might be skeptical. But I can prove it — here’s a look at the most recent Bachelors and Bachelorettes, and how they fared career-wise after the show. I am only looking at Bachelor(ette)s from the Brad Womack Years onward, because Brad Womack was the Bachelor who changed everything. You’ll see what I mean.

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1.Deanna Pappas

Deanna Pappas was dumped by Brad Womack on his first appearance on the show (when he didn't choose anyone in the finale). As the Bachelorette, she chose Jesse Csincsak, a professional snowboarder, to be her fiancé. It didn't work out. While she was a realtor for Keller Williams in Georgia at time of her appearance on Brad's season in 2007, she milked the engagement to appear on some reality programming — Get Married on Lifetime, and Bachelorette Party on Oxygen. Since then, her website Deanna-Pappas.com, (which hasn't been updated since 2011), has contact info for booking her for personal appearances. Sad. She is also known to do occasional Bachelor color commentary on Extra.

2.Matt Grant

...Who? I didn't watch this season, and it doesn't look like I missed anything. He's some kind of global finance dude. Media presence following his appearance: crickets. Engagement to Lorenzo Lamas's daughter (I know, right?): broken.

3.Jason Mesnick

Jason, who was jilted by Deanna in her season, is a business development manager for the travel company Down Under Adventures. His lack of media stardom may be due to his full-time commitment to being a sociopath? On his After The Final Rose special, usually a victory lap for the final couple at the end of the season, he publicly dumped winner Melissa Rycroft and asked runner up Molly Malaney to give him another shot. They got married. On TV.

4.Jillian Harris

Jillian Harris was dumped by Jason (bullet: dodged), then chose Ed Swiderski as the winner of her season as the Bachelorette. Spoiler alert — they broke up. Harris was an interior designer before she appeared on the Bachelor franchise, and she continues to work in the field as a designer for ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. That's, like, a real job. And one that she almost certainly couldn't have landed without being on the show. Good hustle, Jillian. In her spare time she's blogging about this season of The Bachelorette for Ladies Home Journal (oh boy), a gig she apparently usurped from fellow Bachelorette Ali Fedotowsky.

5.Jake Pavelka

Commercial airline pilot Jake Pavelka was dumped by Jillian, and ended his engagement to the heinous Vienna Girardi shortly after his season, The Bachelor: On The Wings Of Love — I swear — wrapped, and his rage problem became well documented in the press. After the show, it became clear that what Jake really wants is to be a STAAAAAR, as he's since appeared on Dancing With The Stars, Famous Food on the CW, and a single episode of H8R. It's not going to happen for you, Jake. Because you're insane.

6.Ali Fedotowsky

Ali dodged the atom bomb full of fury known as Jake Pavelka (what probably sealed the deal was when she told him the first thing she did on the weekends was check her email, instead of MAKING SANDWICHES or whatever Jake wants his lady to be doing instead), and was engaged to Roberto Martinez for 100 years before she broke her leg and then her engagement. She used to work for Facebook — yes, that Facebook — but has since made a medium-successful go at being a TV personality. She was a correspondent on a weekly morning show in San Diego and currently appears on 1st Look for NBC, which airs at, like, the witching hour, but which I've definitely seen (I also stalked her for a hot minute while she was shooting a segment at the Googa Mooga festival in Brooklyn. No shame, only pride).

7.Brad Womack

Brad Womack is a busy man, singlehandedly keeping this ouroboros of shame and despair alive. He kicked off the Deanna-Jason-Jillian-Jake-Ali cycle, with a brief interruption from Matt Grant (who? Exactly), and then appeared on the show for a second time to break more hearts. Brad owns a couple of bars in Austin, TX, and while business might be helped slightly from psychos like me hoping to catch a glimpse of him, the effect is probably negligible. Plus, being the sun in the Bachelor/ette solar system is a full time job on its own.

8.Ashley Hebert

After making the final four in Brad's second season, Ashley the dental student ended up engaged to JP Rosenbaum (and they seem to be happy, so far. Their websites, AshleyAndJP.com, is adorable despite Ashley being photoshopped into total plasticity). She finished school after her season and is starting her pediatric dentistry residence this summer. Okay, maybe her career wasn't explicitly helped, but it certainly wasn't hurt by her appearance on the show. In her spare time she blogs about the show for Parade, giving her the honor of having the classiest Bachelor/ette recapping gig. She and JP might get married on TV, but I actually like them so they get a free pass. Looking at you, Mesnick.

9.Ben Flajnik

Ben was Ashley's runner up, and after her season ended I was a bit disappointed on her behalf for not going with the man who owns his own winery. Then he revealed himself to be deeply stupid on his own season of The Bachelor, proposing to obvious crazy person Courtney Robertson, and I stopped caring about him. He and his business partners recently changed the name of their brand from Evolve to Envolve, partly to avoid publicity drawn from his appearance on The Bachelorette, so it's safe to say TV is not helping him sell wine.

10.Emily Maynard

Finally we have tragic widow Emily Maynard, who dumped Brad Womack after he chose her as his fiancée in Round 2 (bring him back a third time, PLEASE). Emily's occupation during her stint on The Bachelor was "Children's Hospital Event Planner." She tweets as "RickisMommy" and is very preoccupied with emphasizing that she is a single mom first. She has one TV credit on her IMDB page, though, and did vlog about Ashley Hebert's season, and she's on this godforsaken show again, so there's clearly at least a small part of her that wants to be in media. After this season, she may not have a husband, but she will certainly have some good career prospects.

11.

Ultimately, if you're a Bachelorette, you have more job opportunities after the show, but they're in a very narrow field. They require being tied to your identity as a jilted, heart-broken ex-fiancé, probably for the duration of whatever media career comes afterward. Former Bachelors, however, don't have the same opportunities - perhaps because they tend to be somewhat disgraced after their runs on the show (Jason's fiancé switcheroo, Brad's 1000 appearances as the Bachelor, Jake's rage problem, Ben's stupidity and wandering eye) but the ladies get more of a pass. Whether or not the added fame and attention is worth it is their choice.