March 30, 2021 • bachelor insider
Catherine Lowe Discusses Her Time on 'The Bachelor' and One Major Way to Increase Representation on the Show
Catherine Lowe stopped by “Bachelor Happy Hour” to chat with co-hosts Rachel Lindsay and Becca Kufrin about her time competing for now-husband Sean Lowe’s heart on Season 17 of “The Bachelor” in 2013.
During her interview, Catherine recalled her experience as an Asian American woman on the show.
“Sean has dated a Black girl, he’s dated a Filipino [me], and I feel like when he said, ‘I’m attracted to any race,’ he meant it. So, when I came on, I didn’t know that. I thought, ‘OK, this blond white guy, he likes white girls. I’m just here because I’m ethnic and I’m checking a box,’” said the brunette beauty.
“That’s genuinely what I thought, because I didn’t know,” she added. “That was my bad, because I just assumed because he looked like that and he was from Texas.”
Of course, Catherine won Sean’s final rose and the pair tied the knot in January 2014. They have since welcomed three children: sons Samuel, 4, and Isaiah, 2, and daughter Mia, 15 months.
Looking forward to the future of the franchise, Catherine offered one major way to increase representation on the show.
“The lead has to have some sort of attraction to different ethnicities. It starts there because, other than that, it’s filler and that feels wrong,” she said. “That feels wrong because you’re not giving people a chance to really go up higher into how long the weeks go on. You can’t see them long enough because they’re not genuinely attracted.”
Catherine continued, “You want to hear their stories, you want to see them represented more. It can’t just be like, ‘OK, there’s three Black girls in the season now’ — and then they’re all falling off within the first couple weeks because you’re getting a lead who’s not attracted to them and that doesn’t feel fair. I don’t know if that’s looking into their background more. I don’t know what it is, but it’s having honest conversations with the leads, like, ‘If you’re not attracted to them, then this is a deal-breaker.’”
Listen to the latest edition of “Bachelor Happy Hour” below.
