An Investigation: Did ‘The Bachelor’ Blur Out A Contestant’s Bikini Area For Being Too Hairy?

True story: UPROXX’s Andy Isaac and I came up with a brilliant plan that we were going to start tandem coverage of The Bachelor. Looking back, I think the primary flaw in this plan is that I didn’t realize that each episode of The Bachelor is two hours long. So I made it approximately forty minutes into last night’s episode before I cried uncle and bailed, but not before sending Andy the following exchanges:

I’m watching The Bachelor and 20 minutes in one of the contestants bikini bottoms needed to be blurred out. Man. I don’t know if I can do two hours of this. [Foreshadowing!]

Another one put on the guy’s motorcycle helmet and smacked her head against several surfaces to “test” it. Kind of a metaphor for me watching The Bachelor.

Well, I’m really regretting not sticking it out now, because those aforementioned censored bikini bottoms were apparently the subject of body hair controversy(!). At the time I just assumed the bikini bottoms (both front and back) were blurred out because they left very little to the imagination. But according to Jezebel, while that was a common reaction, there may have been something else going on down there having to do with personal grooming habits.

Most took this to indicate that Jillian’s bikini bottoms were just very very small. But once fellow (incredibly drunk contestant) Jordan started blabbing in her confessional about how Jillian had an incredibly hairy ass, speculation arose that ABC had censored Jillian’s butt because it was, um, unkept.

“Jillian has got the hairiest ass I’ve ever seen on a woman,” Jordan drunkenly slurred like she’d gotten into the wine coolers too early at a pledge picnic. “Like, it’s very close to several of my ex-boyfriends’. Peach-fuzzed with all [indecipherable]. Like, this is like hair inside your a**hole. Like, she needs to like take a weed whacker and zzzzz [mimes mowing a lawn]. Like, yeah. It’s just not normal.”

After the episode aired (which sent drunk girl Jordan packing, BTW), she changed her story on Twitter. Hmmm.

As Exhibit B, here’s a Vine taken during the hairy ass voiceover in which another shot of Jillian’s ass is censored, only this time she’s wearing jeans. Something definitely is not adding up, here.

So what’s the verdict here? I guess it’s possible she left her Schick Quattro at home. But the more likely scenario is that ABC probably did a bit of creative editing knowing that Jillian would be later accused of having unkempt body hair, thus stirring up a gossip maelstrom that we all played right into.

Here’s the whole segment, though — if you’d like to draw your own opinions:

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