I'm Claire Fallon and I'm Emma Gray and this is Love to See It, an obsessively detailed

recap podcast about reality dating shows like The Bachelor and other pop culture that makes us laugh, cry, and curse the patriarchy.

We can't live with these shows and we can't live without them, but we can break down every juicy moment and unpack all the weird messages these shows send us about love, sex, and dating.

Welcome to Love to See It's Special Bonus Edition.

Bachelor and Paradise Season 8 has already brought with it a whirlwind of discourse, of course. So of course we will be discussing Bachelor news and gossip from the Clacy breakup to the ongoing debate about Sally's suitcase.

Plus we have a special guest from the Roses for Everybody campaign to chat with us about the notable lack of progress the franchise has made and body diversity since the campaign started earlier this year.

So today we are joined by Epiphany Espinoza, a member of the Roses for Everybody campaign. Epiphany also works in consumer insights at BET.

So she's really in that TV audience data. She knows what she's talking about. Epiphany, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to talk about the messiness of Bachelor Nation and more about the Roses for Everybody campaign.

Absolutely. We are thrilled to have you here. So we have talked about it before on the show, but it's been a minute.

So could you remind our listeners like what the central goal of the Roses for Everybody campaign is and what you hope the franchise will sort of put into place to accomplish it?

Yeah, so the overall goal of the Roses for Everybody campaign is to truly give Roses to everybody, every type of body.

And we're really pushing for more body diversity in the Bachelor franchise. And that's something that we haven't seen at all in all of the years that the show has been on.

So since you guys started the campaign earlier this year, we've seen a fair amount of support in Bachelor Nation, numerous alumni and Bachelor commentators have spoken out in support of the platform have signed on to the campaign.

I'm curious like have you guys heard directly or indirectly from anyone at the franchise itself or anyone who's like still working closely with the show?

Yeah, not as much as we would like. I mean, we have a few unofficial friends behind the scenes who tell us that yes, they kind of know the campaign is going on, but we haven't heard anything official.

It's like, yeah, we're going to work toward these steps and these things that are important.

And what's also been a little bit disappointing as well is that even though we have had some alum support, it's been a lot of private support.

A lot of people are just not talking about it publicly. And I think that's part of maybe a larger issue about just the fat phobia in our society and our inability to talk about bodies.

Yeah, I was going to ask what do you think is behind that? Like, why do you think this kind of a campaign versus other fan driven campaigns for other types of diversity? Like, why do you think people might be more more reticent to be so open about their support?

People in general, in just society as a whole, we're still having trouble having discussions around bodies. I think only recently in the past decade or so, or maybe even shorter that we've been able to talk about race more freely.

And you've seen them needle move in that aspect, then you see the success of the bachelor diversity campaign last year. Well, I'm sorry, those two years ago now.

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