Dancing with the Stars: Diving further into Kaitlyn Bristowe – Mike Fleiss fued

Is there a larger reason for a Kaitlyn Bristowe – Mike Fleiss feud, or is this controversy of the week as superficial as it appears? This certainly feels like a worthy discussion worth having, mostly because there are so many people having heated discussions about it already.

Let’s trace this back to yesterday first, as the former Bachelorette star made it clear that she’d come close to being on a prior season of Dancing with the Stars before saying that Fleiss (who created the entire Bachelor franchise) has canceled the entire thing at the last minute because he didn’t want people from his show using it entirely for fame. Yet, this came mere months after he allowed Chris Soules to sign on the bottom line. Before that, both Sean Lowe and Jake Pavelka had done the gig.

Sure, Trista Sutter also did it, but that was back during the first DWTS season, before the show was a big hit, and it was well removed from the first season of The Bachelorette airing.

In the wake of the controversy yesterday, Fleiss still is not saying all that much, other than claiming that if Kaitlyn is going to come for him on social media, she should spell his name right.

Oh, and he also claimed that allowing Bachelor runner-up Melissa Rycroft to do the show twice makes it clear that he is not discriminating against the women of his franchise.

There are a few different things to unpack here, so let’s look into it further.

Are women being excluded?

It’s a fair question to ask in the light of what Kaitlyn said, and also the rumors that were there this past summer with JoJo Fletcher. Had there been a recent leading lady on the show, Fleiss probably would not be facing so many sexism allegations.

Can you argue that The Bachelorette gets lower ratings than The Bachelor, and its stars therefore don’t carry the same ratings clout? Sure, but this argument goes out the window when you consider that Dancing with the Stars cast women from The Real Housewives, and it’s never been the hit that The Bachelor franchise is. Therefore, this shouldn’t be considered to be a huge part of the equation.

Nothing is definitive in this world — therefore, it’s wrong to just say that this is a black-and-white issue. Yet, you cannot ignore the optics of the four Bachelor contestants since 2010 getting on Dancing with the Stars and no new Bachelorette stars in that time. Melissa’s a special case given that she was a last-second replacement and she wasn’t a Bachelorette to begin with. The evidence is there of women being excluded, and that’s not good.

Is timing a factor?

You do have to consider this as well. At the time of the spring Dancing with the Stars season, Bachelor stars are still in the peak of their fame — typically, their season ended one week prior. Meanwhile, The Bachelorette tends to end in late July / early August, at least a month before the new DWTS season, if not longer. Therefore, they are not at the peak of their celebrity anymore, and may not have as great a pull or relevance.

Still, we’re only talking about 45 days or so at most. We don’t think they’ll be forgotten in this time, and we don’t think this is an ABC issue clearly. If it was, they never would’ve offered Kaitlyn a contract in the first place. This is clearly more of a Fleiss issue.

Was Fleiss punishing Kaitlyn?

If there was any argument you could make for this particular situation of her getting turned away, it is this — during her season of the show, Kaitlyn accidentally spoiled the ending (that she chose Shawn Booth) in a post on Snapchat. This wasn’t a season where spoiler-master Reality Steve had the ending at the time, and Fleiss was facing a chance to have an ending of the show air unspoiled for the first time since Desiree Hartsock chose Chris Siegfried. That may have been a huge ego boost for him, and this ending getting out may have shattered said ego.

Crazier things have happened that Fleiss potentially nixing Kaitlyn’s gig out of frustration for her ruining her own ending. She said at the time that there were people unhappy with her over the Snapchat leak; it would be fairly petty for this to be the reason for canceling the gig, but at the same time we suppose that she could’ve technically faced harsher consequences given that she probably signed a contract to not spoil anything. The show couldn’t directly go after her for that; it would’ve been a PR disaster, and it was pretty clearly an accident that the Snapchat post got out in the first place.

—

We’ve just written far more on this subject than we ever imagined that we would, but now is the time you should share some of your own thoughts on the subject! Why do think that this happened? (Photo: ABC.)