Yet another Bachelor contestant is speaking up to clear her name after stirring up controversy among fans.
On Monday’s episode of the ABC reality series, Sydney Hightower scored herself a coveted one-on-one date with season 24 lead, Peter Weber. During their outing, the 24-year-old opened up about the racism and bullying she experienced in high school but after the episode aired, people were quick to call bulls**t on her sob story!
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Quick back story on Hightower: the brunette beauty has a diverse ethnic background (her mom is white and her dad is Black and Dominican) and hails from Alabama (yes, just like Pete’s ex-girlfriend Hannah Brown). Sydney told Peter that middle and high school were “the worst years of my life,” adding that she ate lunch in the bathroom her entire senior year and wasn’t accepted for her mixed race.
Weber responded gracefully by saying he was “so amazed” by her strength. Meanwhile, the debate over Sydney’s experience really took off on Twitter after an old classmate came through with receipts that appear to tell a different story!
Ch-ch-check out the screenshots from Sydney’s alleged high school yearbook shared by user @jc_me_rollin (below):
“Ate lunch in the bathroom everyday of highschool” #bachelornation I’m selling my yearbooks for $200 a pop, who wants the tea😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/Kjz9LuMEru
— jc me rollin (@jc_me_rollin_) February 4, 2020
The images seem to show that not only was Sydney a pageant queen, she was also voted as an “upperclassmen top beauty.” According to fans who picked up on the tweet, this hardly looks like someone who was bullied or a sad loner as described.
Before we get to the big rebuttal, we feel it’s important to note these experiences are not mutually exclusive. It’s totally possible for someone to win a beauty competition, which is an isolated event, and still experience tons of adversity in their personal life.
Sydney Strikes Back!
Hightower shared screenshots in a since-deleted tweet of her direct messages to the account that called her out in attempts to set the record straight! She began:
“Setting the record straight. I’ve been through so much from the town I grew up in and will not allow my story, or others to be deminished because of one of the same girls, with the same mindsets as the people who terrorized me. Not happening.”
She continued, further explaining the backstory behind those pics:
“Feels ridiculous I even have to address this. But correct I did win a beauty pageant my senior year of high school. That was voted for by 5 judges. Not by my peers. Winning a pageant based off of outer beauty does not take away the racial bullying, and isolation I’ve been through.”
The starlet said she put herself out there as much as she could in an effort to fit in and find acceptance:
“I was also on the cheer team in middle school and in many clubs in high school. You’ll do anything you can to fit in, and I tried. I won pageants because of my ‘looks’ and I was in clubs because I wanted a scholarship to get into college. Not because I was accepted by my peers.”
Then, Sydney dove into more specifics about the way she was unfairly treated by her peers. Along with another set of screengrabs that featured “extremely vile language” towards her, she wrote:
“Any one from my high school want to pull out the videos of girls stuffing my locker with Oreo cookies, vandalizing my home, shoving me in the hall ways? Teachers literally referring to me as a halfbreed? Calling my mother the worst names I’ve ever heard in my life? I doubt that.”
Weber, for his part, has since told Entertainment Tonight that he fully believes Hightower’s story and offered his take on how fans have been responding to all of the gossip this season:
“Listen, I feel like so many of us have been under attack with this show. I don’t necessarily understand why. It seems like in recent seasons there’s so much hate coming on and that kind of saddens me. I feel like that’s not what this is about. This is truly about trying to hopefully have an amazing love story and it’s being just overcome and overwhelmed right now with this insane drama and all this hate.”
Unfortunately, drama like this seems to happen with every lead and at least one of their suitors. In our humble opinion? We don’t see this changing anytime soon — especially when all of this negative press still has people talking about the show.
Perezcious readers, what do U think about all of this? Sound OFF in the comments…
[Image via Bachelor ABC/YouTube]
The post ‘Bachelor’ Contestant Sydney Hightower Defends Herself After Fan Claims She LIED About Being Bullied In High School! appeared first on Perez Hilton.