When Colton Underwood was Bachelor last season, some early drama stemmed from the fact that Hannah Brown and Caelynn Miller-Keyes knew each other from the pageant world before they had a falling out. (They were Miss Alabama and Miss North Carolina, respectively.) Well, on Peter Weber's Bachelor season, there are five contestants with pageant pasts, including Alayah Benavidez and Victoria Paul, who also knew each other before appearing on The Bachelor.
Alayah was Miss Texas 2019 and Victoria was Miss Louisiana 2019, meaning both women participated in the Miss USA competition in May of last year — four months before The Bachelor started filming. All of the women who participate in Miss USA meet each other and some become friends. And while it doesn't seem that Alayah and Victoria became particularly close, they definitely were familiar with each other heading into the Bachelor Mansion.
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Alayah and Victoria don't have photos of each other on their Instagram accounts, but they have both posted behind-the-scenes pictures from Miss USA that show the extent to which contestants interact with each other in the lead-up to the competition. As you can see below, Alayah posted a series of photos with her fellow contestants after the new Miss USA was crowned. She captioned the pics, "I am happy, and even though I did not walk away with the title of Miss USA, I walked away with 50 beautiful friendships that will last me my entire life ... These girls are so supportive and wonderful and it never once felt like a competition with all of these beauties cheering each other on."
And apparently Bachelor fans should arm themselves with this knowledge because something of interest will go down with Alayah. In a video announcing the contestants, Chris Harrison said of the 24-year-old, "Something we’ve never had happen before in the history of the show happens to Alayah." As for Victoria, she's "quick with her emotions and maybe a little quick with the L-word."
In addition to Victoria and Alayah, the three other pageant contestants on Peter's season are Hannah Ann Sluss, Kelsey Weier, and Maurissa Gunn, who has already been sent home. As reported by Us Weekly, Hannah Ann was Miss North Knoxville and competed in the Miss Tennessee competition, Kelsey was Miss Iowa in 2017, and Maurissa was Miss Montana Teen in 2012.
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With so many pageant queen contestants, there has to be a reference to pageants at some point and there also has to be talk about the fact that Victoria and Alayah competed against each other. If Hannah and Caelynn's edit from Colton's Bachelor season is any indication, that's not the sort of information this show would just slip under the rug. Maybe we can avoid the ugly side of former pageant competitor relationships this time though, right, Bachelor producers?
If only. That's unfortunately like asking a bee to give up honey.
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