A TikTok user says 'The Bachelor' producers 'ghosted' her after seeing her body type during a virtual audition

• Caroline Cronin said in a viral TikTok post that she was "ghosted" by "The Bachelor" producers.
• She said that in a Zoom audition, she was asked to stand and "the guy looked at my body."

In a video posted earlier this month, the TikTok user Caroline Cronin said she was "ghosted" after "The Bachelor" producers saw what her body looked like during a Zoom audition.

Cronin, whose TikTok bio describes her as an actor, originally posted a video in November, which has since been deleted, about being contacted by producers of the hit reality dating show.

"When you get a DM from Bachelor casting producers but you're a size 6-8," the text overlay on that post read.

In her January 6 video, Cronin said she did eventually meet with casting producers for an audition over Zoom, which involved talking about her dating history and where she was in her life.

At one point during the call, Cronin said in the video, producers had her "stand up over Zoom, like take a step back from my computer and the guy looked at my body."

A post shared by Caroline Cronin (@carolcro)

She was then told someone would get back to her, she said, adding: "They ghosted me like all the other men in my life."

Cronin said in the video that she was originally excited for the opportunity and thought it was "a good thing" that she was contacted "because I'm not the typical beauty standard, I think, for what the show normally presents." She added that, in her view, while the producers had "done a really great job" with "diversifying the cast of contestants" in terms of race, they "never really diversify the body type of the people that are on the show."

She said that since she was scouted on Instagram and didn't "lie" on her profile, she didn't think her size mattered. But after the audition, Cronin said, she got "the feeling" that her body type played a part in why she was rejected from the show.

In a statement to Insider, Cronin said, "I never meant for my video to come across as bitter or upset for not being cast. That's life."

The point of her TikTok, Cronin added in her statement, was "to raise awareness about the lack of body diversity within the franchise, and it required the context of my interview experience to make my points."

She told Insider that as soon as she was asked to stand up for a "full-body shot," her first thought was, "Oh, OK, so I don't stand a chance."

"This isn't how things should be," Cronin added.

This isn't the first time the issue of body diversity has come up regarding "The Bachelor." In 2018, Glamour's Christopher Rosa wrote an op-ed about the issue, saying that while a midsize model was cast in 2015, she was eliminated in the first week.

Rosa's essay also pointed to the former host Chris Harrison's response to The New York Times in 2014 when asked if there would ever be a "chubby" lead on the show.

"No. You know why? Because that's not attractive," Harrison said. "I know that sounds horrible to say, but I know that at 42, in the eyes of television, I'm old and unattractive."

In 2018, Robert Mills, a senior vice president at ABC, addressed the issue in an interview with WUSA9. He said the show would "absolutely" cast curvy people.

"A lot of it does revolve around who the lead is and who the lead wants to date," Mills added, saying he'd want to avoid casting a diverse body type just to see them "gone the first night."

Representatives for ABC didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

In an earlier interview with Insider, when asked about Cronin's viral TikTok, the "Bachelorette" star Ali Manno (who said she hadn't seen the TikTok) also reflected on the franchise's lack of body diversity, saying she believed producers should make showing different body types a priority.

"That's something I haven't sat with and thought about a lot, but that's actually very, very true," Manno said of the lack of diverse body types. "I know that the show has made a commitment to diversity in ethnicity. Maybe this is a call for the show to really make a commitment to diversity and size. Because I think that's just as important."