happy latinx heritage month to everyone but devin strader
my first "bachelorette" was tanked by a mexican man, sigh
Growing up, my dad always would tell us (half joking) not to “embarrass the family” when we were out in public or at school. It was a way that he reminded us that when we went out to the world, we were not only representing our family, but Mexicans in general. Well, dear reader, I am afraid that one Devin Strader has embarrassed us Latinx people on a national scale on this past season of ABC’s The Bachelorette. And while it is a rough start to Latinx Heritage Month, it’s also sadly on brand for Mexican American men.
The TLDR is this: Strader, 29, was perhaps the most “emotionally vulnerable” of all the men. He shared his story early and often, and was the first to tell our bachelorette, Jenn, that he loved her. Strader regularly interrupted other contestants’ one-on-one time with Jenn and claimed it was because he was so clear about his feelings and intentions with Jenn. In the final episode, Jenn proposes to Devin (a Bachelorette first) and then, tragically, we learn that Devin dumped her over the phone two months after leaving Hawaii, and before they even taped the recap “After the Final Rose” episode.
I had certain expectations going into my first viewing of The Bachelorette. I expected to love the ingénue, Jenn Tran, which I did. What’s not to love? She’s gorgeous (could definitely play a convincing Disney princess), has a really hard job (nurse/ PA), and speaks from the heart about the challenges she’s faced in life. I expected to be a little detached from the men as a queer viewer, I expected that the men would not be anyone I personally would date, and I expected to buy into the idea that she could fall in love and get engaged in eight weeks. But I truly did not expect to be this astounded by the bleak and diabolical fate Jenn met at the conclusion of the series.
From early in the series, Jenn, 26, was (unfortunately) drawn to Strader—a tall, multiracial, Pete Davidson-look-alike. Strader is a son of Houston, Texas, and lured Jenn in by being very up front about his upbringing and the ways it mirrored Jenn’s: Strader’s father is Mexican, his mother is white, and he was primarily raised by his mother, like Jenn. Basically, it seems that both Strader and Tran had disappointing fathers and were raised by single mothers, leading Tran to believe they had a shared experience that made them want love and a two-parent household even more.
Tran was also open early on that she’s struggled to accept her Vietnamese heritage because of the ways in which she was made to feel less than her white peers growing up. Tran shares in the first episode, “It’s been hard to accept myself as ‘the Bachelorette’ because I don’t see myself in that light.” What Jenn conveys, in so many words, is that Asian women are not allowed to embody ideal womanhood and femininity. They are fetishized, hypersexualized, and relegated to sassy side-characters. And while Jenn never explicitly states that she’s interested in a partner of color, she pretty quickly zeroes in on mostly ethnic, black and brown contestants.
Watching the first episode back, it’s even more heartbreaking how Tran was utterly screwed over by the producers of this show, who clearly had little to no interest in actually helping Jenn find love. Many have discussed how the show was not cast with Jenn in mind, because a different previous Bachelor contestant, Maria Georgas, a white woman, was cast and then backed out of the season. All the men there were expecting someone else and the network had cast these supposedly future-husbands for a totally different kind of woman.
Not to be that guy, but I truly never liked Devin. Strader is a unique blend of mean and insecure in a way that many men of color from Texas are. Texas is a deeply racist place, and if you are not blonde and white you’re pretty much never going to be picked first for anything, much less picked first in childhood and adolescent dating. (My middle school boyfriend was Italian, and his mom approved of me because as a light-skinned Latina, she deemed me “close enough” to Italian). On top of his ethnic difference, Strader shared in one episode that he’s insecure about his body; he identifies as a “former fat kid” and compared to the other guys has a fairly normal body, as far as Bachelor Nation casting goes. On the whole, Strader reads as a man who was made to feel less than growing up in a racist environment, and as a result chooses to humiliate women of color to gain a false sense of superiority.
While he doesn’t explicitly narrate his own insecurities about his race, it’s clear that he is embarrassed of his father and uncomfortable with his own identity. Strader’s father makes an appearance later in the series, during the “Hometowns” episode, and Strader makes a point to say that while his father was not around growing up, he’s happy to have him in his life again. I don’t remember his dad’s name and I couldn’t find this man online, so let’s just call him Timo. Devin’s conversation with Timo is stiff and awkward. I’m sorry, but this man does not know his son. Sadly, the stereotype of Mexican men is that they are not good fathers—they are absent, angry, patriarchal, struggle with alcohol, and oppressive. So of course if you have a bad relationship with a dad eerily close to that stereotype, who is your primary connection to Mexican culture, it’s going to hurt to claim that heritage.
In the final episode, we hear Strader identify himself as “Hispanic.” While identification within the Latinx community is complicated, it is true that Latino/a/x/es who opt for the “Hispanic” label have generally been raised to “fit in” and not make any political waves. As someone who grew up in Texas and was often in white-majority spaces, it was easier to identify as Hispanic because it wasn’t as threatening, as “Hispanic” carries connotations of connections to Spain and whiteness.
So yeah, I’m not surprised that Devin was a diabolical fake-ass swindler. But I am very sad that it happened, and even more sad for Jenn that she got got on a national scale. It was a real low for Mexicans, and I think I speak for us all when I say that we should take off our cowboy hats in reverence and mourning for yet another embarrassing son of Texas.