Kaitlyn Bristowe is apologizing to Chelsea Vaughn.
Earlier this week, the former Bachelorette took to Instagram Stories to talk about the season 25 star's conversation with Matt James on The Bachelor in which Chelsea spoke about her hair experience and the emotional side of hair for Black women. Kaitlyn then proceeded to talk about her own hair insecurities and promote a vitamin.
On Jan. 28, Kaitlyn returned to the social platform and shared a clip of herself watching a video titled "The History of Black Hair."
"I was doing some research in my last video and I wanted to explain why," she told her fans. "And some of you may know and some of you may not. And I think the people who maybe watched my story and didn't catch this should also be educated, which I'm going to try and talk about right now."
The 35-year-old admitted she "selfishly stopped listening" to Chelsea's conversation with Matt during this week's episode. Instead, she started talking to boyfriend Jason Tartick about her own hair.
"I was like, 'Yeah, there is emotional attachment. I'm so insecure about my hair,'" she said. "And I feel completely, completely ignorant. I am ignorant. I was ignorant in that moment to not listen to the rest of her story and understand the history behind why she had insecurities around her hair."
She also acknowledged that she owed Chelsea and her followers an apology for her ignorance and for comparing her own experience to Chelsea's in the promotion. "I'm humiliated," Kaitlyn said. "I'm so humiliated that I did not listen."
And while the Dancing With the Stars alum said she's "allowed to have insecurities about hair and emotional attachment to hair," she made it clear that "it is not comparable to Chelsea's journey with hair and the history behind that and why she has the feeling."
"Chelsea's experience is deeply ingrained in Black culture and beauty standards," Kaitlyn said, "and I have now done so much research into what that looked like for many centuries."
She then wrote, "Shame on me for contributing to making a profit off a Black woman's struggle."
Near the end of her video, Kaitlyn posted a link to the video she watched and thanked Chelsea for sharing her story. "I'm so glad that, you know, ABC is starting to share these voices and showing representation of all colors and they should do more shapes and sizes, too," she added. "You know, we can dive into that on another day."
In addition, she thanked fellow Bachelor Nation star Taylor Nolan for having a conversation with her.
"I know it is not her job and I should not rely on women of color to help explain these sorts of things because I can do the work on my own," Kaitlyn said. "But thank you for reaching out Taylor and for chatting to me today. And I don't know if Chelsea will even watch this, but I'm going to reach out to you and would love to chat, as well."
A follower then suggested that Kaitlyn donate the money from the paid partnership to an organization that supports Black women. "This is an incredible idea," Kaitlyn wrote, "and I will do just that."
In her conversation with Matt, Chelsea spoke about the "emotionally freeing experience" of shaving her hair.
"I don't know, I don't think people realize how emotional hair can be, especially, like, for Black women," the runway model said. "Just because, like, I literally had been, like, chemically straightening my hair since I was 2 years old. Like, all my friends are white. My school was white. And I didn't even feel comfortable, like, leaving my house without my hair being straight. Like, there were times I just had so much anxiety and stress about what people were going to think. It's definitely a unique experience that Black women have with their hair."
She also talked about her decision to have the conversation with Matt during an episode of the Bachelor Happy Hour podcast.
"I just think that as women, and especially as Black women, so much of our self-worth is tied to our hair," Chelsea explained. "And I don't know if a lot of people realize that or understand that, especially as far as Black women go. And, I mean, it was just a really big deal to me, so that's obviously something that I wanted to share with somebody that I'm potentially going to end up with, my partner."
She then noted she hadn't seen these conversations come up on the show before.
"I watched the show since I was younger and there haven't been that many Black contestants or there hasn't been a Black Bachelor lead. Nobody's going on there talking about their hair journey," Chelsea added. "And I think that some people might have—hopefully they don't anymore—but might see it as trivial because it's like, 'Oh it's just hair.' And, like, even for a while, I felt like that. Like, I felt like it wasn't important enough for me to bring up to people or it wasn't, like, a big enough of an insecurity to be, like, valid. And then it wasn't until I decided to shave it off that I realized how important it was and how much of an effect it had on me."