'Cosmopolitan' Pulls The Bachelor's Victoria F.'s Digital Cover Over White Lives Matter Controversy

This post contains spoilers for the latest episode of The Bachelor, so beware of reading further if you don’t want to know what happened.

A competition happened between the contestants during the latest episode of the ABC reality competition series and the ladies competed for a chance to be on the cover of Cosmopolitan.

In the end, Cosmo‘s editor-in-chief Jessica Pels selected Victoria Fuller as the winner of the competition and she shot a digital cover for the magazine.

In the time since the editorial shoot happened, Victoria‘s involvement in a “White Lives Matter” campaign surfaced on the internet and the magazine decided that she did not align with the magazine’s values, so the cover has been scrapped.

The “White Lives Matter” slogan was used as part of a Marlin Lives Matter organization, but Pels says that the phrase and the belief system it represents is “rooted in racism and therefore problematic.”

“Unequivocally, the White Lives Matter movement does not reflect the values of the Cosmo brand. We stand in solidarity with Black Lives Matter, and any cause that fights to end injustices for people of color,” she wrote in an open letter.

Jessica concluded, “My team and I had many long discussions about how we wanted to address this issue. We’d already printed the fashion shoot in our March issue, complete with an inset of the cover, and of course the episode had already been filmed. Ultimately what felt right was choosing not to publish the digital cover on our website or social feeds, and simply being honest with you, the audience we respect, about what happened and where we stand.”