Last week, “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” star and upcoming Bachelorette, Taylor Frankie Paul, was exposed by her ex-boyfriend for domestic abuse allegations. As the week progressed, videos were shared, including a clip of her screaming and hitting her then partner, and throwing dining stools at him, which ended up hitting her daughter. With this, she has also recently temporarily lost custody of her son. These abuse allegations are not new either, as she has faced legal trouble around domestic violence before, and as the main video going around is from 2023. It is just now being more widespread and the internet is going crazy. To tie it all in, just days before the premiere, ABC announced that they have cancelled the upcoming season of their hit show, The Bachelorette, which Taylor was set to star in. All of this commotion and chaos around these allegations, which in my opinion are warranted still, make me wonder why we don’t treat other stars or key figures in our society, like Chris Brown or even our President, to the same standard for committing similar crimes, if not worse?
I’m not in any way justifying what Taylor did. Although I don’t know the full story, I know what I saw. Throwing large metal objects at someone is ludicrous. When I saw the video, all I read in the comments were, “why are we not asking what he said to her before this?”, “this is suspicious timing”, “I’m not buying it”. Why are we debating whether or not she was in the wrong when we all see how she is acting? It doesn’t matter what he may or may not have said, she is fully trying to hurt him with full intention. Secondly, if the tables were turned, no one would bat an eye if it was a man doing this. No one would ever ask, “what did she say before this?”. So as a woman, I can’t advocate to always believe victims only when those victims are women, it has to go both ways. Women can be abusers too, and there is no reason to not believe Taylor wouldn’t be just because she’s your favorite Tiktok turned reality star. Lastly, seeing the chair she flung at her ex-boyfriend hit her daughter said more than enough to me. Just the arguing and fighting in front of her broke my heart. As someone who has seen their parents fight in extreme measures, it takes everything out of you to witness it, to hear them argue and to be in such a helpless position. I can’t even imagine how her daughter was already feeling at that moment, let alone to be physically affected and hurt by her mother’s actions. No matter if someone is famous like Taylor or not, this goes to show, we really have no idea what is going on in someone’s home.
So, although I don’t agree with or will ever justify Taylor’s actions, there are plenty of famous figures who have done the same, if not worse, yet their lives are not and will not be derailed completely. It makes me wonder why there’s almost this double standard – why are we holding a Tiktok and Reality star to such a high standard, especially when nobody knew who she was a couple years ago, but not holding huge people in our society, like our current President, to the same standard? As of October 2024 (prior to the last presidential election), at least 28 women have come forward and accused President Donald Trump of sexual misconduct. His own ex-wife filed a lawsuit against him for violent assault during their divorce in the 90s. He was mentioned over 38,000 times in the yet to be released Epstein Files. The list goes on and on about all the horrible, evil and illegal things this man has done. Yet, he was voted into office to lead one of the most powerful countries. Not enough people cared. Yet these same people are disgusted with a woman who just had her rise to fame in the past few years and how she acted, over someone who has been accused of doing so much harm for at least the past 3 decades. Both of their actions are disgusting, but so is the picking and choosing when we want to hold people accountable for their actions.
With all this talk about the newest update on the Taylor Frankie Paul drama, I hope people not only hold her accountable for her actions, her abuse and take away her platform and fame, but I hope society begins to do this to everyone who is an abuser, starting with people we know, like Donald Trump. We shouldn’t care more about who’s on our next reality TV show more than we should care about who is running a country of hundreds of millions of people.