“Bachelor” contestant Sydney Hightower slammed allegations she lied to Peter Weber during her one-on-one date featured in Monday’s episode.
On Twitter Monday night, Hightower, 24, who confided in Weber, 28, about being bullied in high school, responded to ongoing chatter about the authenticity of her story as images from her yearbook — including shots from a beauty pageant — surfaced online.
“Feels ridiculous I even have to address this. But correct I did win a beauty pageant my senior year of highschool. That was voted for by 5 judges. Not by my peers. Winning a pageant based off of outer beauty does not take away the racial bullying, and isolation I’ve been through,” Hightower tweeted.
“I was also on the cheer team in middle school and in many clubs in highschool. You’ll do anything you can to fit in, and I tried. I won pageants because of my ‘looks’ and I was in clubs because I wanted a scholarship to get into college . Not because I was accepted by my peers,” the retail marketing manager continued.
During her dinner with Weber, Hightower opened up about her past, stating that “being in a mixed-race, and growing up in Alabama, I had a target on my back, pretty much.”
“The last bit of middle school and then all of high school were literally the worst years of my life,” she said. “I didn’t go to senior prom, I didn’t go to homecoming, I didn’t do any of those things. I ate my lunch literally in the bathroom stall my whole senior year.”
Hightower later challenged her critics: “Any one from my highschool want to pull out the videos of girls stuffing my locker with Oreo cookies , vandalizing my home, shoving me in the hall ways? Teachers literally referring to me as a halfbreed? Calling my mother the worst names I’ve ever heard in my life? I doubt that.”
As of Wednesday, Hightower remains in the competition.
“The Bachelor” airs Mondays at 8 p.m. on ABC.