Hannah Brown knows a thing or two about being pitted against other women, especially because her “tiff” with fellow Bachelor contestant Caelynn Miller-Keyes got major airtime on Colton Underwood’s season of the ABC dating reality show. Now the Alabama native, who went on to star in The Bachelorette’s 15th season, is focused on lifting up other women.
“We’ve been taught by our society that women are pitted against each other and that to get to the top, you have to smack each other down, and that’s not the case,” Brown, 25, told Us Weekly and other reporters at Girl Up’s #GirlHero Awards in Beverly Hills on Sunday, October 13. “And I think, you know, going through the struggles and the victories that I have in the spotlight [has] really shown me how important it is that, even though we’re all different and we all have different roads of getting there, we need to support each other no matter what.”
She went on: “And I think it can be difficult, but I think it’s always better because we all have the same goal and that’s to be as successful and as empowered as possible. And let’s always do what’s right for women, this female generation, in any circumstance.”
Brown and Miller-Keyes, 24 — who competed together in Miss USA 2018 and ended their friendship before joining The Bachelor — addressed their tension on the show in January, with Brown asserting that it’s “OK for [them] to be a little upset” with each other and Miller-Keyes suggesting that they could “be supportive of one another and put the past in the past.”
On Sunday, the Dancing With the Stars contestant also gave her advice for spreading kindness on a daily basis. “Maybe this is just because I’m from Alabama, [but] when you meet somebody, I think it’s really important that you look them in the eye and say hello and just smile,” she said. “It just takes a moment to just share a smile or a hello with somebody, and you never know if that’s going to make somebody’s day, if that’s the first smile that they’ve seen in a while or where they’re at. So just take a moment to smile.”
With reporting by Emily Marcus
