Get your roses ready because Michlle Young is returning to The Bachelorette. After being runner up for a year steeped in controversy and scandal, Michelle Young is coming back to take control of her own story.

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Back in Matt James's season of The Bachelor, the season in which winner Rachel Kirkonnell's racially insensitive social media posts, the cracks that were at the shows basis came to the forefront. Executives from ABC have begun taking steps to mend these cracks: promising increased diversity on the show and the addition of a person of color to the executive ranks. These are small steps, but steps that hopefully give the show a much needed update.

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The Hollywood Reporter had an exclusive interview with Michelle Young and asked, given the scandal surrounding her season, why she would choose to return. Young expressed:

I think the biggest reason of why I said yes is because how the process challenges you as a person to open up, to stay vulnerable, all of these different things. I knew that I could potentially find my person, and walking into that, I also knew that I'd be able to truly represent who I am - who I am as a woman of color, who I am as a teacher and just carry myself in the same way that I always would. That took a lot of pressure off my shoulders, just because regardless of everything that was going on around me, I know that I was able to stay focused.


Michelle Young as the Bachelorette promises season 18 to be a refreshingly amazing one for the series. Young shared that, as titular role she not only aims to find love. She wants, "to just showcase diverse love stories. Walking into it, I didn't have this type of 'this is what my person physically has to look like.' And being able to have other young women of color, girls of color, be able to turn on their TV screens and be able to see somebody who looks like them is not something that happens often whatsoever."

The season hasn't even started yet, and she is already a role model! The Bachelorette season 18 premieres tonight on ABC. I'm SO ready!!