It seems the season 15 Big Brother contestants have really made a splash, in all the wrong ways. After a huge controversy this week where multiple contestants were seen making homophobic, racist, and misogynistic comments on the cbs.com live feeds, one contestant, Aaryn Gries, was fired from her Texas modeling agency. Now, another contestant, GinaMarie Zimmerman, a pageant coordinator from Staten Island, has also been fired from her job at East Coast USA Pageant, Inc., TMZ reports.
GinaMarie’s list of offensive comments include referring to government welfare as “n**ger insurance,” saying that someone should slap Asian contestant Helen Kim to make her “eyes straight,” and saying that African American contestant Candice’s “blackness” is showing now that she is up for elimination.
Lauren Handler, national director and CEO of East Coast USA Pageant, where GinaMarie has worked for five years, said in a statement, “We have never known this side of GinaMarie or have ever witnessed such acts of racism in the past. We are actually thankful that this show let us see GinaMarie for who she truly is. We would never want her to be a role model to our future contestants.”
She adds, “In a business where we are surrounded by beauty every day, we are saddened to see something so ugly come from someone we put on a very high pedestal.”
Former Big Brother contestants are starting to speak out. Season 13 winner Rachel Reilly, and her husband Brendon (also a former Big Brother contestant) said, “We think it’s vile and disgusting and are completely horrified that people can even think such hateful things. Being former houseguests we understand how people can turn on each other… but the offensive things that Aaryn, GinaMarie, Kaitlin, Spencer and Jeremy say disgust us, and make us sick to our stomachs.”
Season 12 houseguest Ragan Fox is calling for Big Brother to show the racist statements in the edited episodes that viewers see on CBS each week. He says in a blog post, “What’s the point of casting racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities if production’s going to edit out the racism, ethnic discrimination, and homophobia that these people encounter inside the house? Moreover, why do historically marginalized players have the exclusive burden of narrating past acts of racial, ethnic, and sexual brutalization when we see this sort of discrimination enacted INSIDE THE HOUSE?”
He continues, “Big Brother, I LOVE you, but, if you really want to provide a groundbreaking twist, SHOW CBS VIEWERS HOW SOME STRAIGHT, WHITE PEOPLE talk around gays, Asian Americans, and African Americans… Let’s hope the series’ ‘expect the unexpected’ refrain holds true.”
CBS released a statement on the controversy, saying, “We certainly find the statements made by several of the houseguests on the live Internet feed to be offensive. Any views or opinions expressed in personal commentary by a houseguest appearing on Big Brother… are those of the individual(s) speaking and do not represent the views or opinions of CBS or the producers of the program.”