True love never comes free, but in Bachelor Nation, everything has a cost. And if you're a woman, you can expect those costs to be about four to five times that of your male counterparts. That The Bachelor asks a lot of its participants is not news. That the emotional stakes are high and the stresses of living in a mansion/authentic Tuscan-style jail, alongside strangers for which you are competing not only for your future partner but your sanity and your dignity, are insurmountable is not groundbreaking. That contestants dedicate every waking second and the better part of their salaries to preparing for this journey is a well-documented fact. Yet, that doesn't make the cold, hard numbers any easier to swallow—especially if you're of the female persuasion and harboring secret aspirations to one day join the ranks of the Lauren H.'s, the Danielle's, the Ashley I.'s yourself.Season 20, in which the entirety of America is now engrossed, is the perfect example of the bizarre dichotomy that E! News set out to research. One quick glance at the contestants vying for Nick Viall's affection (or something else, whatever, we're not here to judge) and your eyeballs will be treated to the most perfectly primped, plucked and groomed women around. They're all impossibly fit, with impossibly shiny hair curled into impossibly beach-y waves. Now sure, most of them started off incredibly genetically #blessed, but the version of the contestants that makes it to the first rose ceremony comes with an insane amount of prep and money. When we watched, say, JoJo Fletcher's season, the men were anything but. Why else did eventual winner Jordan Rodgers stick out so much, if not for his incredibly coiffed hair that suggested hours spent perfecting the gelled-wave in front of a mirror? Much has been written about the different prep routines by Bachelor contestants over the years, so it was time to put the numbers to the test in a true side-by-side comparison. It's impossible to come up with one hard, cold figure because each person's preferences wildly vary, but after way too much research and some very candid conversations with former members of Bachelor Nation, women will spend anywhere from $1,800 to $8,000 before they hit the road to the mansion. Men, on the other hand, can expect to shell out between $300 and $5,300.
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