YouTube Arie and Lauren Luyendyk record a video in their home.
Fans of “The Bachelor” usually see Arie Luyendyk, Jr. and his wife, Lauren Burnham Luyendyk, share happy moments on social media highlighting their day-to-day lives with their three children. In a recent Instagram post, however, the couple showed a different side of themselves and fans plenty to say about how the couple handled this particular goodbye.
Over the past few months, “Bachelor Nation” fans watched Arie and Lauren share videos of their twins, Lux and Senna, start walking, their older daughter Alessi celebrate her third birthday, and plenty of trips, family outings, and business-related ventures. On December 1, however, “The Bachelor” stars went down a different path.
Here’s what you need to know:
The Luyendyks Addressed the Balenciaga Situation in Their Own Way
The joint Instagram post shared by Arie and Lauren was captioned “won’t miss ya.” The video used the “Campfire Song” audio and showed one of “The Bachelor” stars pulling a pair of Balenciaga shoes off a shelf in the closet. Then, the video showed a plastic garbage can on the grass. As Lauren held the shoes with a pair of tongs, Arie started a flame and burned the shoes. Lauren dumped them in the garbage can as the flames grew and gave a peace sign as “Bye Balenciaga” could be read in text over the screen. A moment later, the shoes were pulled back out with the tongs and revealed, still burning and thoroughly destroyed.
As The Guardian recently detailed, Balenciaga came under fire for a controversial advertising campaign. The advertisements included teddy bears encased in bondage gear, and young children held the bears. There was also an ad that had a prop in the background consisting of documents referencing child abuse laws. Balenciaga has since apologized and withdrawn the ads, but for many like Arie and Lauren, the damage has already been done.
‘The Bachelor’ Fans Had Mixed Reactions to the Video
The “Bye Balenciaga” video Arie and Lauren created received more than 100,000 “likes” and 5,700 comments on Instagram. There were quite a few commenters who were supportive of what the Luyendyks did, while others pointed out issues they saw with the situation.
“There are as or more important things affecting your children than this and you never take a stand. That makes this one feel more like click bait than anything else,” one person wrote.
“You could have donated them to someone in need,” suggested someone else.
“You could’ve just donated to a charity that actually helps protect the victims of child sex trafficking rather than burning your expensive privileged material items for social media attention and clout,” added another critic.
Fellow reality television stars Hannah Ann Sluss, Haley Ferguson, and Cody Nickson from “Big Brother” and “The Amazing Race” all left comments praising Arie and Lauren. Quite a few fans shared similar sentiments.
“If only all influencers would take a stand with issues like this. A difference would be made,” noted one supporter.
“Yesss!!!!!! Thank you so much for taking a stand! I normally am totally against cancel culture on either side but these are the people we should be canceling! Those who want to hurt our children deserve it,” declared another fan.