Publish date: 2024-01-04

Aside from being pursued by multiple men on Bachelor in Paradise Season 4, Christen Whitney became the center of attention for of another reason: the infamous "Scallop Fingers" story and nickname. She ended up being cool with the joke, and it seemed like a key piece of evidence that she was fine with it was the fact that she was shown eating scallops in her goofy title sequence introduction. But, it turns out, Christen was not yet in on the scallop fingers joke when her intro was filmed.

The fact that she ate scallops and giggled when she dropped them for her segment of the Bachelor in Paradise title sequence really made it seem like she gave her blessing for the barrage of jokes, tweets, memes, and Instagram posts that addressed her as "Scallop Fingers," but that was not actually the case.

Christen discussed this topic in an interview with fellow Bachelor alum Olivia Caridi for her Mouthing Off With Olivia podcast. "I filmed my intro not knowing what I was doing," Christen explained. "The producers gave me seafood and said 'you're going to do this for your intro.'"

That seems like it would sound so random, but then again they were filming at a beach resort near an ocean, so seafood is related, technically. Still, it's strange to hear now that Christen was not in on the reference when she filmed her intro.

She also shared that her co-stars kept the secret from her even when she talked about her confusion filming it. She continued, "For the next couple days, I kept saying, 'I did this for my intro, guys. I ate seafood. And I dropped it and it was, like, awkward. That was so random.' Everyone was kind of, like, laughing, but I had no idea why." Wow. That's cold.

Sarah Vendal did try to tell Christen about the running joke, but she never actually shared the details. Christen told Olivia, "The day before she had left she had just been like, 'Hey girl, watch your back. I have to tell you something later.' She had been telling me that and we kind of kept getting interrupted, and I was like, 'Sarah, what do you have to tell me?' ... She didn't get the chance to tell me. She left ... It was about the Scallop Fingers thing."

Why didn't Sarah just tell her what she wanted to instead of saying that she had something to tell her? That would have saved a lot of time, and Christen might have been able to figure out that her occupation was listed as "Scallop Fingers."

Raven Gates eventually addressed Christen as "Scallops" during a conversation in Episode 7, and it was clear that she caught Christen off-guard. Then, bartender Wells Adams told Christen the whole story about how Alexis Waters shared that one time when a big group of Bachelor alums were hanging out, Christen took scallops to-go from a restaurant and ate them in the car with her hands en route to the club.

Christen confessed to Olivia that she "was freaking out so much" because she "had no idea how the whole scallop thing was going to go down" when the episodes ended up airing. Still, she's a good sport about the whole thing and admitted, "At first I was like, 'Dang, these people have been talking about me this whole time and, like, mocking me,' but when I watch it back I think it's really funny."

Sure, it might not be the smoothest social move to eat a container full of scallops in the confines of a moving vehicle, but it is it a dire offense? No, not at all. In the end, Christen made out pretty well on Paradise — both literally and figuratively. She had a bevy of men chasing after her. She got a lot of attention. She is probably going to make a line of scallops-emblazoned apparel. The only people who really looked bad in this whole Scallop Fingers scenario are the people who used the nickname maliciously, not Christen herself.

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