Opinion | Long before she was on ‘Bachelor in Paradise,’ Leslie Fhima was my dance teacher

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As a former reality TV contestant, a reality show viewer, and a student of the reality television arts and sciences with a postdoc fellowship from Reddit University, I make it my mission to stay abreast of the most talked-about series and characters, much like a professor at the University of Minnesota’s School of Agriculture must keep up with The International Journal of Dairy Technology. And so, now that “Love Island” has ended for the summer, I’ve left the villa for “Bachelor in Paradise” (BIP) — a jarring transition, like watching R- and PG-rated movies back-to-back. In general, I am not, save for the first season of “The Golden Bachelor” (a dating show for the over-60 crowd), a fan of the Bachelor universe, a land where irony dies even faster than engagements founded upon rose ceremonies.

Yet I am a fan of parasocial axe-grinding, and it is in this spirit that I tuned into BIP both this week and last to watch local legend Leslie Fhima, fitness instructor and runner-up of “The Golden Bachelor” season one, alongside a bunch of other “Goldens” (alumni from previous Golden Bachelor/ette seasons), cruise into a Costa Rican resort to get drunk, frolic in the pool, and serve as both treacly inspiration for bikinied youths and the butt of broad jokes about sexual dysfunction.

Though Fhima made Minnesotans’ hearts soar when she took the hand of now-disgraced Golden Bachelor Gerry Turner and walked across the Stone Arch Bridge, she’s been on my bad list ever since she ghosted me for a quote about her relationship with Prince when I wrote about his shoes for a minor periodical. And, unfortunately for Fhima, I have a one-strike policy, much like most gals on reality TV. So I was extra annoyed when, just minutes into Fhima’s BIP appearance, she pulled out her proverbial Prince card, crowing about her dating history and the DM she’d gotten from Kenny G.

I’d met Fhima — “met” is maybe too strong a word — back in 2016 when I was underemployed and overanxious and thought the best way to cure my troubles was to join the Life Time fitness in St. Louis Park. Fhima, a friend whisper-networked me, was the best dance teacher in town. Her class, which was called Urban Pop — a possibly cancelable offense today — met several times a week at impossibly inconvenient hours and, like my daughter’s diaper, was always full. Full of whom? A motley crew of trophy wives, empty nesters, stay-at-home moms, self-employed moms, the occasional dude trying to get his groove back and me, a downwardly mobile 33-year-old writer who was undoubtedly the brokest person in the room.

Inside Fhima’s studio, which I always referred to as her studio even though plenty of other classes used it, existed a long list of unspoken rules, which in my experience is true for any female exercise regimen. Rule number one was that if you were new, bad at dancing and/or existed beyond the bounds of conventional beauty, you had to stay in the back. Rule number two, which contradicted number one, was that you could, over time, negotiate your way into prime real estate if you purchased Rodan + Fields products from Fhima, who was a certified representative. Rule number three was that Fhima might invite you to stand next to her facing the mirrors, but you could never, ever assume or ask. Finally, rule number four was that it was OK to look and feel sexy while you danced, so long as your personal sexiness didn’t rub anyone else the wrong way.

It was well-known among the regulars of Urban Pop that Fhima knew about the undercurrent of competitiveness among her faithful, encouraged it, and was arguably the source of it, what with her handpicking the front row and cultivating favorites. But what made even disgruntled disciples like me come back for more was how hot Fhima was when she danced. I mean really hot. Fhima must have already been nearly 60 at the peak of my dance fever, and to watch her move was to witness sensuality in its truest form, not the slop we routinely get fed on our screens. She was — is — mesmerizing. I even bought the exact same pair of shoes she wore so that I would look more like her. The youth call this rizz, and Fhima had the most. In class we were all just shuffling along behind her, trying to draft off her embodied idea that no matter what age and station we were, we could be sexy as hell, provided we could body roll to Justin Bieber.

Which is why I’d been begrudgingly happy for Fhima when I found out she’d been cast on “The Golden Bachelor,” despite her ghosting me, and been happy again, albeit surprised, when she’d been cast into Paradise with her fellow Goldens — their first appearance, as host Jesse Palmer likes to remind viewers, in BIP history. My surprise stemmed from the fact that while Fhima has the moves for a career in the reality arts and sciences, she does not have the personality. She’s polite, politic, humorless and context-appropriate — all death blows for screen time.

So far in BIP, Fhima has been overshadowed by her kooky compatriot, April Kirkwood, who owns chickens and purrs on people’s shoulders, and the sardonic 72-year-old Kathy Swarts, who admitted to having sex while her partner was sleeping in another room. Yes, Fhima tried to bring it by serving up a water aerobics class, but the cast clowns derailed it. If it weren’t for this week’s salsa date with Golden Gary, she’d be a B- or C-character at most.

But this dancing date saved Fhima from a fate worse than death for a reality TV star — obscurity. I’m sure dancing has saved her often. It sure saved me back in 2016-17, when for reasons I still don’t understand, bouncing around to Ed Sheeran three times a week rescued me from existential misery. I just wish she and the “Bachelor in Paradise” producers understood that the things that eventually made me leave the cutthroat world of Urban Pop are the very things that could catapult Fhima into icon status among reality TV aficionados.

If I could, I’d call and tell them to skip the gentle carnival music, the corny confessionals, and leave all the women alone with Fhima in a studio with a wall of mirrors, hidden cameras and a good sound system for 12 hours. By the end, they wouldn’t even need the rose ceremony — for only the strong would survive.