90 Day Fiancé: Before the 90 Days star Ben Rathbun revealed why Mahogany Roca edits her Instagram photos with so many filters that she looks like a different person. Ben and Mahogany’s 90 Day Fiancé relationship looked like it was another catfish storyline waiting to happen. Ben's Peruvian girlfriend had never spoken to him on video calls in their three months of chatting. Mahogany claimed she was too shy to do it when she had photos of herself in a bikini online. When Ben showed Mahogany's photo to his kids, his daughter called it the fakest picture she had ever seen. However, Mahogany turned out to be real when Ben finally met her in Peru. But the “real” Mahogany looked nothing like the Mahogany in her social media pictures.
What made Mahogany’s plot on 90 Day Fiancé even weirder was that she ghosted Ben for 24 hours before he met her. She was scared of meeting a man whom her dad thought had ulterior motives. She did show up eventually after a lot of persuading from Ben. Still, her mannerisms were awkward, leading many fans to conclude that she could be an actress. When Ben convinced Mahogany to get her parents to meet him, he realized she also lied to him about her age. Moreover, Mahogany’s apartment was clearly a vacation rental, adding another red flag to the ever-growing list of reasons why Ben shouldn’t date her.
However, Ben is very much dating Mahogany in real-time and did little to hide it when he spoke to ET about his relationship and even defended her filters. “So if she's a young girl at 20 years old and she finds an app that kind of morphs your face--so we've all kind of done Snapchat filters and had a good time with it--she just posted it," explained Ben, a former pastor. Ben claimed Mahogany never expected the entire world to eventually look at her pictures and judge her for them because she was just having “fun.” He said it “doesn’t really matter” to him and, clearly, Ben sees no problem with Mahogany having a filter obsession.
"In my opinion, there's two different kinds of people that do social media," Ben told the outlet. "One is someone that wants to show what's going on in their lives every single day and they want to be real and authentic and show everyone who they are." According to Ben, Mahogany fits neither of the two categories. He pointed out how Mahogany posts “maybe once...every two or three months and it’s just for fun.” Ben even called what Mahogany is doing “art” at one point in the conversation. “If you look at her page, it's just a bunch of pictures of selfies that look really well done, and some are from two or three years ago,” he explained. So because Mahogany doesn’t update her social media that often, in Ben’s opinion, she’s not trying to deceive anyone.
Even on 90 Day Fiancé: Before the 90 Days, Ben defended Mahogany’s fake selfie to his daughter by saying that she could just be having a good camera that enhances her appearance. When he met her face-to-face, Ben was just happy to know that she’s a real woman and commented that her photos were a little “doctored.” It's almost as if to Ben, what matters is that Mahogany is young and beautiful and still very much marriage material. All that remains to be seen is how Ben and Mahogany’s relationship fares in the future now that it’s public knowledge that they’re still together.
90 Day Fiancé: Before the 90 Days airs Sundays at 8 p.m. EST on TLC.
Source: ET