‘Love is Blind’ Has a Fatness Problem
But the target isn’t what you think
My dirty pleasure for the past two years has been the Netflix series “Love is Blind”. And based on Internet chatter, it’s your dirty pleasure, too.
The show describes itself as a “social experiment”. A group of singles are given a week to find heteronormative love without ever seeing the person they’re supposed to fall in love with.
The singles spend all day talking to strangers in pods, separated by a partition. They can hear the other person, but have no idea what they look like.
The only time they get to see each other is if/when they agree to marry, thereby proving that love is blind.
Hosts Nick and Vanessa Lachey blame dating apps in the show’s intro. The act of swiping left or right has reduced the search for love into a superficial, high-stakes mess. Your race, age, and body size are now obstacles in getting someone to “swipe right” and match with you.
The show claims finding love their way means you can find love regardless of how you look.
It’s a nice idea. Except for when TV production gets in the way.
Right now the Internet is hating on Abhishek “Shake” Chatterjee for the way he treated his fiancee Deepti Vempati.
See, Shake began the experiment asking women if he could lift them on his shoulders at a concert.
Chivalrous gesture? Maybe.
Transparent attempt to identify the fat women? Most definitely.
But here’s the thing. Deepti calls him out on this. She then doubles down confessing to a former weight problem.
The two bond over this. They discover the same body image issues, a shared culture, and the fact they’ve only dated white people before.
I’m not going to do a deep-dive on these two. Although I do think their storyline has more to do with falling in love with their culture than it did about body size.
Especially since both Shake and Deeps are attractive, thin people.
The Problem With Fat Dating
No, Shake isn’t the source of the fatness problem. But his “can I lift you” question is part of a montage that IS the fatness problem.
The show begins with, like, 30 single people. Yet we only get to know six couples. Which means there are 18 people cast to reflect a diverse range of bodies — skin colour, age, and size — that we never get to know.
There are clearly two plus-size women at the beginning of the experiment. And one “husky” male.
We see them for a hot five minutes in a montage showing how some of the singles are trying to figure out what the others look like.
One plus-size woman is asked “do you work out”? She laughs.
The suitor continues “I like women who work out a lot”. She rolls her eyes.
And we never see or hear from her again.
We don’t learn her name, her age, where she’s from. There’s no pithy exit interview.
We’re left to assume she did not find love because she does not work out.
The show casts fat people for a punchline. Then discards them so we can follows 12 thin, objectively attractive people.
When the “social experiment” meets TV production
The show is designed to follow six couples — no more, no less.
The series can only follow so many storylines. Production has only booked so many hotel suites for the couples to “get to know each other”.
Productions like this require a lot of pre-planning and coordination. Each couple would have its own film crew, which means you have to know how many camera, audio operators and producers you need ahead of time.
You can’t just wing it and hire based on how many authentic love connections happen in the pod.
And I’m quite sure it would prioritize “TV-friendly” couples.
It’s entirely possible our plus-size singles did not find love and that’s why they weren’t worked into the overall storyline.
It’s just as possible they did find love, but weren’t encouraged to propose the way some couples were.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but a great deal of my life as a TV producer has been spent manufacturing these “real” moments.
It’s an easy thing to manipulate. Just don’t put the overweight people in pods with people they’re connecting with.
Because I find it hard to believe they didn’t connect with anyone.
Dating While Fat Isn’t a Problem
I’ve dated at my fattest and I’ve dated at my thinnest. And we’re talking a 70 pound difference in weight.
I had the same negative self talk at 130 pounds as I do at 195.
But I also have the same personality. The same hopes and the same values. Which is why I’ve successfully dated at every size I’ve ever been.
It’s not unheard of for someone to develop feelings for you seeing your fat on display. You don’t need the artificial construct of invisible dating.
But we do need our dating shows to normalize dating at every size. And age. And race. And sexual orientation. And physical ability.
So here’s my pitch. It’s for a show called “Shapes and Sizes” where a people of all shapes and sizes are shipped to an exotic locale (for free) and date on camera. Maybe they even get married.
Why should love be blind if the goal is to find someone who truly sees you?
All of you.
