We’ll save the debate over whether your Netflix subscription is worth it anymore for another day. For now, let’s just focus on this trailer for Sexy Beasts and the obvious criticism of it.
Rightfully so, responses have largely been about the fact that it isn’t really a blind dating show when you can see someone’s body type, and we can see that production has picked conventionally attractive people anyway.
The same was said about Love is Blind which, to this day, featured my absolute favorite dating show couple of all time — Lauren and Cameron.
On Love is Blind, the contestants are sequestered by gender with the men in one camp and the women in another. They have dates with each other through a screen, and their connection is built through personality alone. It is actually a blind dating show because they can’t see anything about each other until they decide they want to be together. We the audience however know the stakes are low because we can see them: they’re all conventionally attractive, able bodied, slim to fit young people. Still, one woman who made a “connection” with two men behind the screens preferred the other guy once she saw them all together, because the one she ultimately picked was short.
Mark and Matt are two attractive guys.
Yet, she still regretted picking the guy on the left, Mark, once she saw the guy on the right, Matt.
Switch gears to another kind of blind dating show — Married at First Sight. I’ve only seen one season of this show so I’m not sure if the couples usually work out or usually crash and burn in tremendous fashion the way Paige and Chris did.
Paige is an accomplished, successful, nurturing, God-fearing woman, and exactly what Chris requested on paper. What he didn’t add was that he needed her to be a light-skinned music video type of girl. His face dropped when she walked down the aisle, he told her friends at the wedding that she wasn’t the type of woman he would physically be attracted to, and by the end of the experiment, he was explaining to one of the marriage counselors that it just didn’t work out because he wasn’t attracted to her face. Paige spent three months with a man she just got married to who was saying to her, verbally and through his actions, that she wasn’t attractive enough for him. When she watched it back, she had to sit through +15 episodes of a man calling her unattractive.
Imagine if she was overweight. Or had terrible acne. Or her nose was too big for her face. Or any number of ways a potential romantic partner decides someone is “average” as opposed to attractive. Do people really want to watch that dating show? I’ve never been more uncomfortable watching an episode of television as I was when Paige was sitting on the reunion couch watching playback of Chris telling the counselor that it didn’t work because he wasn’t attracted to her face, and that he was upset with production for picking Paige as opposed to all of the white queens and Latina queens and (he finally threw in) Black queens around Atlanta that were more to his standards.
Mark is a conventionally attractive guy with an athletic body. Paige is a conventionally attractive woman with an athletic body. They both ended up with people who said they couldn’t develop chemistry because the attraction wasn’t there, and it was uncomfortable to watch. Still, these are attractive people who are more likely to come with Attractive People Self Esteem. Mark has no shortage of women who find him hot. Paige can walk into any bar and walk out with a man. Yeah, it stings to be told on national television that someone doesn’t find you attractive, but that opinion of one person can quickly be forgotten after a lap around the club. I never want to see that kind of criticism and rejection happen to a less conventionally attractive person who likely has less confidence. I don’t need to see ugly people get rejected (or rejecting each other!) for drama. I don’t watch brainless dating shows to be stressed out. This should be mindless entertainment to have on in the background while I cook or fold hand towels. This is social media fodder to sent tweets about, not dramatic human interest material to delve into the psyche of man.
Television, and entertainment in general, needs a wider range of representation. Not everyone is 28 and pretty with a gym membership. I would like to see more average looking people in a wider variety of roles, but not on dating shows. Not on reality shows. Not thrown into environments where the unknown variable is whether or not someone will be mean to them. The world does that enough already. Why would we want to watch it happen to some nice person who just wanted to find love?
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