Love is Blind Misses the Point: Being Shallow Isn’t Always Wrong

You know within the first 10 seconds. Maybe it’s the way their hair frames their face or the way their eyes light up when they look at you. Whatever it is, you can tell if you’re attracted to someone almost immediately, just by looking at them.

Netflix’s hit reality TV show, Love is Blind, relies on the exact opposite being true. For four years, we’ve watched American singletons date each other in “pods” without ever seeing one another. Later in the season, they get engaged and, just a few weeks after, walk down the aisle together.

It’s saccharine, overblown, and very cringe-inducing. But it also makes for great television, despite its obviously bonkers concept. Surprisingly, it sometimes works—about 10 couples from the show’s previous six seasons are still married.

Now it’s arrived in the UK, challenging Brits with the question, as repeatedly asked by hosts Matt and Emma Willis: is love truly blind?

Well, I’m here to tell you that it is not. Not even the show’s success stories can convince us otherwise.

Obviously, I know that someone’s appearance isn’t enough to sustain a healthy, loving relationship. Other factors come into play, like personality traits, shared life goals, and astrological compatibility, if you ask a millennial. But it’s myopic to argue that looks don’t matter at all. For whatever reason, we’ve decided it’s shallow to admit the importance of physical attraction. It isn’t—it’s just normal.

You need to fancy someone in order to fall in love. A lot of that initial attraction is inevitably based on how that person looks. It’s just how the world works. And it’s how it works on Love is Blind, too, despite what it wants us to think.

First, remember this is a reality TV show, so everyone involved is already “TV hot,” which makes the whole intention somewhat obsolete. But even within that, there are factors that disprove the concept entirely. For instance, the cast consistently talks about what they look like while dating in the pods.

Take Sam from the UK series. He frequently talks to women about the attention his looks attract when he’s out. He’s also told them that he regularly posts workout selfies on Instagram. Hardly the kind of stuff you say if you’re trying to get beyond appearances.

The most notable instance is the Megan Fox saga from the latest American season. It started when cast member Chelsea Blackwell told her eventual fiancé, Jimmy Presnell, that she looked just like Fox—defeating the object of the show. When Presnell met Blackwell, he decided she looked nothing like Fox and laughed cruelly at her comparison.

It turned nasty as the internet started piling on Blackwell. The situation escalated to the point where the real Megan Fox responded, telling E News, “I didn’t watch it, but I think in general, no one deserves to get bullied. I don’t think she deserved that. I think people went way too hard. I did see a picture of her. A hundred thousand per cent, people have told her, ‘You kind of look like Megan Fox.’”

Naysayers will argue that the successful couples prove that love really is blind, by staying married. But are you seriously telling me they would still be together if they didn’t fancy each other when they met?

If they’ve managed to game the system, it’s because they formed a connection in the pods that was solidified when they saw each other’s looks. That’s based on luck. We’ve seen it go the other way too, with some couples expressing disappointment at their partner’s appearance and subsequently breaking off the engagement.

Regardless of what we’d like to believe, love can’t possibly ever be blind. We’re all simply a little too shallow for that—and that’s perfectly fine to admit.

Source: Particle News, E News