The late author bell hooks wrote in her book All About Love: New Visions, “We fear that evaluating our needs and then carefully choosing partners will reveal that there is no one for us to love. Most of us prefer to have a partner who is lacking than no partner at all. What becomes apparent is that we may be more interested in finding a partner than in knowing love.”
I have yet to miss a season of the Netflix original series, Love is Blind. The show released its fifth season on September 22, 2023, and, while I love the drama of it all, I can’t help but be critical of what I’m watching. The show takes a group of men and women, separates them, and sends them out on daily dates. They have ten days to meet their potential future partner, and twenty-eight days after they’re engaged to decide whether or not they will get married. However, these people do not see each other until one of them proposes to their date. The show’s experiment tests the old dictum: “Is love blind?” Once a cluster of couples from the experiment get engaged, they then advance to other steps of this process. They go on vacation together, then move in together, and meet one another’s friends and families. As viewers, we do not know if the couple will get married until they say “I do” or “I don’t” at the weddings that they have planned. I have to ask myself: why would people put themselves in such extreme situations all in pursuit of “the one,” and when even that isn’t guaranteed. This rushed experience says a lot about what kinds of relationships we value in society.
From a very young age our movies, books, television and music tell us that love and romantic relationships are something we should strive for, and that as we grow older we should be meeting certain benchmarks in our love lives in order to keep up with our peers. But without these portrayals of “love” and what it “should” look like, I wonder how many of us would be eager to invite romance into our lives.
A lot of these reality dating shows operate on the premise that they are trying to make people form “real” connections by eliminating distractions and obstacles that are present in the world outside. But how real are these relationships when their conversations and interactions, broadcast to a large audience, could bring them fame and money– whether or not they meet the love of their life on the show. In fact, how much of it is just about the money? An article published by The Independent on April 9, 2023 states, “According to a lawsuit filed by season two contestant Jeremy Hartwell in July 2022, the Netflix show pays Love Is Blind stars $1,000 per week, up to $8,000 for the length of filming the show, per Variety. Hartwell alleged in the lawsuit that production paid them ‘less than half of the applicable minimum wage rate of $15.00 per hour’ in California, despite the cast working up to 20 hours a week.” On a differently disturbing note, the article observed, “The lawsuit also claimed that, through a ‘combination of sleep deprivation, isolation, lack of food and an excess of alcohol all either required, enabled or encouraged’ by Love Is Blind producers,” the show “created some ‘inhumane working conditions and altered mental state for the cast.’”
Being paid any kind of money in your pursuit to find love seems to nullify the relationship. And while it is possible that the couples who are still married to this day could very well be in love, it is also possible that they have stayed together for the financial gain that their exposure brought them. Some of the former contestants from Love is Blind have up to two million followers on Instagram, and with that kind of fame comes brand deals and a world of opportunities that I’m not sure that they would have received as quickly without the show.
As an avid watcher of the series, I did truly enjoy the first season, because it was the first time such an experiment had been conducted. There are couples I love from this show who I believe may truly be committed to one another. However, I believe that once people realized that they could make money and capitalize on their image, the show has lost some of its innocence even as it continues to make season after season. On April 19, 2023 People Magazine wrote, “According to executives at the streaming network, around 6.5 million viewers logged into their Netflix accounts at 8 p.m. ET to watch the reunion. However, the vast amount of viewers shocked Netflix’s system. Some were eventually able to watch the reunion live, while others had to wait until it was uploaded midday Monday.” Furthermore, “To put the 6.5 million viewers in perspective, Succession‘s highly anticipated episode on Sunday night brought in a total of 2.6 million viewers as it premiered, Variety reported.”
As production companies continue to create more and more content in this realm, they also continue to push the envelope of absurdity. Shows like Naked Attraction prove my point. Naked Attraction, a dating show that began airing in the U.K. in 2016, has six contestants with one person picking who to eliminate each round until they end up with the individual with whom they decide to go on a date. However, the six contestants are all completely nude. Each round more of their body is revealed, first from their hips down, then their chest, their face, and finally their voice. The first time I turned on this show after reading the synopsis, I was under the impression that their private parts would be blurred and only the participating players on the show would see the genitalia of those on the show. I was shocked that this wasn’t the case.
While I agree we should work towards stopping the constant sexualizing of the naked body, that is not what Naked Attraction does. The show relies on shock value as opposed to breaking down the societal standards by which bodies are deemed attractive. Contestants are still eliminated based on physical characteristics so the show is not as progressive as it claims to be. There are often sexual jokes and innuendos made by the player and the host which just makes me wonder what exactly is to be achieved by a show like this. The contestants often talk about how it was a fun and liberating experience, but I wonder if we have gone too far. I am not sure what we gain by choosing to date someone purely based on what they look like naked. Had the show promoted itself as one that is purely for hookups, that might have been one thing, but that is not what we are witnessing. The show claims that it is about relationships and human connection while relying on a cheap gimmick.
Is there anything pure about a relationship if there is some kind of financial gain involved, be it the contestants making money or the producers and executives of the show? Watching people put themselves in vulnerable positions, whether for fame or actual love, begs the question as to why we are all so obsessed with “love” in the first place? It’s a money maker. People are sold the idea that they might find love if they put themselves in strange and vulnerable positions. As viewers, we separate ourselves from that desire while we watch people go through pain, and we laugh at it, as if many of us don’t want the same thing. These shows do so well because we keep tuning in partly to see how bad things can get. And we pay our monthly subscriptions for the privilege.
We see this commodification in dating apps as well. Apps like Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge all have “upgraded” versions that claim to improve the experience for users. According to a Buzzfeed article published on June 3, 2023, “Bumble’s Premium subscription with bonus features and advanced filters costs $19.99 for one week, costs $39.99 for one month, $76.99 for three months, and $229.99 for a lifetime subscription” In a Business Insider article published on February 17, 2023, “Hinge Preferred is now rebranded as Hinge+, and the price has been reduced to $30 per month. The company also offers a free version of its dating app that allows up to 8 profile likes per day. Hinge isn’t the only Match-owned dating app looking to expand its subscription offerings: Tinder is internally testing user interest in a $500 per month – or $6,000 per year – membership tier, according to a recent Bloomberg report. It is currently unclear what additional services would be offered with such a pricey membership.” The $500 a month subscription, Tinder Select, is the app’s fourth subscription tier; there are three others, Tinder +, Tinder Gold, and Tinder platinum, all varying in price and perks. The article states that “Match’s mobile-based dating apps like Hinge and Tinder grew in popularity during the pandemic, and according to the company, they are still a ‘bright spot.’”
For companies to even offer a paid version of a dating app, to somehow suggest that paying to meet people would improve your chances of finding love, seems a bit counterintuitive. Why should I have to lose money to gain love? Tinder+ even came out before the pandemic in March of 2015 which says to me that companies are well aware of the fact that people are desperate for love and romance and would do a lot to feel wanted by another person. I feel that part of the urge for people to spend money on dating apps is that “third spaces” have been erased. “Third spaces” is a term coined by the sociologist Ray Oldenburg who defined them as social places that are separate from home and work. These are places such as churches, cafes, bars, clubs, etc. A Brookings Institution article published on September 14, 2016 states, “For young Americans, many third places are now virtual – from Facebook and chat rooms to group texts. But as Oldenburg notes, the most effective spaces for building real communities are physical places where people can easily and routinely connect with each other: churches, parks, recreation centers, hairdressers, gyms and even fast-food restaurants. A recent newspaper article on McDonald’s found that for lower-income Americans, the twin arches are becoming almost the equivalent of the English “pub,” which, after all is short for “public house.”
While there is value in online communities, there must be a conversation about how we have lost in-person communities. Using the internet as the main way to date may have some harmful side effects, especially when people have to pay monthly subscriptions, or participate in outlandish activities to maybe meet “the one.”
We also have to question why we place so much pressure on people to be in love, and why we feel that that is something we have to “achieve” while we are young, or something that we have to “achieve” at all. Has the envelope not been pushed enough?
I feel that these shows have created a warped sense of what romance can be. While I am clearly not the spokesperson for love, dating, or romance, I do think we must have this conversation. There is beauty in the online world of dating, but there should also be a concerted effort to rebuild in-person spaces that grant people the opportunity to meet each other. Why must we be offered expensive subscriptions or outlandish dating shows in our attempts to find what many of us hope for–real love? Why do we feel that we need this kind of love in the first place, as if friendship is not fulfilling enough? Why is there such an emphasis on romantic encounters when there is no guarantee that any of our choices will bring us happiness?