Love can’t possibly be blind... we’re too shallow for that

Olivia Petter, The Independent

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’ll be able to tell if this is someone you’re attracted to almost immediately. And regardless of what anyone says, you’ll be able to do that just by looking at them.

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

It’s saccharine, overblown, and very cringe-inducing. But it also makes for great telly, despite the fact it’s quite obviously a completely bonkers concept, made more so by the fact that it sometimes works — around 10 couples from the show’s previous six seasons are still married.

Now it’s arrived in the UK. And Brits are being faced 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. And not even the show’s few success stories can convince us otherwise.

Look, obviously I know that someone’s appearance isn’t enough to sustain a healthy, loving relationship. Of course other factors come into it, like personality traits, shared life goals, and — if you ask a millennial — astrological compatibility. But it would be myopic to argue that looks don’t matter at all. For whatever reason, we’ve decided that 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 with them, and a lot of that initial attraction will inevitably be 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, let’s remember that this is fundamentally a reality TV show, so everyone involved is already “TV hot”, which renders the whole intention a little obsolete. But even within that, there are other factors disproving the concept entirely. Like the fact that the cast consistently talk about what they look like when they’re dating in the pods.

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

Then, most famously, there was the whole Megan Fox saga from the most recent season of the American show. It all unfolded after cast member Chelsea Blackwell told her eventual fiance, Jimmy Presnell, that she looked just like Fox — again, really defeating the object of the show here. When Presnell then met Blackwell, he decided that Blackwell looked nothing like Fox and laughed cruelly at her making the comparison.

It all turned rather nasty, as the internet began to pile on Blackwell. It got so bad that the real Megan Fox eventually 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 did manage to prove that love really is blind, by staying married. But are you seriously telling me they would still be together if they didn’t also happen to fancy each other when they saw one another?

If they’ve managed to game the system, it’s because they formed a connection in the pods that was solidified when they saw what the other looked like.