‘Love Is Blind’ Has Only Included 2 Plus-Sized Contestants—That Needs To Change
Everyone wants to believe that love—real, raw, heart-thumping, life-partner love—knows no limits. Perhaps that's why Netflix's Love Is Blind has become such a sensation since its first season in 2020. The reality show pushes the limits of what is possible when it comes to finding your soul mate, but it hasn't been without its shortcomings.
The one-of-a-kind experiment tries to determine if love really is "blind" by putting 30 heterosexual singles through a two-week dating intensive while sequestered in separate "pods." The twist: participants do not lay eyes on each other until they become engaged, sight unseen. Once sparks fly and emotions run high, the couples are faced with the challenge of maintaining their connection in the real world and in the bedroom. Although the show has had successful pairings across its four seasons (including two couples from seasons 1 and 3, and three from the latest season 4), more often than not, the duos end up parting ways.
It's a scenario that is ripe for reality TV, but perhaps moreso for potentially problematic situations relating to, well, what the other person looks like. The cast has been relatively diverse—economically, racially, and culturally. But there's one notable thing missing.
The show seems unwilling to test the theory's limits if that person happens to be fat. (I use fat as a neutral term here, not an insult. There is a tremendous difference).
Of the 60 women shown in four seasons, only two have been plus-sized.
That's just 3 percent of the contestants that are a size 14 or above. The two women, Hope Antonello-Foli and Chassidy Mickale, both appear on season 2 for a few minutes, but don't have main storylines. (Alexa Alfia from season 3 was branded as plus-sized, but as a size 8 to 10, she doesn’t actually fall into the category.)
This is not unique to the show. The Bachelor franchise, Married At First Sight, and a litany of MTV dating experiments have also fallen into a similar trap.
I, like the average American woman, wear a size 16 to 18, and am considered a plus-sized person. And it's glaringly obvious when watching these shows (which are, of course, not *totally* based in reality) that bodies like mine are not being taken into consideration.
Netflix did not respond to repeated inquiries about size inclusion on the show.
“Netflix brought up [my body] a lot.”
Former contestants and activists say that Netflix seems unwilling to show various sized bodies in their programs. When Hope Antonello-Foli entered Love Is Blind, she was confident and excited. She was, as she states at the beginning of episode 1, season 2, focused on meeting her soulmate and husband.
“My body was not at the forefront of my mind when I was coming on the show,” Hope tells Women’s Health in an interview. “Netflix brought it up a lot, though.”
Hope’s bubbly personality and kindness were palpable through the Zoom screen as I interviewed her from her hotel room. “I assumed this was a good opportunity to truly date people based on their personality," she says. "But when I looked around, everyone on my season was incredibly thin.”
Hope quickly found the other curvy girl in the room, Chassidy Mickale, and stuck with her through what became some of the most challenging weeks of her life.
Unfortunately, Hope and Chassidy's season was chock-full of coded "size" questions from male contestants. Shayne Jansen asked dates if they felt comfortable wearing cropped tops, which both Hope and Chassidy took to be a thinly veiled question about their body size. Shake Chatterjee asked several women if he could "put them on his shoulders" at a music festival. And another contestant, Brandon, asked the women if they were "comfortable" at the gym. (For the record, plus-sized women do wear cropped tops, they can be lifted onto someone’s shoulders, and they do feel confident working out.)
See for yourself what Hope and Chassidy are talking about in this Instagram clip from Love Is Blind season 2:
Producers also peppered Hope with questions about her body, she says. “I never brought up my body. But the producers asked me, ‘Do you have a hard time dating because of your body?’ and ‘Are you afraid people won’t want to date you because of your curves?’”
That’s enough to rattle even the most confident woman in the room, Hope says, and it nearly pushed her to a breaking point. “Confident or not, your natural reaction to a question like that is ‘well sh*t...are the men bringing up that they don’t want a curvy person?’” she tells Women’s Health.
Hope wasn't the only one bothered by the questions. In one of her only on-screen appearances, Chassidy says in a clip, “My physical insecurities have definitely affected my dating life."
It’s difficult to imagine Chassidy feeling insecure. From her hot pink power suit in her Instagram profile to her quick wit, Chassidy radiates confidence. “I don’t have to go on a show to get a man,” she tells me. “I can skip down the street and have five men interested in me.”
Yet, Chassidy felt like her portrayal was clickbait-y. “They ask you a series of questions to get to the point where it comes off as if you are miserable because you are a plus-sized woman. This is so foolish.”
Netflix, she claims, “wanted to build sympathy around my weight,” but did not take her love story seriously.
Only one curvy woman has been a central character in four seasons, and her body was a big point of discussion.
Although Alexa Alfia (now Lemieux) could not be reached for this story, her scenes speak for themselves. A very confident Alexa is introduced during season 3 with a tight shot of her butt. Cut to a clip where she talks about how she could lose weight if she ate less.
“I love so much that I can represent a very normal sized figure," she shared on the Betches' Diet Starts Tomorrow podcast (she is a size 8 or 10, which is not plus-sized). "People act like I'm this massive human being. I am a size eight to 10 like I am below average in America.” Alexa adds that producers asked, "Are you nervous about how he is going to react to your body?" before the reveal with her now-husband, Brennon.
“I was like, ‘No…That wasn’t a concern, but it is now,’" she said on the podcast. “I didn’t really think about it until that moment.”
Alexa also expressed frustration at how people talked about his attraction to her curviness. "The thing that I dislike the most is that people say, ‘Brennon loves me, in spite of my body.’ That sucks. Like what? No, he loves me and my body," she shared.
Where are the big girls in season 4?
The founders of Roses for Every Body, a campaign demanding fat inclusion within The Bachelor franchise and reality programming at large, hoped Alexa's success would prompt women of all sizes to apply for future seasons. But that was not the case for season 4.
“Love is Blind had the opportunity to create a show based in actual reality and instead made the deliberate decision to exclude fat and plus size people from the entire production," says Rachel Everly, one of the group's founders. "The message is clear: larger people aren’t worthy of falling in love, or even of being on your screens."
Vanessa Lachey, one of the show’s hosts, actually weighed in on the lack of body diversity during a controversial interview. She wondered if some contestants didn't make it past the pods because of their own insecurities. "Their whole life, they've been so insecure about being themselves because of this crazy swipe generation that we are in and this catfishing world that we're in, that they're so afraid to be themselves," Vanessa told Insider.
While Vanessa said everyone is given a “fair shot” in casting (she's not a part of that process), she wondered if it was possible "diverse body" contestants “don't have enough time in those two weeks to find themselves, A, and then be themselves to then find that spouse."
To this point, Hope and Chassidy say they felt incredibly confident while filming, and weren't worrying about sucking in or making themselves smaller. This wasn't the case for the other girls, they say. “It was like 50 times a day someone having a meltdown about ‘how fat’ she was, but she’s actually a size 2,” Hope observes of other contestants.
Needless to say, Chassidy, Hope, and the Roses for Every Body founders were disgusted by Vanessa's statement. Roses For Every Body spoke out against it, and received a DM from Vanessa, which was reviewed by Women's Health, saying it "breaks [her] heart" that the organization misconstrued her words. “You are a clown,” Chassidy says of the original comment. “You have no idea what you are talking about.”
Vanessa did not respond for comment at the time this story was published.
But, as season 4 reaches its finale, I ask Netflix: what are you so afraid of? Is a fat person not worthy of love? Or, at the very least, worthy of being featured on a show about true, unconditional, blind love?
Answer your own question, Netflix. Is love blind?
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