Vanessa Lachey: lack of body diversity on Love is Blind is contestants fault

After a popular second season earlier this year, Netflix series, Love is Blind, finished filming a third season and was renewed for a fourth and fifth. In one of my past posts about Love is Blind, I wrote that one question about the upcoming seasons is whether it will ever truly test that theory by casting people who aren’t considered conventionally attractive. Vanessa Lachey, one half of the show’s host couple, has kind of taken a stab at answering that question. She doesn’t say whether the cast is more body diverse for the upcoming third season, but she does have a potential explanation for why it hasn’t been thus far. It’s the contestants’ fault they don’t make it to the engagement stage because they’re too insecure. Um, what?

Host Vanessa Lachey addressed the lack of body diversity on “Love Is Blind” in a recent interview with Insider.

She said she often wonders if some contestants don’t make it past the “pods” stage of the experiment because they feel “insecure” and don’t have enough time to make meaningful connections.

“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,” Lachey said of contestants who may not believe they fit into conventional beauty standards.

On the first phase of Netflix’s hit dating show, male and female contestants live in separate pods and only communicate with each other in designated rooms, separated from each other by a wall. The point is to get to know each other and hopefully build a genuine connection that turns into true love before knowing what your partner looks like.

When a contestant feels like they’re in love, they propose marriage and move on to the next stage of the experiment, where they finally get to meet in person and commit to exploring their relationship in the real world — with Netflix cameras following them, of course.

Lachey acknowledged that many couples who move past the pods stage fit into conventional beauty standards. She’s not a part of the casting process but said she knows that “Love Is Blind” and Netflix give people with diverse bodies a “fair shot” as far as casting them on the show.

“I wonder if they truly don’t have enough time in those two weeks to find themselves, A, and then be themselves to then find that spouse,” Lachey continued.

She said no one on the show controls who gets engaged, so that is part of the reason why we don’t see more physically diverse contestants move on to the stage of the show where they go on vacation with their partners. The “NCIS: Hawai’i” star said she often has conversations about diversity on the show with her husband and co-host, Nick Lachey.

[From Insider via Buzzfeed]

I don’t think anyone was expecting insightful commentary from Vanessa Lachey, but this is a really bad take. And it doesn’t even make sense. By her logic, the contestants who don’t fit conventional standards may not make it to the engagement stage because they feel too insecure about catfishing to show their true selves in the pods. And they don’t have time to “find themselves” before finding a partner in the pods. Because the only people who need to find themselves are people with different body shapes and sizes? Ridiculous. Also, they can’t be catfish because there are no fake photos/identities involved. The one thing Vanessa is right about is that the show doesn’t control who gets engaged, they just choose the cast. There were a grand total of like, two people on the first and second seasons who fell outside of the “standard,” so how likely is it that Netflix casting is giving them a “fair shot” as she says? It would have made more sense if Vanessa’s theory was diverse-bodied people don’t even apply for the show because they don’t think it’s for them. This twisty, blaming justification is rude and ugly.

P.S. An After the Altar special for season two is coming later this year, before season three premieres. I wonder what’s going on with Kyle and Deepti.

Photos credit: Netflix

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