“There’s only so many people that we showed.”
The creator of Love is Blind has responded to recent criticism regarding the lack of diversity in terms of body sizes on the show.
The first few episodes of the second season landed on Netflix over the weekend, and while it attracted a large audience, many couldn’t help notice that the plus size participants were given significantly less screen time than the others.
In the first drop of the season, 30 singletons go on virtual dates in pods, without ever seeing the face of their potential partner. If they hit it off, they can meet each other for the first time while on a couple’s retreat.
As well as the lack of screen time for the plus size participants, some viewers took issue with one of the contestants when he appeared to try and gauge the weight of the woman he was talking to. While in their pods, Abhishek ‘Shake’ Chatterjee asks his date if he would have “trouble” picking her up at a music festival.
All the plus sized contestants just vanished in thin air. Love is really blind, eh? #LoveIsBlind pic.twitter.com/htdZJPHE2Y
— Scarlet C (@ricksnemesis) February 12, 2022
The show’s creator, Chris Coelen, has since responded to the criticism.
In an interview with the LA Times, he said: “Both Season 1 and Season 2, we really tried to have a diverse pool of participants in every sense of what that word means — whether it’s experience or body type or ethnicity or whatever.
“There’s only so many people that we showed.”
He went on: “It’s certainly not like we said, ‘Let’s stack the deck.’ No, we had every kind of person that we could find come into this environment, and everybody had an equal opportunity.”
He then added that production does not try to “steer” or “control” the show.
Coelen said: “We just set up the mechanism and help move them around, depending on who they want to spend time with.”
Love is Blind is currently streaming on Netflix.
