Netflix released the first batch of episodes for season two of “Love Is Blind” on Friday and fans of the show are already invested in the drama and multiple love triangles. But, many viewers also voiced their disappointment over the lack of body diversity among the contestants featured on the show.
The contestants on “Love Is Blind” initially communicate through pods, small rooms where they can’t see each other. Despite not knowing what the other contestants look like, some propose and eventually meet before deciding if they want to get married.
Although “Love Is Blind,” casts 30 singles looking for love, the reality dating series only focuses on six love stories. Many of the diverse cast members barely spoke in the five episodes currently available to stream. They were not shown conversing in the pods or having conversations in the women’s or men’s lounges.
After half of season two, viewers took to Twitter to express their confusion over why certain contestants were not given significant screen time.
“All the plus sized contestants just vanished in thin air. Love is really blind, eh?” one fan asked.
Another wrote, “Love is Blind put 2 curvier women on the show for season 2 then proceeded to give them no tv time on a show based off of looks being unimportant…ok lol.”
Others called out contestant Abhishek “Shake” Chatterjee for his comments in the pods. During the premiere episode, Chatterjee tried to determine the women’s body types by asking if he would have “trouble” picking them up at a music festival.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times published on Friday, “Love Is Blind” creator and executive producer Chris Coelen addressed casting choices and critiques.
“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,” Coelen explained.
He added, “There’s only so many people that we showed.”
Coelen said he found it interesting that the show allows contestants to “strip away all of the trappings of the material world.”
“It’s certainly not like we said, ‘Let’s stack the deck,’” he told the publication. “No, we had every kind of person that we could find come into this environment, and everybody had an equal opportunity.”
He shared that the team behind the show does not “steer or control any of it.”
“We just set up the mechanism and help move them around, depending on who they want to spend time with,” said Coelen.
“Love Is Blind” released a mini-series special called “After the Altar” in 2021 that provided an update on couples from season one and also featured some of the contestants that weren’t showcased in the first season.