Love Is Blind showed us two plus-size women, then ignored them for the rest of the series

When the cast for Love Is Blind season two dropped, it promised us an even more diverse show than ever. Then, the compilation clips of everyone at the very start of the first episode feature plus-sized women very prominently. The first person we hear speak is 33-year-old Chassidy, who shares that her physical insecurities have “definitely” affected her dating life, and says she’s looking forward to being judged “as a person, versus the physical”. But instead of that, what actually happens is that we watch two plus-sized women being asked incredibly superficial questions on Love Is Blind, then never to be seen again.

As the Love Is Blind contestants walk towards the pods for the first time, there’s a voiceover from Hope, 31, who says she’s looking forward to what could be “discovered” in the pods. “It doesn’t matter what I look like, it doesn’t matter how much I weigh, colour, ethnicity or anything you come from, it is who you are inside”, she says.

Like Chassidy, Hope is excited to go in the pods and says she wants to find a husband on Love Is Blind

What we “discover” is a compilation cut of Shake, who has been called the male embodiment of a red flag, asking the women some incredibly superficial questions. He asks about Mallory’s race, very un-subtly tries to find out about Iyanna’s body by saying he “loves buying clothes for girls” and asks for her size. He asks to Hope if she “likes working out” and says he “gets along best with individuals that do work out”. She says she doesn’t really enjoy it and pulls a face.

The scene then cuts to Shake asking Chassidy how old she is, and saying he prefers “dating younger”. The entire scene with Shake speaking to multiple women barely even lasts a minute, and yet it is pretty much the last of both Hope and Chassidy’s screen time.

Chassidy’s disbelief when Shake tells her he ‘dates younger’

As one TikTok user, Valentina, said: “The opening intro was super powerful, they were showing people of all different body sizes, races, ethnicities, cultures, everything. It was just a variety of people and I was like ‘oh my god, finally a dating show that is representative of the outside world.'”

But she says despite the powerful opening scene, as she watched the first episode her hope for the series left her. “The more I watched, I’m like ‘wait a minute’. They didn’t show any of the plus-sized women talking to other guys. I had so much hope and then it just got shut down.”

People online are sharing Valentina’s sentiment – one Twitter user said there is a “fatphobic narrative” which cast play off as “deep conversations about body image … and it’s all coming from the participants in thinner bodies”.

And it’s not just the way the we hardly see Hope and Chassidy – we also see Danielle and Deepti speak about how they used to be “heavier”, it’s treated as if it’s some huge, shameful secret. As one TikTok commenter put it – “we get two stories of ‘reformed’ plus-size ladies – like we’re only worth it once we lose the weight.”

Look, I get that 30 contestants is a lot to show, and Love Is Blind only really shows the cast who end up getting engaged in the pods (and even then, not all of those make it – it’s been announced that two couples who got engaged were cut from the show). The show’s creator has said in the past that we don’t get to see all cast members on their dates, which is why some people appear in the cast but we don’t end up seeing anything of them in the series. “There was a certain point where we did a whittling down of people just to focus internally on the people who were really connecting, to allow them more time,” Chris Coelen said.

Both Hope and Chassidy were shown prominently at the start of the series talking about their insecurities, and then the only other time we see them was when they’re asked meaningless, superficial questions which tell us nothing of who they actually are. Both of these women are stunning, but isn’t the whole point of Love Is Blind that the contestants connect on a deep level beyond physical and material aspects?

Season two of Love Is Blind is available on Netflix now, with the next episodes being released on Fridays. For all the latest Netflix news, drops, quizzes and memes like The Holy Church of Netflix on Facebook.

Related stories recommended by this writer:

• Every single time Shake from Love Is Blind has waved a very bright red flag at us

• This Love Is Blind season two couple got engaged in the pods, but we never saw it