Originally published in June 2021
“Could you fall in love with someone based on personality alone?”
That’s how the snide, whisky-drunk voiceover dude introduces you to Sexy Beast, a new Netflix series that belongs in a tree mulcher and the latest in its seemingly effervescent obsession with shaming people for having eyes. You’ll find it bears striking similarity to Love Is Blind, a show where Netflix made people talk to each other behind a wall for a week and then decide to live together. We’re going to address two major concerns around Sexy Beast now that I’ve slept on them and had some wine. First, maybe obviously stop making single people your gladiators but I’ve since I’ve already made my feelings Saran-wrap clear on that topic, we’re also going to address why the fuck Netflix thinks physical appearance is a shallow quality while also only ever casting people with remarkable physical appearance. Could I fall in love with someone based on personality alone? Probably not! Here’s what’ll really pluck your eyebrows—I DON’T HAVE TO.
Netflix is making something that is not a thing, a thing. For those of us who have the ability to see, seeing is one of the things we’re allowed to do. It’s a completely valid human capability, and it’s allowed to factor into who we’re attracted to without us feeling “shallow.” The greenlighting of Sexy Beast (honestly did no one think, any point, what the actual fuck are we doing?) is the latest in Netflix’s commitment to shaming us for something normal. Not that I think this should happen because leave singles the hell alone, but why doesn’t Netflix just cast blind people? That has to be faster than applying monster makeup.
Fuck you Netflix. I knew you’d eventually jump the shark, but I didn’t realize the thing that would do it would be a human person dressed up to look like one. Well that, and a shitload of very hastily produced and predictable reality shows where you’re trying to get people to care about outcomes via a lot of forced and fake urgency that we’re way too smart to be tricked by, but I digress. Hulu and HBO have taken the quality route, let’s see how Netflix’s quantity approach serves them long-term. There are many things about Netflix that I find offensive as of late, particularly with regard to its portrayal of single people, but at the end of the day, it’s just getting annoying.
But hey, I’m no television critic, I’m just an advocate for single people being treated with the same amount of respect and validity as couples! My goodness Shani, stay on topic. Here I go: The way this streaming platform looks at single people as opportunities to make human beings do weird shit is nauseating. We’re guinea pigs to them, little lab rats they can make do and try anything and then carefully edit the outcome for entertainment.
The public flaying of single people feels very vintage. It feels dated, tired, and out of touch. It also tells me that people are either running out of good ideas, or they’re forgetting to run their ideas by actual single people first. The same tired tropes of putting singles in cringe-worthy situations keep repeating themselves, with no one ever bothering to level-up. Except, apparently, for Connie Britton. There are too many obvious complaints about a show as fucking ridiculous as Sexy Beast. The fact that it made it all the way through production is telling on humanity. I don’t need to twist that knife.
Where I’d like to spend some time is on physical attraction, and why Netflix has chosen to shame it. I honestly thought Love Is Blind was a one-off, surely the streaming platform wouldn’t degrade single people and their natural physical attraction to each other twice, right?
What about all the couples that currently exist? Do we not think physical attraction had something to do with them? Physical attraction is shallow? Apparently only when single people use it. Where’s the show about couples on the verge of breaking up because they’re no longer physically attracted to each other? Are only singles capable of being shallow? Or are only singles a community it’s safe to shame?
If you’re going to degrade singles, degrade couples in equal measure, or you get me to deal with. (Please don’t degrade either, I have to believe human beings are capable of being entertained without someone else needing to be humiliated first.)
Netflix created (another) show about how physical attraction is shallow and how we should be ashamed of our reliance on it as one fucking factor and then cast it with people who are smoking hot. Irony abounds. I’m really looking forward to the follow up documentary twenty years after these people have dated as furries and I hope it’s made by Netflix’s biggest competitor.
There’s a premise in error here. Physical attraction is shallow when it’s the ONLY thing we use in our selection of parters. These shows operate around ONLY removing physical attraction, centering it and assuming that participants (and maybe viewers) operate in that limited way. In reality, we use countless factors to determine whether or not we’re attracted to someone. Appearance, wit, voice, scent, style, kindness, personality, manners, respect, maturity, anything! If Chris Evans himself smelled bad and was rude to a waiter (there’s no way in hell) I wouldn’t be attracted to him!
We base it on so many different factors, all of which come together to determine our attraction to someone, and theirs to us. But it’s really hard for a lot of those factors to fully come into play when you’re distracted because your date is dressed as a fucking panda.
Does anyone else—dear god it can’t just be me—take issue with the scenarios in which “dating” shows put two people together so that they can “get to know each other?” AXE THROWING? How, how pray tell does axe throwing help you get to whether or not you’re attracted to someone? How do any legitimately fun activities help you get to know someone apart from whether or not they like FUN? Oh, you had a great time bowling with her? THAT WAS THE POINT. I’m ready for a television show that takes two people and has them assemble an Ikea bookshelf—that’s how you know if this relationship has legs.
Or better still, do what happens in the real world! And what used to happen on the actual Real World! Make them work together. Stock an office with howevermany hot 24-year-olds don’t understand that Google search results last forever and how we will never care that you were on reality TV but will for sure remember any part of it that was super embarrassing for you. Have them work together in an office or other place of business for three months and friend, sparks will FLY. Send me skee balling with basically anyone and it’ll be the best date of my life—but I swear on a stack of Jane magazines I’ll know very little about our actual compatibility when we’re done.
Netflix has a problem with single people placing importance on physical appearance. They apparently also love to shame us for this totally human thing, as proven by the fact that they continue to make reality shows where people can’t see each other but are still supposed to “pick” each other based on whatever Netflix itself deems to be “true” factors. Riddle me this, TV bois, which one of YOU would want to leave your romantic future up to a casting director whose job depends on ratings instead of the formation of successful relationships?
It’s fine if you think someone’s hot and that hotness plays into whether or not you want to see them again. It’s also fine if their physical appearance is just kind of meh for you but you really love the sound of their voice and all the things you have in common. Attraction can wax and wane with repeated exposure. All kinds of attraction can wax and wane with repeated exposure. All of these things are natural parts of being human, and there’s no shame in our humanity. But dressing people up in prosthetics and telling them that only when you can’t see someone can you truly be attracted to them by valid means is fucking embarrassing. Kind, respectful human beings don’t create television like this. But monsters might.