A nude dating show is a controversial hit on Max. But is it actually sinful — biblically speaking?
Contestants on the naked dating show are revealed slowly from the feet, up — with plenty of zooming in on the areas censored by the leaves we added. Courtesy of Max/Channel 4
By Mira Fox October 3, 2023
Most dating shows in the U.S. play with the same concept: resisting physical allure. On Love is Blind, couples get engaged after talking through a wall. In the (very strange) Sexy Beasts, prospective couples date while disguised as animals. In all of them, contestants want to fall in love with someone for their true self, without the base concerns of bodies and attraction.
The idea has its roots in the bible; physicality, we learn as early as the story of Adam and Eve, is animalistic, sinful or fallen. Only after eating the forbidden fruit did the biblical first couple realize they were naked, and care about their bodies. Nudity is tied to the idea of original sin, invented by St. Augustine and embedded in Western society, religious or not, ever since. Therefore, the pervasive logic goes, the more we can strip it out of our life choices, the better — the closer to a godly, Edenic state of being.
Naked Attraction, a U.K. dating show that premiered in 2016 but only recently arrived on the streaming platform Max — where it quickly became the most-watched show — throws all that out the window. Each contestant chooses between six potential dates without speaking to them, instead only seeing their naked bodies, revealed in slow stages, starting at the feet. Only at the very last stage are they allowed to very briefly speak and reveal the slightest sense of personality. Profession, age or sense of humor don’t enter the conversation.
The show is shocking; even in a world in which prestige dramas such as The White Lotus or Game of Thrones have featured full-frontal nudity, there’s always been the possibility that actors were using prosthetics. And they never panned from penis to penis, or vagina to vagina, as Naked Attraction does, all while the host, Anna Richardson, unabashedly asks contestants how they feel about the potential dates’ circumcision status — generally uncircumcised, given that the show is filmed in the U.K. where circumcision is less common — labia or pubic hair choices.
Yet, just like Love is Blind, Naked Attraction aims at some nobler form of choosing a partner. When Richardson asks contestants why they want to date naked, they often offer a sentiment about seeing people’s real selves, as though dating naked allows them access to some sort of fundamental truth.
“If you remove the clothes, I think you can really get to know the real person,” said one contestant. “We can really find out a lot more about who people really are.”
Is there anything to this? Conventional wisdom would say no. Seeing someone’s naked body might provide a few insights into who they are in the world, based on tells like painted nails or piercings. One man had an elephant tattooed around his penis, which has to say, uh, something about who he is, though I don’t know what.
But looking at the story of Adam and Eve, their nakedness is not truly the source of sinfulness. In fact, they were naked before they ate the fruit. They were commanded to “be fruitful and multiply” and “become one flesh,” which we can assume implies sex, and yet “they had no shame.” It’s the shame that they acquire by eating the fruit of knowledge that seems to be the source of sin — not the nudity.
“Naked Attraction is … oddly wholesome?” wrote Joel Golby in the Guardian in 2019, long before the show reached America’s Puritan shores. “Naked Attraction is nakedness as humanity — old, young, large, small, hairy, plucked — and it is curiously heartening.”
The bodies on the show cover a wide spectrum — not everyone is conventionally hot or in perfect shape, the way they often are on U.S. dating shows. And the discussion of bodies and preferences is frank and unembarrassed. In fact, in each contestant’s brief interview after the show, they almost invariably describe the experience as empowering and positive.
In a way, Naked Attraction returns us to our Edenic state: a place where bodies are just bodies and sex is just sex. There’s nothing to be ashamed of.
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