I just finished watching the first two episodes (plus the very beginning of the third) of season 5 of Love Is Blind, and this old crone has at least one thought she wants to shout out into the void:
Social media filters are ruining people’s chances of happiness by creating unrealistic expectations of people’s appearances. With the first couple to get engaged (Teacher Barbie and Firefighter Ken—I’m not invested enough yet to remember names), Teacher Barbie admitted she wouldn’t normally be attracted to Firefighter Ken because he had a gap in his teeth. Friends, it is a small gap. Nearly unnoticeable unless you have honed your expectations of humans on social media filters and concomitant dental procedures to make faces look like filters. A gap I would have barely registered if I was still in my 20s and dating (those halcyon years of the early aughts), and one I, as an oldster in my 40s who doesn’t use social media filters didn’t register now (probably because I’ve reached the age where the orthodontic interventions experienced by me and my contemporaries in our teen years have fallen victim to years of relentless sleep grinding which have, much like the grinding of tectonic Pangeal plates, created shifts and gaps and overlaps in our once-pristine smiles. Anyway, Teacher Barbie seemed visibly unnerved by Firefighter Ken’s tiny gap. While I think there were other aspects of their meeting to be legitimately unnerved by (the non-consensual first kiss, the kisses in triplicate, the awkward staring, the JimBob-esque hair), the tiny tooth gap seemed to be an odd point of fixation.
No idea if I’ll post again about this dumpster fire if a show I keep watching. Tune will tell. Until then, turn off your filters, young ones. Take a chance on a person whose teeth aren’t perfect of whose features aren’t airbrushed into nonexistence. You might be pleasantly surprised. (Or not, but at least it’ll be an adventure.)