We all know what reality television is about: Put attractive young people together in intimate settings, ogle at the seminudity, and wait pruriently to see which casual sexual relationships will develop, unwind, and erupt into tears and recriminations.
But things have changed lately. We still have the attractive young people on these shows. We still have the sexual tension. What we don’t have in the newest shows, though, is the sex.
Love is Blind was a recent Netflix hit in which couples fell in love and got engaged without ever seeing or touching one another. Then after meeting in person, some of them fell out of love and became unengaged. The question at the heart of this show was whether a man and a woman could fall in love with each other’s personalities, absent physical contact.
“The idea we based the show on,” the show’s creator said, “is that physical attraction is one of the least important things to the success of a long-term relationship.”
Too Hot to Handle was Netflix’s way to take the idea a step further. After the mostly naked contestants got to know each other on the first day, the robot (yes, robot) that ran the show informed the young and promiscuous guests of the rules. “You have been selected because all of you are having meaningless flings instead of genuine relationships,” the robot explained. “You will have to abstain from sexual practices for the entirety of your stay.”
Thus the title. These hot people had to keep their hands off each other.
Rolling Stone covered this trend in a piece titled “Why No Sex Is the New Sex on Reality TV.” The magazine agonized over whether this was real chastity and virtue. “In the first episode, the cast members are all talking about how they want sex and are going to climb all over one another,” one professor said. “They talk about sex all the time.”
But desiring sex, thinking about it, and being attracted to the opposite sex is not vice, of course. While talking about it lasciviously certainly ain’t saintly, a show that challenges people to overcome their appetites isn’t sullied by acknowledging those appetites.
On the other hand, while contestants might get less flesh-to-flesh than in a normal reality show, the viewers are getting just as much of a view of that flesh in both of these shows. So sex is still selling, even when nobody’s having any.
