The very foundations of Love Is Blind, the experimental dating show which has now been running for six seasons on Netflix, is that you find your life partner ‘sight unseen’. Hosts Nick Lachey and his wife Vanessa hammer this point home through various, faintly awkward, segments within the show, where 30 contestants are let loose to enter the now infamous so called ‘pods’ where they spend days dating a series of members of the opposite sex.

They are on the hunt for what is solemnly referred to as ‘their person’ (which is 2024 talk for husband or wife), and the dates get ever cut-throat as each contestant strikes potentials off their list until they propose to The One.

Now in its sixth season, Love Is Blind viewers know this format all too well. The idea is that when they accept a proposal they finally get to see what their fiancé or fiancée looks like as the partition doors are pulled back. Until this point they are not strictly meant to have discussed looks: hair colour, race or body type, if they want to play the game properly (although a few contestants have tried their luck, like Shake in season two, who asked Deepti if he might be able to ‘carry her on his shoulders’ at a music festival in attempt to figure out her weight).

This season, a conversation between contestants Chelsea Blackwell and Jimmy Presnell, who both hail from Charlotte, North Carolina, has caused a wave of controversy thanks to an exchange about which celebrity flight attendant Chelsea resembled. Although Chelsea herself said she ‘didn’t see it’ and told Jimmy not to ‘get excited’ she revealed that she had been compared to Megan Fox over the years. She told him she’d get told ‘all the time’ that she looked like a certain celebrity during flights. ‘It’s just because I have dark hair and blue eyes,’ she added. Jimmy was like a cat who got the cream, asking if he could marry Chelsea ‘right now’.

Immediately after their first post-engagement meeting, though, Jimmy said in a confessional interview that, even though he was still attracted to his fiancée, she had ‘lied’ to him about her appearance. In fact, Jimmy struggled to compliment much more about Chelsea than her teeth. Viewers weighed in on the subject online, with one commenter on Chelsea’s TikTok writing, ‘MEGAN FOX? NO NATALIE NUNN’, referring to another reality star, who’s known for her appearance on Bad Girls Club. ‘You could be Megan Fox’s sister in like a Khloe Kardashian way,’ another quipped. YouTuber Trisha Paytas also added: ‘I see it girl. Ppl be wildin.’ Chelsea was eventually forced to speak out, joking in a video that has now been viewed 13.4 million times, ‘This would be a great time for the people who have ever told me that I resembled her to come forward…’

Jimmy does almost nothing to reassure Chelsea’s obvious insecurity. He upsets her by telling AD how great she looks, even apparently spinning her around to get a better look at her body. It’s painful to see Chelsea’s diffidence play out so publicly in the group and behind closed doors with Jimmy as she almost begs him to validate her and show her he’s committed. Even prior to meeting Jimmy for the first time she tells the confessional camera that she is ‘thicker’ than the other girls, something which certainly isn’t apparent to me as a viewer, and even if she were, it shouldn’t be an issue with someone she felt truly confident with.

In the next batch of episodes, spoiler alert, it becomes more and more clear that Jimmy has realised that Jessica was, indeed, right and he’s beginning to make noises as though the grass might be a bit greener on the other side. In a preview for a later episode we see Jimmy take the mum-of-one aside and tell her that he may be having second thoughts, although he has now already slept with Chelsea, met her friends, and told her he thinks she is ‘perfect’.

And therein lies the major issue for these two. Jimmy appears to be something of a shallow guy, who was lured in by Chelsea’s eagerness to please him (much has been made of the kind of girl Jimmy ‘thought’ he wanted: Jessica is direct to the point of intimidating, whereas Chelsea duly laughed at all of Jimmy’s jokes and told him what he wanted to hear – which is almost certainly how the Megan Fox ‘lie’ came about.

There’s no doubt Chelsea was feeling insecure, being pitted against Jessica who is so self assured. Did that play into her decision to use the ‘Megan Fox’ card? Possibly. And whether you think she looks like her or not, do you think she deserves to be torn apart by hundreds and thousands of trolls laughing at her for even daring to compare herself to a good-looking celebrity?

The bigger point at play here is how we see ourselves – and how we want others to see us, which is a huge element of the dating show. Even though they claim to take looks out of the equation while these contestants fall in love, arguably there is a great deal more pressure on their looks once they have committed to getting engaged and those screen doors pull back. It’s not shallow if you don’t have a physical connection – if these couples do have one that’s a bonus, but it still doesn’t mean they’re going to have a happy relationship (in fact only eight couples who have married over the previous seasons are still together, including Cameron and Lauren from season one).