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Breaking news: Age-gap relationships are back. Maybe. Netflix\u2019s new dating show \u201cAge of Attraction\u201d certainly aims to prove they are.<\/p>\n
The premise of the show involves a group of men and women placed together in a large retreat in the middle of nowhere. The singles then have to meet and date each other through various activities and events. Seems pretty basic. The one twist, however, is that they aren\u2019t allowed to tell each other their age, and the ages of the singles range from 22 all the way to 60 years old.<\/p>\n
While this unique (and slightly creepy) twist distinguishes the show from others in the dating category, \u201cAge of Attraction\u201d fails to capitalize on its potential, and its failure only exemplifies the fact that age gaps are very much a thing of the past.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The show\u2019s most immediate and obvious problem is the fact that the participants get to see each other. That\u2019s right, there is no \u201cLove is Blind\u201d-esque barrier preventing the participants from seeing each other\u2019s appearance. This essentially defeats the entire purpose of the show. If the intention is to remove age as a factor in attraction, then seeing the other participants eliminates that possibility almost instantly. Humans are very good<\/a> at guessing age based on appearance, whether it\u2019s through things like skin texture or even posture and hairstyle. You can literally see the participants in the show calculating their dates\u2019 ages in their minds as they meet. Contestants are still trying to fit their partners into an age bracket before getting to know them on a deeper level, which makes the entire concept feel skewed. It\u2019s not really an experiment in whether or not love is blind to age; it\u2019s just people pretending not to care about something they clearly do notice and bracing themselves for the confirmation.<\/p>\n