Naked Attraction 10 Years On: Are We Voyeurs or Liberators?  

By Saffron Baker 

 It had been a long day. Many of you will be familiar with the feeling of total oblivion in the face of deadlines, essays and exams, and atop of that, the endless piles of laundry and dishes (one must imagine Sisyphus is happy). I flicked along the channels and browsed for something easy, something digestible without thought, tinged with some shallow hope of feeling better about my own life. Then, I stumbled on Naked Attraction.  

Originally launched by Channel 4 in 2016, its presenter Anna Richardson, invites one ‘singleton’ to the stage with the task of finding a romantic partner. If you’re not familiar with the show, it goes something like this: six contestants stand naked behind six coloured cubicles. On each round, the door lifts a little more to reveal what they look like. Each round ends in a subsequent elimination, where the ‘singleton’ sifts through physical features that they either do or do not find attractive in a partner. The last standing contestant wins a romantic date with the singleton. Interestingly, unless contestants reach the last round, they are only referred to by the colour of their individual boxes (yellow, red, blue etc) and only on elimination are we more formally introduced. After airing in 2016, the show received endless OfCom complaints, scandalous headlines, and a significant number of dates that never had a fairytale ending.  

Now, in the interlude of ten years on from the first airing of the show, I am only left wondering on the nature of my own role as a viewer. Was I a consumer of unconventional nudity, fuelled by a morbid curiosity? Or was I a liberator of nakedness, in being a part of the ‘supply and demand’ for the show?  

Much of the marketing behind the show is built on the concept of body positivity. Countless contestants who are featured fearlessly tell the camera (whether they are picked or not) that they are glad to have come on the show and are proud of themselves for stepping outside a comfort zone. Occasionally, the show will offer interesting and arguably educational facts about the human body, love and relationships, and the more intimate side of life. Artfully, it normalises nakedness. It enters the realm of what is ‘natural’ and therefore, ‘liberating’, insinuating that in presenting nakedness so openly, we are breaking conventional norms around the body, and rejecting traditional dominant ideologies of modesty. Indeed, contestants may feel liberated whether we watched or not – all of this may be true.  

Though, two truths can exist at once. Regardless of how I, or any other viewers perceive the morality of the show, (whether it is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’) it does not change the fact that we still remain ‘viewers’. When we consider this perpetual, undeniable aspect of voyeurism, we must ask: can liberation and voyeurism co-exist?  

If we refashioned Naked Attraction as indeed, liberating, it begs the ultimate conflict between viewers and contestants: is that liberation co-dependent on outside voyeurism? In this example, liberation itself does not derive from the act of participating, but instead, flows from the prying eyes and curious minds of viewers. The central assumption being that, if we can ‘look’ without embarrassment, we are no longer voyeurs, but just ‘comfortable’ with nudity. Though I’d wager that ‘comfortably’ watching is not the same as ‘innocently’ watching.  

In many ways, the stark nakedness and the slow reveal often remind me of Adam and Eve. Before the ‘fall’ from Eden, the nakedness of Adam and of Eve never presented as a shameful act. Only after the forbidden fruit, plucked from the Tree of Knowledge, are they ashamed of their nudity. Essentially, it is not the nakedness itself, but the gaze that changes. Could this be the same?  

Or perhaps not. Perhaps my musings simply stem from the fact that I am avidly aware of my own ‘looking’. If that is the case, the contestant and viewer share somewhat of an equilibrium, in both liberation and voyeurism.