19 Lesbian Cultural Practices Appropriated By “Love Is Blind”

Did this tweet inspire me to watch Love Is Blind last week and then immediately begin screencapping it for an Autostraddle post? It did.

Because yes, as also noted in yesterday’s landmark essay “Love Is Blind” Is Basically a Lesbian Reality Show for Straight People — and I Can’t Get Enough of It, this is what we’re dealing with here: women who date women are more likely than any other sexual orientation group to meet their partner online, sight unseen, develop an intense emotional connection, meet up for a whirlwind romantic weekend in an appropriately sexual but undoubtedly isolated location, and then immediately move in together. Watching these heterosexuals dive head-first into relationships they’re convinced must be true love just because they essentially texted all night for four days was nothing short of banal. Whomst among us has not done precisely that? The question is are straight people okay and the answer is, not really. [Also, the Diamond / Carlton situation is actually too serious to be part of a jokey post like this one, but I recommend this piece by our very own Rachel Charlene Lewis over at Bitch Magazine.]

Shall we begin to discuss how, exactly, this show stole our culture? I AM.


1. Falling In Love With Her Without Ever Having Seen Her

2. Sharing All Your Trauma Within 24 Hours of Meeting

3. The Ceremonial Meeting of the Girlfriends at the Airport

You’ve seen it in a million YouTube videos of YouTube girlfriends who have since broken up. You’ve done it yourself. She has flowers. You have a very heavy backpack. You kiss for the first time. You squeeze hands. You pledge eternal devotion. Her hair smells incredible.

4. Being So Excited Your Internet Girlfriend is Objectively Hot That You Don’t Really Think About If You Are Personally Attracted To Them

At first…

Shortly thereafter…

5. U-Hauling

6. 2 Bottoms, 1 Relationship

Kelly! Kelly and Kenny. Has there ever been a cuter set of names for a lesbian couple? There has not been. Unfortunately, these two humans are never going to bone.

7. Having to Hang Out With Your Exes All The Time

8. Having Horse Friends

9. Being a Kinsey 5

Okay so disclaimer: Kelly doesn’t really give off gay vibes or any interest in women, but her messaging about men is very much on a Kinsey 5 level. Sure, Kelly’s into men. But only like — REALLY REALLY HOT MEN WHO FIT A VERY SPECIFIC TYPE? And also, she’s never really connected emotionally to any of her exes? And also… didn’t receive the pleasure she desired from having sex with them, so?

[see also #4]

10. Being a  Tomboy Who Spends $200 On One Trip To Ulta

11. Adding Your May-December Relationship To The Cannon of Celebrity May-December Relationships

12. Your Friends Thinking You’re Crazy To Marry Someone You Just Met, You Thinking They Just Don’t Understand the Depths of Your Connection

[…]

[…]

But listen….

13. Reminding Everybody That She Said One Time She Wanted to Marry You and Therefore Her Eventual Rejection Of You Was Not an Actual Rejection But Just Her Being Bananas and Blinded By Lust for Amber


and then…

and again…

14. Shane / Carmen / Jenny Love Triangle

Remember when Carmen dated Jenny seemingly just for the good sex, romantic attention, and the fact that Jenny lived with Shane and therefore Carmen could keep being around Shane while kinda still pursuing and crushing on Shane and also being obsessed with Shane’s downward spiral?

[…]

[…]

15. Getting Engaged After Dating For One (1) Week

16. Fighting About Her Parents Not Knowing About Your Relationship

17. Cosplay

18. Wanting To Play Her “You Belong With Me” On Your Ukulele

19. Brutally Breaking Up With Someone While Telling Them They Should Be Okay With It Because It’s Your Emotional Truth and You’re Just Being True to Yourself and It’s All For The Best and Your Therapist and Sister Agree With You, So

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Riese

Riese is the 41-year-old Co-Founder of Autostraddle.com as well as an award-winning writer, video-maker, LGBTQ+ Marketing consultant and aspiring cyber-performance artist who grew up in Michigan, lost her mind in New York and now lives in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in nine books, magazines including Marie Claire and Curve, and all over the web including Nylon, Queerty, Nerve, Bitch, Emily Books and Jezebel. She had a very popular personal blog once upon a time, and then she recapped The L Word, and then she had the idea to make this place, and now here we all are! In 2016, she was nominated for a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Digital Journalism. She's Jewish and has a cute dog named Carol. Follow her on twitter and instagram.

Riese has written 3238 articles for us.

9 Comments

  1. Wow this is amazing and a lot, but also somehow the takeaway for me is that straight people don’t talk about Sarah Paulson and Holland Taylor enough??

  2. I am a now as full of emotions as a condo-loft’s garburator.

    I do NOT want to feel sympathy for them but… damned if they’re not pressing all of my buttons.

  3. I RESENT how thoroughly and repeatedly dragged I have just been by this post about a heterosexual TV show

  4. These essays led me to binge the show and now all I can think about it how Jessica’s quote, “he’s so emotionally available, that’s a big red flag for me” didn’t make the cut here. What a wild ride

  5. Okay, this is excellent but I will posit that Kelly absolutely has gay energy in addition to not being that into Kenny and not having connected the way she wanted with her ex-boyfriends.

Comments are closed.