Naked Attraction

In the last few days I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been asked if I watch Naked Attraction.  It’s a bold question for anyone to pose in an office, as it comes pre-packaged with an assumption that the asker is proudly declaring their love for nudity-based programming, displaying an unashamed love for looking at other people’s bits and pieces from the privacy and comfort of their own living room.  I can answer that question now: I don’t watch Naked Attraction.  But that doesn’t stop me going on about it here.  Besides, when I say I don’t watch it, this means I don’t make an appointment to view the onscreen wobbly bodies.  It means I don’t make a point of downloading missed episodes on a catch-up service.  But sure, I’ve flicked through the channels of a late evening and found myself transfixed by a good fifteen to twenty minutes of crotch-first dating, so we can all rest assured that I have definitely qualified myself to comment.

For those that don’t know, Naked Attraction is a dating show that gets right down to business.  Our singleton is presented with six potential partners, obscured from their view by coloured screens.  As you would have guessed from its title, there is nudity.  But while our chooser is fully clothed, those that are submitting themselves for selection or rejection have taken off their vest and pants beforehand and are awaiting judgment in the altogether.  Bit by literal bit, the screens reveal the bodies behind, but we start below the waist, only factoring the face into things at a final stage.  After each round, one contestant is cruelly purged, judged to have the wrong genitalia and the game goes on.  The action culminates in the chooser disrobing for the final decision, joining in all the bare-arsery, putting the cock (or pea) in peacocking with visible relish at the thought of finally making everyone else look at their junk.

Regular readers will know I love a boundary-pushing format, but I just can’t get the commissioning meeting for this one out of my head.  It’s one thing to greenlight a naked dating show – Britain could do with taking a more European approach to nudity (shrugging with disinterest rather than pointing and laughing), but the fact that this goes beyond unclothed coupling up and pivots on the first impressions people’s external sex organs make on each other must have made for an interesting PowerPoint presentation.  “So, the entrants look at each other naked and we see if sparks fly?” is what I presume the Channel 4 commissioner asked.  “Not quite,” must have come the response, “one contestant looks only at the other’s privates in order to determine if they are a suitable life partner.”

I suppose it gets any awkwardness out of the way that may come up later down the line.  Nobody wants to have wasted three evenings of their life in various Pizza Express branches before finally getting down to consensual rumpy pumpy, only to find that what lies beneath falls short of expectations.  Why not be upfront about what you want?  Judith from series five (yes, five) certainly has been, and this is what has got our prudish British tongues a-wagging.  Asked for her ideal man, she was candid in her prerequisite of eight to eleven inches.  And fair play to her – it’s not the Dark Ages so we’ve no right to sneer at an older church-going lady who likes to accommodate well-endowed chaps.  Finding out these details is the wonderful Anna Richardson, mastering the hosting art of not looking at the choosing contestants’ crotches in each final round, probably because so many eyefuls are forced upon her beforehand, eagerly examining each mons and foreskin with that week’s date-seeking hopeful.  I imagine she has ensured the clauses in her contract stipulating no obligation for her to join in with the naturism are clad in iron.

Why shouldn’t real bodies get more airtime on TV?  Naked Attraction has been applauded for its inclusiveness, with every shape, size and hue of human mixed in among the skin-showing.  Where it finds contestants willing to undergo such scrutiny is anyone’s guess.  It would be impossible to avoid any awkwardness, especially as the scrutinees can’t speak until later rounds, resulting in people trying to answer questions with eye-level hip shimmies until you can almost hear the pubic hair rustling.  My favourite delicate moment is when the chooser meets the rejected contenders.  It answers the question to which humankind has long pondered the answer: how do you hug someone when one of you is naked?  The solution: the crotch-back hug.  Participants lean in from a slightly more distant stance than they would normally, sticking their bottoms back a little more lest bare flaccid willy graze someone’s jeans.

The toe-curling is actually strongest once the clothes are back on and we witness the final pairing’s first date, reassuringly conducted in a well-lit public space in case anyone tries to slip their slip off again and parade around desperately seeking attention.  The matches rarely work out, despite both having the unhinged glint in their eye that they are perfectly willing to take part in a national television show whose main premise is the detailed scrutiny of their reproductive organs.  Watch it at your own peril and talk about it at work while running a similar risk that everyone thinks you’re a titspervert.  But let’s shed our inhibitions like candidates shed their underpants and knickers.  If they’re happy living free of shame that their scrotum is extra dangly or that their labia are unique, then you can be free of shame that you spend your evenings looking at them.