The Big Picture
- MTV is creating a new dating show called Dating Naked where contestants interact in the nude, pushing the boundaries with explicit content.
- Similar to Love Island, the show will feature a cash prize for the winner and will be filmed in a luxury villa in South America.
- The show sparked controversy in the past, with a contestant filing a $10 million lawsuit after her genitals were shown without her consent, but the lawsuit was ultimately dismissed.
MTV is making a new Love Island-style dating show where the contestants get to know each other in the nude. Show bosses are now on the lookout for “body-confident extroverts” who fancy spending three weeks in a tropical paradise while mixing with other naked singletons. The blurb for Dating Naked described it as “a new social experiment provides daters with a radical dating experience where before they bare their souls they bare everything else first.” The show is expected to be X-rated, with a warning that the contestant’s body parts won’t be blurred out for modesty.
A source told The Sun: “This show is really going to push the boundaries, it’s like Naked Attraction meets Love Island – so fans of both series will be in for a treat. Finding love isn’t the only incentive for potential contestants – there will also be a huge cash prize for the winner.” The source added: “But the contestants will have to be seriously at one with nature because they’ll be filmed nude for pretty much the entire time they’re on the show.”
Dating Naked is scheduled to be filmed in South America in February 2023, in a luxury villa. Similar to Love Island, the show starts with the contestants lining up to choose which singletons they want to get to know, before heading outside the villa for cozy match-ups. All contestants participating in the show will have to be over 20 years of age to apply and prove that they’re not in an existing relationship to be eligible to take part.
‘Daking Naked’ Takes Inspiration From ‘Naked Attraction’
The announcement of MTV’s nude dating show comes off the back of an equally risqué dating show, Naked Attraction, a British reality dating series that aired on US cable network Max, on September 20. The interest in the show was huge for the American streaming service. In fact, with very little promotion, the show raced to the top spot on the “Most Popular” series list a week after its U.S. release. Max has not posted about the series on its official accounts, but when social media users came across the show by chance, it lit up the internet. Postings spread throughout the forums, with opinions split over its graphic nudity. Large numbers of subscribers soon signed up to see what all the fuss was about. Sunny Hostin, co-host on ABC’s The View, spoke on the daytime show about watching Naked Attraction with her husband soon after it first streamed. “I’m very embarrassed to admit that Manny and I got so obsessed with this show, we binged it yesterday, and we watched all 8 episodes,” she said of the show.
Naked Attraction puts six singletons into frosted glass cubicles, fully nude. Looking over their bodies to see which one to date is the picking contestant, with the aid of the show’s host, Anna Richardson. Over a few telling reveals, the “picker” chooses their favorite, based predominantly on naked attraction. Starting from the bottom up, the six contestants’ screens are raised in stages, exposing more and more of their bodies. One by one, the contestants get dwindled down to two, and their faces are finally revealed. The picker then strips off too, and a choice is made. The naked couple then walk off for a date, this time fully clothed.
The debate that has been raging on social media in the past few weeks is how the US can broadcast so much nudity on a television show. The Federal Communications Commission prohibits obscene, indecent, and profane content on U.S. television, which covers nudity, sex, and offensive language. This, however, only applies to “over-the-air” television networks like NBC, CBS and ABC. Streaming services like Max are given more freedom. Max, which is owned by Warner Bros, is the home to HBO Originals like Game of Thrones and Euphoria, which regularly feature nudity. In the UK, the Office of Communications (Ofcom) regulates all the UK’s private channels, including Channel 4, the producers of Naked Attraction. Ofcom’s broadcasting regulations mainly function to protect children under 18 years old. “Material that might seriously impair the physical, mental, or moral development of people under eighteen must not be broadcast”, according to Ofcom. To combat this, a Watershed was introduced. Watershed is the time between 9 pm and 5:30 am in which material “unstable for children” is permitted to broadcast. This allows shows with excessive nudity and cursing, like Naked Attraction, to be shown on free to air TV.
Naked Attraction is produced by Channel 4, on the UK’s mainstream TV network, and has been on air since 2016. Now the US pay television giant, Max, is showing the entire back catalog of this controversial dating show. Soon after the show’s stateside success, The Hollywood Reporter spoke to Naked Attraction executive producer Darrell Olsen and asked if he ever thought the show would air in the U.S.
He said: “We thought it probably wouldn’t due to the general restrictions in the States and the public feeling about nudity on TV. There have been talks about it and [the reaction has] always been, ‘We’re not sure U.S. audiences are ready to see this.’ That’s been the sticking point. This time, Max said, ‘We’re a cutting-edge streamer, we’re just going to go with it.’ A lot of people in the U.S. were already big fans, including celebrities like Chrissy Teigen and RuPaul. That it’s already a hit on Max has taken us by surprise. Said Olsen.
Naked Attraction might be new to the US, but reality dating shows with naked contestants are not unusual on this side of the pond. MTV’s forthcoming Dating Naked is a reboot of an American reality dating show that first aired on MTV’s sister channel, VH1, in July 2014. However in this version, the contestant’s naked bodies were blurred and pixelated. The format takes a naked man and woman to a secluded tropical island where they will soon get to know other naked and like-minded contestants through various games and activities. At the end of each episode, the two main participants look back on their experiences and decide whether they want to see any of their matches again. New contestants would join the show during each episode, in a setup similar to the dating show The Bachelor. The winning couple then have a final date on the island, and the chance to see each other in the real world.
Shows This Risky Sometimes Involve Lawsuits
Dating Naked did spark controversy during its three-year broadcast on VH1. One episode had a 69-year-old man paired up with a 29-year-old woman. There was also a $10 million lawsuit filed by one of the contestants after VH1 showed her too naked in season one. Jessie Nizewitz, 28, says the show makers flashed her crotch during one segment while she plays wrestled with one of the male contestants on the beach. Nizewitz went on to say she’s been humiliated on social media. Producers had allegedly assured Nizewitz that her genitals would be fully blurred during the episode. Nizewitz, who failed to find love on the show, added that the show cost her a “budding relationship” with someone she had been seeing for a month after the series had finished.
Speaking to the New York Post she suggested they broke up because of what he saw on the show. “He never called me again after the show aired,” she said. “I would have hoped we could have had a long-term relationship. He was employed, Jewish, in his 30s and that’s pretty much ideal.” Two months later, Viacom, in its petition for dismissal held that “Nizewitz signed three agreements, in which she expressly and repeatedly agreed that she would participate and be filmed fully nude: without restriction; that the producers would have sole discretion in how the footage was edited; that she waived any right to sue over her appearance on the show.”
In March 2015, the lawsuit was dismissed by a New York Supreme Court judge. When Dating Naked was canceled in 2017 after 3 seasons, Chris McCarthy, president of MTV, VH1, and Logo said they currently have no plans for season four of the dating reality show but are open to future reboots.
Six years later, a new version of Dating Naked crossed the Atlantic Ocean to Europe. Dating Naked: Germany premiered in February 2023, via VH1’s parent company, Paramount, and is currently available on Paramount Plus for streaming in Germany. This new take on the show has a few changes to the original, 2014, US version. The main change is that the contestant’s naked bodies are not blurred, everything is hanging out there for all to see. There are also far more revealing scenes. Contestants get intimate with each other, one couple could be seen romping on a bed in the lavish villa as others ventured out in their birthday suits for dates. This new German version has already caused headlines across Europe, even by their more liberal standards. So what will the response be when North America’s less broad-minded cable channel broadcasts the revamped Dating Naked uncensored? Judging by the reactions to the streaming of Naked Attraction on Max, it’s likely Dating Naked will also grab everyone’s attention.
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Khushi Patel is a science fiction author who lives in Austin, Texas. She has published three novels, and her work has been praised for its originality and imagination. Khushi is a graduate of Rice University, and she has worked as a software engineer. She is a member of the Science Fiction Writers of America, and her books have been nominated for several awards.
