When Aneha Singh said right up front on “Love Is Blind” that she doesn’t drink, I was surprised. Not that she doesn’t drink, but that, given their history, the show left it in and let it be said. She declared it with confidence (Episode 1, 9:28), and it made me wonder if the show had finally realized how much it romanticizes alcohol and was willing to shift the script.
Unfortunately, that seemed short-lived. As the season went on, it looked to me like production inched back to minimizing, even hiding, the fact that she doesn’t drink. Then, later in the season, there was a shot glass in her hand. I noticed it right away, and I haven’t been able to let it go. This is Part 2 of my “Love Is Blind” coverage, and it’s about how people who don’t drink get treated on reality TV, one small prop at a time. In my book, I call people like Aneha temperates: people who don’t drink simply because they don’t want to, for no reason society would deem valid, like recovery or pregnancy. I have no judgment on anyone’s choice to drink or not to drink, and that includes the cast members. This piece is about how the show handles it.
What Aneha told us
Aneha Singh is a 28-year-old principal engineer in biotech, and she says in the pods that she doesn’t drink. She never has, and she made that decision for herself at a very young age. She has said that on the record, too. In a Nov. 5 Boston Globe interview, she describes herself as a cheap date because she doesn’t eat meat and doesn’t drink alcohol, and Netflix’s own Tudum interview with her and Cam notes that she doesn’t drink.
The scene
Here’s the scene, with the episode and timestamp.
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- The bachelorette party, Episode 12, 12:44. The room raises shot glasses to toast the brides, wishing them a lifetime of love, happiness and joy. Aneha, in her veil, is smiling in the middle of it, and small gold glasses are raised all around her, one right in front of her. Aneha is holding one.
Aneha is only holding the glass. I don’t remember seeing her drink from it, and the show doesn’t show what she does with it afterward. What it shows is a big smile and a bent elbow, with the glass at a natural distance from her face, as if she had drunk it. Everyone around her is holding the same gold shot glass, and the camera lingers on her with hers. I can’t tell what’s in those glasses, and neither can you. What I can tell you is what’s on screen: a woman who doesn’t drink, smiling, with a gold glass raised like everyone else in the room.
A shot is not a ritual
I get why a person who doesn’t drink might hold a drink at a party. I’ve had plenty of nonalcoholic beers myself. A beer is something you can sip, taste and enjoy. It’s part of how a group settles in together, and the ritual of having a drink in your hand is real, even when the drink has no alcohol in it.
It started earlier, on the beach with Cam (Episode 6, 12:00). The scene opens on two gold goblets, a bucket of ice, and a bottle beside them. I don’t want to be overly critical, because I did catch what looks like an iced tea or an apple juice in that bucket, with a plastic cap, alongside the other bottle. I had Google analyze the bottles. The brand label is turned away from the camera, as is standard in production, but the bottle’s silhouette and T-cork closure point to hard liquor, not a nonalcoholic sparkling wine. There’s a tiny chance it’s a nonalcoholic beverage, but based on the analysis and research I did, all signs point to a distilled spirit. So it appears there’s alcohol here for Cam, and that’s fine. Cam’s an adult. But the scene was still staged around an alcohol bucket and the show’s signature gold goblets, and I don’t know why it needed to be.
What’s the message? That Cam is going to marry a woman who never drinks, and he’s going to keep drinking alone? Why would he need to drink alone in the middle of the day? Because he’s on vacation? Because the script hasn’t been broken for him yet? Because he just loves his alcohol? There are so many things to look at here. Wouldn’t that make his soon-to-be wife uncomfortable? It really bothered me. Either Cam wanted to drink alone, or the producers chose to stage the goblets, and both send a negative message. Why couldn’t the scene have no drinks at all, or ambiguous ones? It seemed unnecessary, but I let it slide in Episode 6. I don’t think a regular viewer would pick up on it. But as I was writing this piece, I was disturbed and really wanted to know what was in there. Did they really just have Aneha sit on the beach with alcohol? The way the whole scene is staged adds to the message that Aneha is the oddball out. I’m not taking a dig at Cam. I liked him. But this scene doesn’t make sense to me.
A shot is a different thing. Nobody takes a shot for the flavor, and nobody lingers over one. It’s one fast swallow, done together, and the whole point is the alcohol. There’s no ritual left to keep when you take the alcohol out.
So when a woman who doesn’t drink has a shot glass in her hand, I have to ask what holding one adds. A shot has no flavor and no experience to enjoy. Maybe she wanted to hold one. Maybe she asked for it. I can’t say. But it doesn’t match the vibe she gave off at the start of the season. Why would she want to look like she was doing shots?
My antennas were already up after Episode 6. Aneha doesn’t drink, so why was she sitting next to a giant goblet, a bucket and a bottle? Then we get to the episode with the shot glass, and zooming in on Aneha holding one is the ultimate slap in the face. When you’re really paying attention to the subconscious messaging that runs through entertainment, the media and the commercials, it’s hard to miss. Why was there a shot glass in her hand? It’s okay if she doesn’t do a shot.
After the pods, her not drinking goes quiet
After the pods, I don’t believe the show mentions again that Aneha doesn’t drink. There’s one other scene where she’s holding a stemless goblet. I took that as a possible cue that the stemless glass was meant to signal a nonalcoholic drink, but that’s an assumption on my part.
The goblet defense doesn’t cover a shot glass
There is a known reason for the show’s gold goblets. Season 3’s Zanab Jaffrey explained that editors spliced scenes together without viewers seeing a glass go from full to empty to half full, according to Looper. It’s a continuity trick, and a fair one.
A shot glass doesn’t work that way. You empty it in one swallow, so there’s no level to match from cut to cut. If the goal were continuity, any prop would do.
And think about the logistics. Would a cast member who’s told everyone she doesn’t drink choose to stand in a round of shots holding a glass of water or an empty one? That doesn’t match the woman we met in the pods. I can’t say whether she asked for it or someone behind the camera told her to hold it.
It’s not just this season
This isn’t only Aneha’s season. It’s every season I’ve seen so far, and it isn’t limited to the US. I just finished watching “Love Is Blind” Italy, and in a dinner party scene, one of the men takes out a bottle and says, “Everyone’s drinking, right?” That leaves no room for anyone to break the script. Everybody nods along and gets their glass poured.
Cast members who don’t drink have said this before
Aneha isn’t the first cast member to raise this. Season 6’s Matthew said he did the experiment sober and that this was never disclosed in his story, per ET Online. In a later Q&A, he claimed producers tried to encourage him to drink after he told them he doesn’t, as reported by Yahoo. That is his account, not a confirmed finding.
Reality star Joey Sasso, who is sober, said conversations between him and fellow sober contestant Chloe Veitch were all cut from a show they were on, according to VinePair. They had wanted to show you can have fun and let loose while sober.
Former “Love Is Blind” cast members have also alleged heavy pouring on set. The production company has denied those claims, and creator Chris Coelen called them insulting. I’m not asking anyone to take the allegations as fact. I’m asking why a cast member’s own words and the footage don’t match.
What a viewer who doesn’t drink sees
A viewer who doesn’t drink, watching that scene, sees a woman who said she doesn’t drink, standing in a room with a glass in her hand. Maybe it’s water. Maybe it’s empty. Maybe she chose to hold it. I don’t know, and the show doesn’t tell us.
What I do know is that the show’s own publisher says Aneha doesn’t drink, and that people who don’t drink are watching. We notice. For many of us, seeing someone who doesn’t drink staged as a drinker feels like being erased.
What stirs this up for me is how much of our narrative is driven by the media we consume: reality TV, movies, commercials, the news. The message is that alcohol is celebratory, benign and necessary. We’re fighting that narrative now, armed with a lot of data, and I don’t understand what it’s bringing to the table. This is a show about finding love, the healthy kind that can last a lifetime, with marriage as the end goal. Why does alcohol have to be so heavily woven into that story? It doesn’t seem necessary to me. I’m out here explaining that people need to make decisions with full awareness of what alcohol really is, and for most drinkers that’s still not the case.
Aneha, I’d love to know the answer. Did you tell them you don’t drink, but you were fine being shown with a goblet and a shot glass? Does yours have water in it? Did you feel like you were missing out on being part of the group, and ask to hold one and be zoomed in on? Or was it a decision from the production team? I hope this reaches you.
As for the show, I think it should reduce the alcohol glamorization and be honest about who drinks and who doesn’t. Right now, that still doesn’t seem to be the case. And if production wants to explain why a shot glass ended up in her hand, I’d love to hear that too.
By Contributor: Tara Oporto
Editors note: Before the Boston season premiered, Tara Oporto wrote about the show’s signature gold goblets and one contestant’s experience filming sober in “Love Is Blind Sold a Wine. The Sober Guy Got Cut.” Here, she turns her attention to a bachelorette toast.
Sources
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