Naked, authentic, classless? Reading Naked Attraction

Abstract

At first glance, Naked Attraction seems to be another example of a type of reality television that is often criticised as ‘voyeuristic’, ‘tasteless’ or transgressing bourgeois boundaries of shame. In this article, however, I want to show how class differences that play a vital part in reality television, are made invisible with great effort and translated into questions of ‘authenticity’, ‘privacy’ and supposedly classless forms of ‘desire’. The argument is developed in three steps. First, I outline my theoretical approach, which combines a material and symbolic understanding of class. Building on this, I will show that the connection between seemingly ‘private’ and ‘intimate’ spheres of life and the fabrication of class, which is central to Naked Attraction, is based on a structural relationship. In the third section, I analyse Naked Attraction in more detail, suggesting that the programme can be read as the (doomed) notion of a seemingly ‘classless’ society. This is where the class politics of the show (and, more broadly, of contemporary neo-liberal imaginaries since New Labour) can be found.