‘Perfect Match’ Fans React to Stars Matching Black Women for the Wrong Reasons
A lot of drama and strategizing goes into Netflix’s Perfect Match. But fans are noticing a troubling trend with how Black women are treated, from the original cast members, like Anne-Sophie Petit Frere, to the newcomers.
[WARNING: This article contains spoilers regarding Perfect Match Episodes 1-6.]
‘Perfect Match’ winners have the power to set up couples
Perfect Match is a game where singles must match up or get eliminated. They then do a compatibility challenge in hopes of winning. Winners get control of the boardroom, where they can set up two couples and get their own date.
Nick Uhlenhuth and Savannah Palacio won the power first. They match Kariselle Snow with Chase Demoor because of their personalities. They matched Petit Frere with Calvin Crooks because Nick was against bringing in Damian Powers.
Petit Frere and Demoor won the power second. They match Uhlenhuth with Izzy Fairthorne. Demoor then left Petit Frere behind to go on a date with Georgia Hassarati. The Selling Tampa star was eliminated.
Francesca Farago and Dom Gabriel earned the power next. They matched Ines Tazi with Bartise Bowden. Farago then chose Powers for herself.
Snow and Joey Sasso got the power after that. They matched Gabriel with Colony Reeves because they “looked good together.” They then matched Shayne Jansen with Chloe Veitch.
Reeves didn’t find a match in the end. Fairthorne also was eliminated because Bowden wanted to match with Tazi in a later episode.
So the trend has been that Black women go home quickly. Also, the reasons why Black women get put on dates have very little to do with helping them find a perfect match.
‘Perfect Match’ fans react to stars matching Black women with only Black men
The trend of how the Black stars are treated is very noticeable. Fans talked about it on Reddit.
“Anyone else noticed for ALL black cast members they IMMEDIATELY choose just whoever is black,” the original poster wrote. “SOOO ANNOYING. Sophie Anne got stuck with Zay’s side gap crazy horse self, then briefly paired with bi racial Chase who clearly only liked white women, then pairing Dom with Colony knowing damn well that’s not his type.”
“I thought Kariselle saying how great Dom and Colony would ‘look’ together was the cringiest part of the entire show up to that point,” one commenter wrote.
“Right? When Kariselle and Joey were matching Dom with Colony they were like ‘oh they look hot together’ blah blah rather than speaking about their personalities like they did with Shayne’s potential matches I dunno it felt f**ed up,” someone else agreed.
“It made me very uncomfortable. I also hate how it’s usually the black or other minority contestants going home,” one fan admitted.
“Yeah, I noticed that too,” someone wrote. “Every time they were in the boardroom, they’ll always pair a black contestant with another contestant. Nothing about their compatibility, just a pairing based on race (and they don’t do that for anyone else). This made it even more obvious when Dom who was paired with Colony, then pawns her off to Bartise and introduces her as a ‘Black Queen.’”
There might be hope that this trend will change in future episodes. But for now, many fans aren’t happy about how Black women aren’t able to play the game the same way.
