The two girls sharing my hotel room were watching a rerun of The Bachelorette, a show that never fails to amuse me with its scripted scenes and “perfect” matches. “Lamia—” one of them said. Oh no, I thought. I was normally a friendly, go-lucky type of girl, but there was something about these two that made me feel queasy. “Where you’re from, you have something similar, right? But they’re forced marriages?” I wasn’t sure whether to start by telling her that I was from New York or that it was called an arranged marriage. It seemed that arranged marriages were only okay when the couples looked like 2003 Bachelorette winners Trista Rehn and Ryan Sutter. Meanwhile, as a South Asian, if I were to be the subject of an arranged marriage, it would be considered oppression.

I have my own complicated relationship and understanding of arranged marriage as an institution, but I cannot excuse the ignorance of white consumerism. The two girls meant no harm with what they said, but whatever influenced them to think of it in that way is the underlying issue. As a Bangladeshi-American, I’ve seen plenty of my cousins have arranged marriages, and to say that they’re forced into those relationships is largely misconceived.

That being said, there are blatant issues with arranged marriages in South Asian communities. While elders may claim that matches are based on compatibility, the truth is that oftentimes, appearance is the deciding factor. This comes to light in the Netflix series Indian Matchmaking, where matchmaker Sima Taparia examines the biodata of her clients to find their “soulmates.” Sima has been scrutinized for her explicit colorism, but I still admire the show. It may have fundamental issues, but it is honest in its portrayals, unlike reality shows like The Bachelorette and Love is Blind, which hide their shallowness.

The more popular reality TV shows use the concept of an arranged marriage without directly stating the term. They do so to prevent any association with South Asian culture, going even further to make their casts melanin-free. By implementing lies, the marketing industry idealizes the perfect white relationship. At the same time, they refuse to give credit to the origin of their ideas, thereby perpetuating the existing stigma against desi arranged marriages. How is it that white reality TV shows are applauded for exploitation of South Asian culture while the brown community is stigmatized for putting those same traditions into practice?

The western marketing industry acts as if they’ve done something new when all they’ve really done is take a cultural practice and turn it into a game. They’ve cherrypicked aspects of my culture that they found useful and then thrown away the parts that wouldn’t appeal to their audience. Their only goal is to profit off of a harmful standard created for rapid consumption.

American audiences blindly absorb whatever the industry tells them. They don’t bother to question the conceptual aspects of reality TV shows because they are bombarded with the entertainment values presented on their screens. This is the most difficult part about trying to educate viewers on their mistakes. The marketing industry does not expose their audience to cultural information, therefore keeping them from recognizing the masked problems and discussing effective solutions. It causes the public to continue accepting a negative connotation of arranged marriage while simultaneously watching material influenced by that same concept, not seeing the hypocrisy of it all. Thus, the western marketing industry has made it such that there has been no progress in the acceptance of South Asian culture, keeping society stagnant on this issue.

Unfortunately, none of this is a new phenomenon. For the last hundred years, there has been more direct conversation about South Asian cultural exploitation, with topics including the overpricing of henna at American street fairs, the use of religious symbols in primarily Western jewelry, and the selling of traditionally desi clothing as decorative dress sets. While these larger issues are now acknowledged, the subtleties are still ignored. If we don’t start pointing them out, it’ll only make the industry believe that they can continue to get away with it. There’s no problem with spreading the message of “love at first sight,” but the authors of the statement deserve proper recognition.

Written in August 2020