Love Is Blind … but Are Your Hormones?

Imagine sitting in a pod, speaking to a stranger you’ve never seen, separated by a wall … and then getting engaged to them. Six years ago, the idea might have seemed unthinkable. But in 2026, with its tenth season set to premier this week, Love is Blind is Netflix’s biggest hit ever.

Could the Pod Squad be on to something here? Could taking faces out of the equation lead to better matchups in the long run? Actually, maybe it could—at least when it’s women doing the picking. A long-standing idea in evolutionary psychology is that the type of male faces women prefer fluctuates with their menstrual cycle: Supposedly, when fertility peaks, women prefer more “masculine” faces—stronger jaws, heavier brows, a certain ruggedness. During other phases of their cycle, they prefer men with more “feminine” faces. The evolutionary logic? “Masculine” men might make better mates, but “feminine” men might make more reliable partners (like Love is Blind, evolutionary psychology is super heteronormative).

Seems like a clever theory—but as situationships, dating apps, dating shows, and the so-called male loneliness epidemic take center stage in public discourse, it’s worth asking whether these claims about attraction truly stand the test of time.

So, as a diligent researcher and ardent reality-TV watcher (everybody has their vices), I dove headfirst into the literature. It turns out, as far back as 2018—when Love is Blind was just a twinkle in a producer’s eye—we already had a pretty definitive answer. A research team based in Scotland recruited nearly 600 heterosexual women, all in their early twenties. Some were on the pill, some weren’t, and some started or stopped during the course of the study. This is crucial, because if women’s preference for masculine versus feminine faces really does fluctuate because of cycle-driven hormone changes, then we wouldn’t—of course—see those changes in women who are on the pill. And rather than, as most previous studies had done, just asking participants about the dates of their cycles—which can be unreliable—these researchers measured hormone levels directly and precisely, using saliva samples.

On the same lab visits, the women completed a simple task: rating men’s faces for attractiveness. They were shown pairs of male faces, where one was digitally masculinized (sharper jaw, heavier brow), the other feminized, and asked which man they found more attractive, either for a short-term fling or as a long-term partner. This process was repeated across multiple sessions, to identify any hormone-driven changes in individual women’s preferences.

So, do women’s preferences swing from Timothée Chalamet to Jason Momoa as their fertility fluctuates during the month? Well, the statistics (yep, yep) say—not exactly. While women did tend to prefer more masculine-looking faces overall, particularly for short-term flings, this preference didn’t rise and fall with their hormone levels. Neither did being on the pill—or switching onto the pill over the course of the study—wipe out this Jason-Momoa effect. If anything, women taking an oral contraceptive pill showed a bigger preference for hyper-masculine faces (the theory, of course, predicts exactly the opposite).

This doesn’t mean attraction is random. Cultural ideals, personality, individual quirks, and physical attractiveness all play huge roles. But it does go to show that your hormones aren’t defining your type. And maybe that’s more interesting. Rather than being at the mercy of invisible chemical tides, our romantic choices seem to be shaped more by psychology, society, and personal history.

So, can the messy, hot-and-cold behaviour we see once the contestants are out of the pods be explained by hormone-driven changes in women’s facial preferences? No. When it comes to attraction, our hormones aren’t pulling the strings as much as we thought. Looks might matter, sure, but love seems to be playing a longer, messier, and more human game.

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