Adam Zoekt Eva

One of the reasons I’m known as the Shallow Man is due to my habit of valuing looks over content. An example of this was my pursuit of a Dutch lady in Amsterdam, who in spite of the fact that she irritated the hell out of me, I continued due to her epic boobs. They were good enough to star in a James Cameron movie. I had to get my hands on them at all costs. They were often prominently on display, and I single-mindedly was determined to free them from the captivity of their surroundings and enjoy them in their natural beauty.

The things the Shallow Man would do to get his hands on a pair of valuable assets. I even sat through riveting conversation pieces such as “My hair is not blonde, it’s platinum blonde, I wish you’d pay attention” or “I have no female friends, I’m so good looking that women feel threatened by me.” So finally when I managed to get the lady in question out of her clothes, you can imagine my disappointment when I realised that the spectacular cleavage, which could have been rented out for downhill skiing competitions, was the result of a very well constructed push up bra. Had we been in the USA I would have sued her for false advertising, which brings me to the subject of today’s post, Adam Zoekt Eva.

In my never ending quest to provide up to date info on modern Dutch culture, I couldn’t ignore the latest reality show on RTL5. In spite of having much better things to do, the Shallow Man sat through 48 minutes of the first episode of this show. The things I do for my readers!

Adam Zoekt Eva

Finding romance takes many forms. Swiping through profiles on tinder, online dating, standing still in a packed bar and waiting for the aggressive Dutch Antelope to pounce, or going to an Island off the coast of Panama, being surrounded by a film crew and meeting your potential partner naked as the day you were born, welcome to Adam zoekt Eva.

The camera shows an aerial shot of beautiful clear water. It then zooms in on a raft, on which a woman sits and with a paddle and rows towards an Island. It then cuts to a man doing the same thing. They then strip off, and swim naked to the island. How many fish have been traumatised by the sight of naked Dutch reality TV,  F list “I’ll do just about any bloody thing to become a bekender Nederlander” morons? Where are the animal cruelty people when you need them? I’ll tell you where, hanging around outside a fur shop in the PC Hooftstraat being a nuisance, when they should be protecting the sensibilities of tropical fish.

Nicollete Kluiver is the presenter.Thankfully, she remains fully clothed. She has the kind of high pitched, loud annoying voice that’s reminiscent of the noise one hears if you accidentally step on the tail of a cat. The noise of nails being dragged against a blackboard, or the anguished sound of pain when a Dutchmen is asked to pay the bill on a first date.  She also pronounces the Dutch “G” in all its glory. It sounds as if she’s choking on a piece of oude kaas, or something else. She has the kind of voice that people would pay money to sit as far away as possible from in a cafe or restaurant, and yet, there she is, on national TV.

She’s an old G, with a voice that could cut glass

Die liefde in de meest pure vorm

If you’ve just finished eating, I’d advise you to skip the rest of this post, as watching this programme certainly turned my stomach.

In the first episode we have Kathy, a 26 year old social worker, who in the past fell in love far too quickly, so has come on the programme looking to find the real thing. Now a cynic might say that what she really means is that she auditioned for lots of parts and was so bad that she couldn’t even get a small non-speaking role on Goede Tijden Slechte Tijden or Achter Gesloten Deuren. Desperate that at the ripe old age of 26 that her dreams of fame might not be fulfilled, she auditioned for a part on Adam Zoekt Eva. That’s what a cynic might say, but in reality she’s there looking for true love. Kathy likes men with Lion King hair that drink beer.

The male, Jorrit Pieter, seems quite genuine, as in genuinely naive. I honestly think that he is there looking for love, that, or he’s a better actor than I give him credit for. I assume that he’s not from Amsterdam, where there is an abundance of single women. If you put on a blindfold and walk for two minutes in any direction, you’ll bump into a single woman. Actually the number one cause of accidents on bikes in Amsterdam currently is women swiping through tinder instead of paying attention to the road. If Jorrit lived here, he wouldn’t need to go all the way to Panama and make a fool of himself on national tv, so I can only assume that he’s from some male dominated hell hole such as Rotterdam. Only joking, the Shallow Man is partial to lots of concrete, anyway, I digress, back to the show.

The search for true love

In it’s purest form (naked)

The Shallow Man is right on how to attract a Dutch male

I’ve often written that Dutch men love their women with wet hair, and have been criticised for it. Yet, on Adam Zoekt Eva, the first meeting of the couple takes place after they have swum to the Island, and as well as standing in front of each other naked, they both have…. wet hair!

No buts, they are going through with it

First impressions

So Jorrit and Kathy meet, check out each others bits, and were pleased with what they saw. At least there will be no legal issues later about false advertising. I do wonder about the idea of meeting each other in this way. The entire point of having dates with women is to eventually get them naked. As things progress, the anticipation of getting them out of their clothes is part of the excitement of the dating process. Yes, I’ve had one or two unpleasant experiences in the past, but generally thoughts have gone through my head such as “wow, I’ve won the boob lottery” or “where was that hot butt hiding?” These, are the simple pleasures of the dating safari, the hunt, followed by enjoyment of the kill. If both parties are naked the first time you meet, where’s the fun in that?

RTL5 of course, have cynically thrown in the naked bodies as a simple gimmick to get people to watch. The first episode had 800,000 viewers, but, the novelty of naked butts, wears off very quickly, and what we are left with is yet another tedious reality show, featuring people who are desperate to be on TV at all costs, and a TV production company that has run out of ideas and is simply retreading yet another variant of Big Brother. The annoyingly voiced presenter even asks the protagonists “what made you take part in the Adam Zoekt Eva experiment?” Super original question. Replace Adam Zoekt Eva, with Utopia, Big Brother, De Gouden Kooi etc, etc, they are all experiments, in the desperation of people to do anything to be on TV.

The quickest way to see people naked is to use tinder, even a bad date is less excruciating than sitting through forty eight minutes of cynical pap TV for the brain dead.

No actors who failed to get a part in Goede Tijden Slechte Tijden were hurt during the writing of this post.

For up to date information on the Dutch dating scene, the Shallow Man Guide to Dating the Dutch is available from Amazon and BOL.com as both paperback and ebook.

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