The season 3 contestant tied the knot with Brennon after the pair met in the pods.
Love might be blind, but prior to season 3 of the Netflix reality dating show, Love Is Blind, the production was criticized for not featuring diverse body types on the show.
That changed with contestant Alexa Alfia, who later tied the knot with Brennon Lemieux and took his last name. The insurance agency owner was praised for embracing her curves and loving her body, despite not fitting into the proportions previously featured on the show. But in a new interview, Alexa points out that she's not even considered to be "plus sized."
“I love so much that I can represent a very normal sized figure," she shared on the Betches' Diet Starts Tomorrow podcast. "People act like I'm this massive human being. I am a size eight to 10, like I am below average in America."
Alexa is mostly bothered by critics praising her husband, Brennon, for loving her "in spite of" her figure.
"The thing that I dislike the most is that people say, ‘Brennon loves me, in spite of my body.’ That sucks. Like what? No, he loves me and my body," she shared. "It was never a concern. I asked him after the fact – after we met – like, ‘Are you attracted to me?’ And he said, ‘Hell yeah, I love that you’re curvy. You look good.’”
Alexa participated in the pod experiment, noting that she was ready to leave the show three days in due to homesickness -- but Brennon convinced her to stay.
“Brennon was my number one from day one. Day three, I went in and I was like ‘Peace out girl scout, if you're feeling anybody else, pursue that, but I miss home and this is too much for me and you’re the only person I am connecting here with,’" she shared of her now-husband. "He was like, ‘You're the one for me. Let's leave the show together.’ I was like, ‘Hold up, whatever is happening here is working, this environment is working. I’m down to stay if it is only you. I don’t want to talk to anybody else.’”
She added that she hadn't even considered being nervous about their physical reveal until someone asked her about it right before they came face-to-face for the first time.
"I can’t remember exactly how they brought it up…It was kind of brought up right before the reveal, like ‘Are you nervous how he is going to react to your body?’ I was like, ‘No…That wasn’t a concern, but it is now,’" she said. "I didn’t really think about it until that moment."
Despite showcasing strong body confidence on the show, Alexa said that she wasn't always that way.
"It's definitely something that took time," she said. "I don't think that everyone's born with confidence overnight and I definitely still have days where I hate myself and I think that's perfectly normal."
She added that growing up she suffered from depression, which led to extreme weight loss.
"I have been really skinny before. When I went through an episode of being very, very, very depressed, I went down to almost a size four," she shared. "I was very skinny, and that was when I was my unhappiest self. I hated my life. I hated myself... Skinny does not equal healthy and that is such a difficult thing for people to understand."
Love Is Blind: After the Altar premieres Friday on Netflix and will update fans on Alexa and Brennon's life since the Love Is Blind finale and reunion aired in November.
RELATED CONTENT:
