Don’t let Chloe Veitch fool you. She may have introduced herself on Netflix’s Too Hot To Handle as “not the brightest spark in the book,” but the bubbly Brit can actually get pretty freaking deep. Sure, she spent a lot of time on the reality dating series flirting with guys and prancing around in teeny bikinis, but Chloe Veitch’s Too Hot To Handle journey was actually a huge lesson in self-worth.
Warning: Spoilers for Too Hot To Handle Season 1 follow. “When I first got casted [on] the show, I thought it was going to be an easy ride. I thought I would turn up, you could kind of hook up with guys, and have fun and have a free holiday,” Chloe tells Elite Daily. Of course, that wasn’t the case. Instead, she and her fellow cast members were tasked with what seemed to be the impossible: forming emotional bonds with one another while avoiding sexual contact.
"I thought, 'Well, what is the actual point of us even coming here?'" Chloe tells Elite Daily, reminiscing on the moment she learned about the sex ban and cash prize, which decreased every time someone on the show broke a rule. Though the rules were certainly a challenge for Chloe — I mean, she did end up breaking them more than once — she says she actually ended up embracing them.
"As the process went on, I kind of understood why [the rules were in place]," she says. "It was like when your mum told you not to eat chocolate, 'cause your teeth will rot and you just don't care — you want to eat chocolate. And then you understand the logic behind what your mum is saying."
After crushing on Harry, not finding a spark with David or Bryce, and getting burned by Kori, Chloe's time on Too Hot To Handle ended without a romantic connection. However, she did form a significant emotional bond — with herself.
"When I got [to the villa], I was like, 'Wow, some of these people are, like, really intelligent. They use these long words all the time. I don't know what they're talking about.' And yeah, I kind of put myself down a little bit," she explains. "It's really easy to judge yourself with women, and in today’s society, you’re always kind of looking at other women and thinking 'Oh, she's got a better physique than me, she got better hair than me.' For me, I really struggled with getting my words out sometimes ... I thought, you know, instead of crying about it, I'm going to laugh about it."
A big turning point for Chloe during the show was the yoni puja workshop, during which the women at the retreat gathered to pay tribute to female sex organs, and in turn, gain some insight into their relationships with themselves. The exercise — which, TBH, was a highly simplified version of the traditional yoga practice — really hit home for Chloe, especially since it took place after Kori rejected her for Francesca.
"I was in a very personal, emotional place in my head, and I was overthinking things. When I got into the yoni challenge, I thought, 'Do you know what? I'm going to make the most out of it,' and I just absorbed everything that the lady told me," Chloe explains. "It brought me back to the times where I would hook up with guys … and they just wouldn’t want me anymore, or I couldn't emotionally connect with people. Doing the challenge, like, really empowered me into thinking, 'I'm not going to feel like that anymore. I need to respect my yoni, I need to respect myself.'"
Chloe was so fired up after the workshop, she sat down with Kori to set him straight. "When I had the chat with Kori after the challenge, I was just full of it, I was full of emotions and memories of my past," she says. "I just thought, 'I've got to stand up for myself and I've got to stand up for every single independent woman out there that has ever been messed over by a guy.'"
Chloe hopes her experience helps other women too. "For all the independent women out there today, I want them to know their worth, because you feel like such a better person after having that emotional change of yourself," she explains. "I want to empower the young generation of today."
Too Hot To Handle is on Netflix now.
