The premise is so simple it's practically idiotic: A man and a woman are purposefully placed in an uninhabitable environment for 21 days–without food or shelter ("afraid") and without clothes ("naked"). If you decide to binge watch Discovery's Naked and Afraid, you'll likely notice a few things. For one, bug bites are truly our worst enemy. And fires are hard to start in the rain (or, for some of the unlucky contestants, in the rainforest.)

"It is recognized that, overall, the women seem to be more badass than the men."

But the most glaring thing you'll notice after watching a slew of Naked and Afraids? The women constantly outsmart, outlast, and outshine their male counterparts. "We have seen it and there was even a discussion among the production team to see if we were noticing it in casting or if it was just kind of happening on the show," says Kristi Russell, a producer and casting director who has worked on Naked and Afraid since the very beginning, in 2013.

"It was surprising to everybody involved that the steely determination of the women is just unparalleled. We certainly haven't come up with the answers for it, but it is recognized that, overall, the women seem to be more badass than the men." Russell assures that they cast equally–looking for men and women who are at the top of their survival game and coming from all different backgrounds. But oftentimes, men chosen for Naked and Afraid tend to be from hunting backgrounds, while women call themselves "survivalists," "wilderness guides," or "environmentalists," always adding that they would rather "connect with nature" than fight against it.

"It's very different walking into the wilderness with a gun and bait and all these things we get used to, and developing this false sense of confidence," says Laura Zerra, a 31-year-old from New Hampshire, who spent 21 days on a remote Panamanian island. "When you're out there in the wild, you actually need to listen to the land. You need to become like one of the animals that you want to hunt. You have to take a step back and say, 'I have to humble myself a little bit.'"

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Her partner on the show, Clint Jivoin, hailed from Indiana, and showed up ready to catch their first meal. But it wasn't as easy as he had imagined: Thanks to unexpected weather and a disagreement on method, the two could not get a fire going. No matter what they caught, there would be no way to cook it. "I'd imagine this is what marriage is like," Jivoin remarks to the camera at one point.

After Jivoin fights Zerra for days about fire-starting techniques, he finally agrees to try hers–the traditional "bow drill"–and they find success. "I can't believe it," he says. "That freakin' thing worked." ("That freakin' thing" he's referring to is an ancient form of fire-starting, dating back to the 4th and 5th millennium BC.)

Zerra adds that Jivoin told her much of his ego was thanks to a sneaking suspicion that he was being "had" by Naked and Afraid's production, that they were going to add a reality TV "twist": "He actually told me that when we were out there, that he thought that production actually was going to tell him later, 'Yeah, this girl's not really a survivalist, she's actually just an actress.'"

"I feel like it's inherent in being a woman, thinking, 'How do we collaborate on this, how do we work together? How do we take your skills and my skills and combine them?'"

Eva Rupert, a 35-year-old from Flagstaff, AZ, appeared on Naked and Afraid in season two (and would later return for Naked and Afraid XL–an offshoot where 12 contestants "survive" for an extended 40 days), where she and her male counterpart, Jeff, had to survive the harsh desert of Madagascar. "I like to think of myself at this point more as a primitive technologist and as a wilderness guide, wilderness aficionado," she said. "[I] rely on my connection with the land and the natural places in the world that inspire me the most rather than thinking that I'm going to be a survivalist and I have to conquer things."

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"I feel like it's inherent in being a woman, thinking, 'How do we collaborate on this, how do we work together? How do we take your skills and my skills and combine them?'"

Her partner Jeff, a Mormon, starts off by saying to the camera, "Feminists bug me," before he disrobes to head off into the wilderness.

This wasn't surprising to Rupert when she first watched her episode on TV: "The production company is like, 'Okay, let's find this strong, feminist girl and this male traditionalist and put them together and see what happens.' It's television, right?"

Perhaps the reality of Naked and Afraid has more to do with what happens after the 21 days in the wilderness–Zerra and Rupert each experienced the effects of starvation: weight loss, hair loss and crazy hormones. Bug bites left scars, menstrual cycles were completely out of whack and Zerra explains that she traumatized her body so deeply that it clings on to fat for dear life: "My body doesn't want to put on muscle, all it wants to do is put on fat. It [is] preparing for the next starvation."

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Even more taxing, perhaps, is when the show is over, and it's time to acclimate to "normal" life.

Says Rupert: "I always think about the moment when I turn my phone on for the first time after 40 days in Colombia. I was literally staring at the screen of my iPhone thinking, 'Is that what my phone looks like? Did it always look like this?'"

"No matter how harrowing the experience may have been or what they have gone through, afterwards, in a really short amount of time, it's as if their skin grows back twice as thick," says producer and casting director Russell. "And oftentimes, they want to go back out."

For 29-year-old athlete Kacie Cleveland, mental strength was the most important qualification of all–she arrived in Belize with little experience in outdoor adventure, but a high tolerance for pain. "Someone who has the most knowledge and the most skills won't be able to use any of them if they're stressed," says Cleveland. "I would think that your mental strength and your ability to stay calm is the most important part of survival. You can only control how you react to stressful situations."

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Cleveland was so determined that she freaked producers out when she seemingly refused to let her body overpower her mind. A male producer told her he "actually thought [she] was going to die on the show," Cleveland says, adding that what scared them was that they knew she wasn't going to give up–no matter what.

Which is remarkable because, at first, she wasn't as into the concept as Rupert and Zerra were. "My first response, hearing "Naked and Afraid," was, 'Fuck no.' It just sounds weird; It sounds creepy."

But it was the challenge aspect that got her to see the whole "naked" thing quickly disappearing into the background.

"The women seem to not give a shit as much as the men do."

The nakedness isn't just a gimmick for viewers–it's a genuine wrench in a survivalist's plan to stay alive: "It's always a factor in your day-to-day life [on the show] because you are so incredibly exposed all the time," says Rupert. "At the end of the day, when it's cold you don't get to pull a blanket or sleeping bag over you; when it's hot, you don't get to put on a shirt and keep the sun off of you."

Not that the very primal Adam and Eve temptation never comes up. Says Zerra: "You're starving and you're being eaten by bugs and then all of a sudden you realize, 'Oh yeah, there's this naked man here who may be single. Maybe he's checking me out. Am I giving him the wrong signals when I'm bending over the fire in front of him at night,' you know?'"

And while the post-production blurring on Naked and Afraid is its own thorough task, Russell says that's rarely a deterrent to the women who agree to be on the show. "The women seem to not give a shit as much as the men do. [They know] that it is simply to heighten the experience of having absolutely nothing."

"That being said, the wilderness provides a wealth of clothing," Russell adds, "and many quickly cover their blurables with bras and bottoms fashioned from flora. Not necessarily because they're modest, but to cover up sensitive parts from the wilderness–have you ever had bug bites on your nethers? You'd figure out how to become a jungle seamstress, too."

Laura and Clint Courtesy Discovery

Lindsey Weber Lindsey Weber is a writer, editor, and co-host of the pop culture podcast, Who Weekly.

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