Women of Colour and the Exclusionary Reality Dating Paradigm

By Sarah Ahmed

Love Island UK manages to capture racial dynamics through its focus on romantic partnership. The program exacerbates the denigration of women of colour by reinforcing racial stereotypes around desirability and behaviour. The whitewashed structural features of the show validate the persistence of racially ignorant depictions, effacing the presence of participants of colour in favour of endorsing romantic white unions. I specifically explored the ways in which Love Island UK constructed the racialized female participants in relation to their white counterparts.

Analysing Love Island UK required me to address how the casting choices reproduced a racial dimension on account of the dominance of white cast members. The lack of racial diversity demonstrates how this structure of televisual programming asserts the significance of white participants while positioning the participants of colour as inferior. Particularly, it is the women of colour who struggle to find a partner which excludes them from the romance narrative offered by the show. This is a consequence of being disregarded for the conventionally attractive white contestants. Their only function is to recentre whiteness because they frame the coupling of white women by way of their rejection. When they are not chosen, they aid in the culmination of the white woman’s love story, forgoing the chances of their own. The show’s process disadvantages women of colour as they struggle to navigate a space where they are not the ideal (white) type or romantic interest of the male contestants. The format of the series elicits questions of sexism and racism as women of colour are framed within narratives of internal struggle rather than romantic partnership. Their love stories are elided to accommodate and fulfil the white women’s purpose on the show. Consequently, they are side-lined during the process and removed from the romance narrative.

One of the seasons I watched included a black contestant named Yewande who was not initially chosen by anybody during the first episode when the couples were pairing up. This reflected a concurrent theme that was prevalent on the series where the few (or only) black women were not paired up and left single. Her efforts at finding love were unsuccessful and left the impression that black women were not the ‘right’ recipients of romantic attention. This reinforces notions of undesirability for women of colour, who when matched against their white counterparts are often ignored or rendered less attractive. The series’ salient focus on women of colour’s difficulties in navigating the space where they are not desired as romantic partners is indicative of covert implications of racial inferiority. Female audiences of colour have problematized these inferences by addressing the show's debasement of non-white women through these scenarios where they are situated as devoid of romantic potential.

Another central feature of Love Island UK that I assessed was the series’ deprecating representation of racialized women’s behaviour. In the series, emotional outbursts are extraordinarily spotlighted when performed by racialized bodies. Whiteness is invisible in such performances where the same behaviours are illustrated by white individuals. Their anger is not in excess but rather tempered, making audiences desensitised to displays of white rage. For example, Yewande was characterised as an “angry black woman” when she confronted her romantic interest about his intentions with another woman. She received backlash for this, with people claiming she was being extremely aggressive despite the fact she had not displayed any hostile behaviours. Racial dynamics expose how women of colour are differentially portrayed on the series. Contrary to their representation, the explicit vexation of white women remains cushioned from repercussions. Their expressions of frustration are not sensationalised to the extent that women of colour’s expressions are. For example, Maura, a white woman on the same season as Yewande, displayed fury towards her partner but her disposition remained unjudged despite the fact she had been aggressive multiple times prior.

Women of colour have voiced their frustrations with their televisual representation on Love Island UK, citing the program as a source of denigration as it reinforces troubling gendered and racial stereotypes around desirability and behaviour. The way reality TV shapes perceptions of race indicates the media's failure to reflect the complex nature of race because it relies on thematic constructions of racial difference or a ‘politics of difference’. Ultimately, Love Island UK relies on simplistic narratives positioning white women and women of colour differentially from one another by juxtaposing the expression of their frustration and impression of desirability. Watching Love Island UK allowed me to reflect on the media’s role in establishing racist and sexist ideologies conducive to extirpating the humanity of women of colour and reducing their identities through reductive public representations.