Women of Colour and the Exclusionary Reality Dating Paradigm
By Sarah Ahmed
For my GSWS 320 paper on cultural media and racial politics, I analysed the reality television program Love Island UK. This is a show that I had consumed as a teenager transitioning into early adulthood, therefore it critically shaped my understanding of racial identity and cultural notions of beauty. I had witnessed a familiar pattern on the series which reflected not only a lack of racial diversity, but also the struggles that the women of colour endured on a show where they were not promised a piece of the romance narrative. Every season was the same: the woman of colour was not chosen, instead being overlooked for the 鈥渂londe blue-eyed bombshell鈥�. As a young woman of colour, these exhibitions of a covert racial inferiority enabled me to recognize the program as a reflection of society鈥檚 reliance on maintaining racist and sexist beauty standards and the effects this had on women who did not embody Eurocentric features. I wanted to explore how Love Island UK produced problematic racial narratives reflective of such societal conditions through its reinforcement of negative perceptions around the physicality and behaviour of women of colour.
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鈥檚 love story, forgoing the chances of their own. The show鈥檚 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鈥檚 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 鈥榬ight鈥� 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鈥� salient focus on women of colour鈥檚 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鈥� deprecating representation of racialized women鈥檚 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 鈥渁ngry black woman鈥� 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鈥檚 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 鈥榩olitics of difference鈥�. 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鈥檚 role in establishing racist and sexist ideologies conducive to extirpating the humanity of women of colour and reducing their identities through reductive public representations.
Student Biography
Sarah Ahmed: I am a third year GSWS major at 丁香园AV who is interested in advocating for initiatives that espouse values of equity and inclusion. As a woman of colour who is an avid consumer of reality dating programs, I have consistently observed patterns on television series that reflect inequity or reinforce troubling stereotypes and I attempt to understand these from an intersectional perspective.