Love Island: Black Contestants Experience Exclusion and Rejection

Love Island, 2018's hottest and most popular summer reality TV show, includes good- looking singles entering a villa in Majorca, Spain in search of love, romance and a £50,000 prize as a result of becoming the British publics most loved couple. Love Island's overwhelming success after its 4th series winners Dani Dyer and Jack Fincham who had a grip over the audience’s hearts since the beginning of their budding romance, has opened doors for the couple. Both gaining over one million followers on Instagram has enabled countless opportunities for them to make quick and easy money like; appearing at clubs/events, promoting clothing lines, having interviews and being on magazine covers and talk shows. It is evident that Love Island's booming popularity suggests that even contestants that don't win have equal opportunities once leaving the villa, due to a following on social media that all contestants gain recognition from. Besides this, cons about the reality show raise awareness on the social issue of ethnic minorities, and whether black contestants experience exclusion compared to the majority white contestants.

The show unites males and females from across the UK with different personalities and appearances – creating options and a likelihood of finding love for the singles. Although, it is apparent that across the past two series of Love Island variety isn’t exactly what they offer in terms of ‘types’ and ‘preferences.’ Black females and males tend to experience exclusion, perhaps without even realising – women who are white, slim and blonde and men who are dark, tall and handsome have often occurred as the contestant’s general idea of a partner. Though the show includes one or a couple of black people every series, it is questionable that perhaps they are used as tokenism in order to give the appearance that the show is diverse, when in fact black contestants are ‘unlucky’ in love and subjected to rejection.

Evidently, Samira Mighty in Love Island’s most recent series had great difficulty finding a partner she was interested in and vice versa. The black contestant was invited on a couple of dates but was never preferred over the white female contestants, she was often labelled by the males as “just a friend” or just not my “usual type.” As well as this, once Samira did find romance in later weeks with Frankie Foster – she experienced rejection when Frankie in episode 23 stated about Megan Barton-Hanson, a glamour model that “I definitely like her… she’s a good looking girl”, after Samira expressed her attraction and liking towards him, which then resulted in her breakdown and feeling of insecurity in comparison to Megan who is blonde haired and blue eyed and preferred by many of the male contestants. Samira’s trouble to find romance in difference to the other girls, does make you wonder as the audience if her black ethnicity; darker skin and darker hair had an impact on her wait for someone who genuinely liked her. To illuminate this idea, Marcel Somerville from series 3, experienced immediate rejection in episode 1 when none of the girls took an initial attraction towards him during the first coupling. Perhaps this is because of the lack of female contestants selected for the show that prefer black men.

Through 2018’s series of Love Island, two bi- racial couples came from the show – Samira and Frankie who developed into a relationship once exiting the villa and Wes Nelson and Megan who made it to the final and came 4^th place. I do wonder if this is a true reflection of diversity? Black relationships are practically non-existent in the reality show with a ‘type’ that doesn’t include black males and females who are interested in each other. Love Island seems to exclude black relationships, making it unlikely that a black couple could ever win the show.