‘Love Island USA’ pushed stereotypes of Black women this season that made it hard to watch

As a Black woman who loves “Love Island USA,” I’ve never been more ready for a season to end. I’ll watch the show’s reunion special Monday night to get the closure I need, but the disrespect and dehumanization visited upon the show’s Black women contestants this season has me questioning my entire relationship with the franchise.

While none of this year’s contestants escaped fully unscathed, Michelle “Chelley” Bissainthe and Olandria Carthen, both of them OG Islanders, were subjected to misogynoir (a specific bias against Black women) by the show and its viewers. They were harassed and unfairly characterized as bullies, with some critics suggesting they deserved to be physically harmed — if not killed.

BuzzFeed thought it funny to recommend a “knuckle sandwich” for Bissainthe.

Parasocially obsessed fans of contestant Huda Mustafa circulated imagery of Cathen’s face on George Floyd’s body as he lay dying under the knee of a Minneapolis cop. In an Instagram post suggesting food for the various islanders, BuzzFeed thought it funny to recommend a “knuckle sandwich” for Bissainthe. In the wake of immediate backlash, BuzzFeed removed the carousel within hours. But it didn’t apologize until more than a month later.

A sincere apology would have come sooner.

On one level, “Love Island” is just mindless reality TV fodder. It’s a show that depicts hot people living in a bubble and doing silly challenges with manufactured drama for our entertainment. But it stopped being a means of escapism for me this season when I saw the show’s Black women contestants being disrespected, dehumanized and caricatured as something they’re not. That’s the same as the real-life stuff we Black women have to contend with daily.

“It’s difficult. I’m not going to lie,” Carthen told Variety about what she went through this season. “I heard it was even a meme of me being George Floyd and Huda [Mustafa] being an officer. That’s a very touchy topic for the Black community. It’s disgusting, to say the least.

“I don’t understand how you take a love show and make such a comment like that. I was even getting death threats,” she said. “It’s very tough and unfortunate as a Black woman. We feel like we can’t truly speak our minds and express our feelings without being perceived as something different.”

They were perceived as bullies, in particular as “mean girls.” Being called mean when we’re not is something most Black women are familiar with. “Black women are generally framed as either angry, strong or both,” Robin Boylorn, a professor of communications at the University of Alabama, has said. “While anger and rage are a reasonable response to oppression, the danger is that it caricatures and dehumanizes Black women, making them instant memes while refusing to engage them as emotionally intelligent and vulnerable.”

If you haven’t watched the show, “Love Island USA” is a reality dating show that throws singles together in a luxurious villa in Fiji, where they have to form couples to stay in the game. They have zero access to the outside world. They complete challenges, twists and recouplings. The last remaining couple wins a cash prize.

Modeled after the British original, the USA show reached a mind-boggling level of success this year. According to NBCUniversal, the parent company of Peacock (and BLN), this season was the streaming service’s “most-watched original season of all time” — garnering over 18.4 billion minutes streamed.

Because the contestants remain secluded during filming, Bissainthe and Carthen didn’t learn until they returned to the United States how they had been edited.

“For us to come out of the villa and see that we’re mean girls,” Bissainthe told Teen Vogue. “We’re like, ‘Mean girls where?’”

“To see our fellow islanders playing into that narrative was hard,” Carthen told Teen Vogue. “It’s like, you knew us, why would you get out and let America, let social media get to your head? A lot of them played into that mean girl, bully narrative. I’m like, ‘Okay, this is not fair.’”

It isn’t fair. At times this season became unbearable to watch because I knew, as a Black woman, that as soon as an episode was over, the floodgates of racist hell would be unleashed.

Bissainthe and Carthen couldn’t win for losing. If they were too poised, they were fake. If they were upset, they were evil villains. If they set personal boundaries, they weren’t “girls-girls.” These were women never given the space to be human. They had to be perfect or nothing at all.

Again, this is not escapist TV — at least not for Black women viewers. It’s a reminder of the many ways larger society has a problem accepting Black women as something other than caricatures.

Bissainthe and Carthen don’t fit a typical reality TV “Black stereotype.” They are poised. They stand tall. They set boundaries. They communicate their feelings. When they make mistakes, they apologize. It seemed as though the show’s producers had no idea what to do with these fully realized Black women. So they did the easiest thing they could: make them villains.

BriShon Mitchell

BriShon Mitchell is a coordinating platforms producer for BLN Digital. She’s previously worked as a digital content producer for WTSP in Tampa, Florida, and KCEN in Temple, Texas.