the problem with dating shows (as a woman of colour).
the mistreatment of people of colour, especially black women, on reality dating shows.
As a Black woman, the dating world is often a gruelling one. It doesn’t matter if you’re looking for love in TV shows, dating apps / social media, or even in person. It’s inevitable that it’ll be stressful and tiring. Data scientist Christian Rudder even shared research that showed that Black women were considered the least desirable racial group to men (yes, even Black men) on a dating app (OkCupid). On top of the misogynoir we experience whilst attempting to date, there’s the added fatphobia and featurism that genuinely make it a struggle for Black women to find love, especially in reality TV dating shows.
For the past weeks, I binge-watched dating shows and slowly started losing my mind over them. Why do we repeatedly sit and watch people complain about not finding love and, in the end, just play a game through the show? I have no idea, but it’s entertaining, and that’s precisely why we’re all hooked. Shows like Too Hot to Handle, The Perfect Match, Are You the One, and Love Is Blind (warning: it’s not.) have been on my recent watches list on Netflix, and I’m tired of it.
One of many problems with these shows is that most contestants go there to simply find new followers for their socials, not for love. But in this essay, we’ll specifically focus on the treatment of people of colour, especially black women. We’ve been humiliated, embarrassed and disrespected to the point where as black women, it’s time we stop pleasing the directors of these shows and their diversity fix.
origins & the impact of covid 19:
Dating shows have been around as early as 1960s America, where shows like The Dating Game gained some traction. The basic premise followed a single woman who was then separated from three single men, and she was left to judge these men by their answers to her questions, later choosing one to date. A more modern spin on this set-up is Netflix’s Love Is Blind, which first aired in February 2020. the date alone says enough. The pandemic was a time when we were all slaves to the media, and to put it lightly, Netflix owned us. You’d be shocked if you could calculate the number of days you spent sitting on your couch binging these shows. And this is precisely what caused dating shows to boom in our decade. Let’s be honest; who doesn’t want to experience love? At least once in their lives. No one. We all often desire the love of others to fuel our own self-worth, but in my lens, dating shows have ruined the image of what love actually is.
With these shows, we see with our own eyes, and also in the producers’ eyes, the gaslighting, toxicity and overall negative energies created as a result of this form of television. The two shows I’ll refer back to in this essay are Love Is Blind, The Perfect Match and Love Island (UK), which each have different approaches to the dating world, but their treatment of anybody who is not white is the exact same.
the treatment of people of colour:
White people in the dating show world have always been at the top of the food chain. It’s that simple. This is to say that people of colour constantly are put to the side and ignored (not just by contestants but also by producers). In shows like Perfect Match (and Too Hot to Handle), a conventionally attractive White woman, such as Francesca, got all the attention from the men. It was insane to see how both men of colour and white men were on their knees for her, and that alone placed everyone else, especially the women of colour, in the “ignored until further notice” box. Francesca— and to some extent, this might have been the producer’s edit for her— made women of colour seem extremely villainous for playing the exact same game that she was. Savannah (Latina and Asian) was the only other minority in the house that wasn’t black and was turned into a villain by Francesca, and when she attempted to defend herself, was shut down.
Black men in these shows more than often have a preference for white blonde women (or just any that aren’t black), and that is okay. We’re not bashing you for who you’re attracted to; we’re criticising you for how you behave towards black women simply because they’re not your “type”. They weaponise our blackness, and that’s the bottom line. Dom and Chase of The Perfect Match are some of the best examples of this. The instant Dom sees that a black woman is waiting for him on a date (a beautiful black woman to add, Colony), you can tell he’s so uninterested as his demeanour changes. And then, the code-switching and his “strong black woman” speech begins, which is a whole story for another day. Chase, another perfect example, is about to be sent home, so what does he do? Charms up the last standing black woman (Anne Sophie), gets saved, and the next morning, calls it quits as he goes onto a white woman. Put yourself in the shoes of these black women. How exactly would you feel if you were constantly ignored for being black, especially by the people of your own race? You’re not seen as good enough or pretty enough for them because all they’ll say about you is, “Oh, I love her drive, energy and how she works for herself,” but other than that, you might as well pack your bags.“The Perfect Match” cast where the black girls were doomed from the start.
love island (UK):
In a show like Love Island, where the first episode is based on stepping forwards if you like a boy and hoping that he chooses you, the black people are BY DEFAULT put together. No matter what, the black woman will be the last one chosen. It’s as if there’s a token black girl in the original cast that will repeatedly get picked last. Producers of these shows are attempting to paint this image that they’re diverse, and they do this by adding one light-skin woman that might attract one or two men and one dark-skinned woman that will get the attention of a dark-skinned man. Focusing on dark-skinned women, they have more than enough times been rejected by their preference (white, black, etc.) for another race. Again, having a preference is fine, we aren’t mad; it’s how they blatantly play which a woman’s feelings until their REAL type arrives.
The casual micro-aggressions from white cast mates like Lucie, who “couldn’t pronounce such a difficult name” of African origins, are truly pathetic when you’ve constantly been corrected and taught how to pronounce Yewande. And the problem is they’ll apologise in the words of their PR team or forever play the victim.
In scenes where the islanders explain their types, all we hear is, “Oh, they’ve got to have great banter, blue eyes, tall, dark, and handsome” (spoiler alert: dark does not mean black, we’re going for a store-bought tan here) and the typical “blue eyes, nice bum, etc.” the producers of these shows know what the participants want and what their types are but do nothing to help out the black women. Why not bring someone that is genuinely attracted to them? Why do you repeatedly put them in a house with no one that is attracted to them and constantly play against their self-worth? It doesn’t make sense, and we see this year after year and show after show.
It seems that there’s almost a lack of effort put into finding a match for Black women compared to their White counterparts. Do producers expect us to believe that in the whole of the United Kingdom, a country where Black British citizens are the largest ethnic minority group, they simply cannot find someone who is a match for these women? It’s a joke, really.
what now?
I’ll stop my ramble because I think you get the point, but all this begs the question of “what next?” well, think about the impact these shows have on black women that are watching. As a young black woman, it’s honestly heartbreaking to see how people that look like me are treated. It gives us the impression that we will never find true love and respect because shows like this reflect how society feels towards black women. We all know we can still find true love, but it’s harder for us than for other races. In all honesty, until there’s a dating show that’s specifically for us, black women, please stop going on these shows. It won’t bring you, or the young girls watching you, anything good.
thank you for reading