Love Island & Desirability Politics
Love. Lust. Desirability. Attractiveness. These are all themes of the ever-popular Peacock series Love Island. For those unfamiliar, Love Island is a reality dating television show created by ITV Studios originating in the United Kingdom that brings millennials and young adults to an island with the purported goal of helping them “find love.” While the global franchise has a number of international versions, Love Island USA and Love Island UK are the most widely watched. The concept of the show is simple: throughout the span of six weeks, contestants are rotated in and out of couplings as they navigate challenges, disagreements, and “bombshells,” a term for attractive new contestants, coming into the Villa (which is where contestants stayed and spent most of their time). While the television show is seemingly innocuous, the program, along with the heated online discussion that takes over in response, highlights deeper conversations about desirability politics and systems of harm, including ableism, fat antagonism and colorism, among others.
I started watching the most recent iteration of Love Island USA, season 7, after my sister coaxed me into it. Over the summer, we would spend many nights watching an episode or two. I had never watched an entire season of Love Island, let alone more than two episodes, but I, along with millions of people across the world, quickly got pulled into the program. As I watched the Villa, brimming with conventionally attractive people, I couldn’t help but think – who wasn’t represented in the show, and why? How does conventional attractiveness and desirability inform who shows up on our screen? And how does what and who we see in the media impact us as consumers?
In this ableist, anti-Black, anti-fat society that we live in, who is seen as “conventionally attractive” and “desirable” has a direct correlation to whose humanity is recognized and who holds social and structural power. While it is easy to dismiss criticisms about the political nature of desire as “personal preferences” most, if not all of the time, these “preferences” are indeed rooted in systems of oppression.
When fat people are seen on television, they are portrayed as undesirable and desexualized, very rarely in a positive light that shows them as a main character worthy of love. Dark-skinned people are erased in the media, and dark-skinned women are masculinized and seen as undesirable as well. Disabled people in the media rarely control their own stories and narratives, often being reduced to their disability. When there is a sustained media campaign committed to portraying these groups as lesser options, how can we in good faith suggest that a collective lack of desire for them is a miraculous, individually rooted choice?
Importantly, while the term “desirability” may be intuitively associated with sex and relationships, its reverberations throughout all aspects of life couldn’t be overstated. When fat people are portrayed as lazy and dirty, employers, susceptible to this same conditioning, carry this into how they think about and treat their fat employees. This is why, for example, fat people in the United States can be legally fired in multiple states for being fat. On the other side of the coin, we see how desirability makes way for preferential treatment, with light-skinned women receiving less prison time compared to darker-skinned women. Disabled people are a particular nexus when it comes to desirability, being desexualized and infantilized, yet facing extreme levels of sexual and intimate partner violence. Yes, not being seen as pretty hurts, but desirability is about more than some minor ego bruising or scuffs. It fundamentally gives credence to the systemic discrimination and violence fat, dark-skinned, and disabled folks face on a daily basis.
Returning to the case study of Love Island USA, one TikTok user, in response to people reacting to contestant Andreina’s appearance, commented that there are people that are “natural 10/10s”, adding that “some people are naturally the preference.” This is the problem – the belief that there is a natural hierarchy of who and what looks the best and thus deserves the best treatment. Love Island acts as a microcosm for society at-large, so while we may think we are watching strangers, it’s really a reflection of ourselves.
What society really and truly needs is to divest from desirability politics. We need to address and fight the daily discrimination, workplace abuse, and medical negligence people face simply because they are not deemed desirable. So yes, while shows and media like Love Island can be fun and lighthearted at times, we must also recognize that there are serious real-world dynamics at play that reinforce social hierarchies of beauty, desirability, and humanity. Everyone should read and research to understand the deep roots of desirability politics in anti-Blackness, work to unlearn what we’ve been taught, and actively fight against the systems creating this harm.
Nadia L (she/her) is a reproductive justice and health equity advocate born, raised, and currently based in Northern New Jersey. She is a Spring 2024 graduate …
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