As a Black contestant is picked last, yet again, does Love Island have a micro-aggression problem?

Love Island is back for another season of All Stars, with millions of people tuning in every night to watch contestants laying it on factor 50 thick nightly and getting pied on national television. It’s entertaining, it’s embarrassing, and it’s easily digestible. But the show is a completely different viewing experience for people who are familiar with subtle racism in the dating game.

For many of us, it serves as an uncomfortable mirror up to our own dating experiences. It brings up difficult conversations around western beauty standards, fetishisation and internalised racism. As Love Island has become essential in understanding the British dating scene, it’s vital, then, to look into the way racism manifests within it.

Think about the last time you went on a date. How nervous you felt beforehand. The numerous outfits you tried on. The excited voice notes you sent to your friends. Wondering whether your date will like you or how the evening will go. Now think about the added pressure of considering things like, Have they ever dated anyone who looks like me? What will they make of my religion? Where I come from? Are they going to make weird race-related comments? Do they vote for a political party that actively discriminates against people like me?

The point being - racism in dating exists, and it’s not easy to ignore as a person of colour. If racism is something you’ve experienced throughout your entire life, you will have a trained eye for it. Your heart will drop every time you’re called “exotic”, as though you’re a seasonal fruit flown in from Thailand. It’ll sting every time you’re told that you’re “pretty for your race”. For so many people, this is the exhausting reality of dating - and it’s only amplified on shows like Love Island. This isn’t because the show fosters an environment for this type of behaviour, but because it accurately reflects modern-day Britain.

In almost every 'coupling' ceremony over the past six seasons, a Black contestant has been picked last - with last night's Love Island All Stars [15th January 2026] episode proving no exception. In case you missed it, the six returning female Islanders were tasked with choosing one boy to label 'Good' - and snog after giving their reasons why - and one boy to label 'Bad'.

As the six made their choices, with Tommy and Sean getting picked the most as 'Good', and Charlie as double 'Bad', it was Shaq - the only Black male contestant stood up there - who wasn't picked for a single snog.

In fact, he was almost not picked for a sash at all, until Leanne gave him the 'Bad' sash, explaining it's because she's friends with his ex.

And this is just the most recent in a long line of similar situations. Cast your mind back to series two and it was Malin left standing alone. In series three, it was Marcel. Series four - Samira, series five - Yewande. Series six, it was Leanne. In season seven, it was Kaz. You get the picture.

Yewande Biala, an ex-Love Island contestant from the 2019 series, spoke to Cosmopolitan about how it felt for her: “Before I went into the villa, obviously I was aware of how hard it is when dating as a Black woman. Being from Ireland, the diversity pool isn’t as big, so it’s definitely something I had at the back of my head before going in.

“I personally struggled a lot because every man who came into the villa said their type was said ‘blonde hair and blue eyes’,” Yewande recalls. “ I just sat there like, 'obviously I missed the memo because I’m not blonde and I definitely won’t have blue eyes.' It was a struggle and I cried so much.”

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It might be easy for some people to dismiss these moments. To say it's just 'coincidence' that contestants of colour are picked last, or that season four's Samira was asked to twerk within minutes of entering the villa. But I'm not so sure; they feel like blatant signifiers to what's going on in wider society. Western beauty standards dictate what is desirable and what's not. For years, we’ve been told via various modes of media that whiteness is the ideal. It doesn’t matter how good looking Shaq is, or amazing these woman are; they don't fit into the narrow ‘beauty standard’ box we’ve been conditioned to accept, and so get picked last.

And it’s not just in the coupling ceremony that this kind of inadvertent racism is evident.

You might remember the dismissal of Leanne during her first time in the villa back in 2020 (she's back for All Stars season 2), when contestant Mike, who was paired up with Leanne, told fellow islander, twin Jess Gale, that he was leaning towards Leanne over her.

In reply, Jess said she was “shocked at this strong preference.” For me, when I watched it, there were uncomfortable undertones to what she was suggesting; why couldn’t she wrap her head around the fact that Mike could somehow find Leanne more attractive? It wasn’t something that went unnoticed by viewers.

“I honestly believe that Jess was shocked that Leanne was picked over her because she’s Black and she thinks she’s superior to her and more beautiful, because she’s white,” wrote one person at the time. “WHY IS SHE SHOCKED? Lmao I have to laugh ,” posted another, adding that Leanne is “a fine fine babe.”

Jess' twin, Eve Gale told Cosmopolitan last year that she didn't believe her sister's shock was race-related. "We were both encouraged to pick the person that we would most likely be attracted to in the 'real world', regardless of who they were currently coupled with. For Jess that person was Mike," Eve, who was dumped told us at the time. "Leanne [was] Jess and I's closest friend in the villa and we believe her to be a stunningly beautiful woman, both in looks and personality."

Jess' perceived disregard of Leanne as 'competition' had echoes of a previous series, when Arabella Chi dismissed Yewande's entire relationship with Danny. Some viewers felt then, too, that it might have stemmed from the fact that Yewande is a Black woman.

Arabella insists this wasn't the case, however. "I saw Yewande as equal competition. She is a beautiful looking girl with an incredible personality," she told Cosmopolitan, later reflecting on the events.

Elsewhere, hearing Nas from Love Island 2020 refer to himself as "exotic" and then having a fellow contestant compare him to "Aladdin" was also precarious; the perfect microcosm of how people of colour are often othered in the dating scene.

Siânnise Fudge, who initially gave him the nickname, may have also referred to herself as Jasmine because she’s “obsessed with Disney” - but regardless, hearing an Asian man being compared to a Middle-Eastern cartoon character is imprecise, uncomfortable and not in the least bit surprising. It carries the message that all brown people look the same. Is there such little positive representation of Asian men in popular culture, that the nearest comparison Siânnise could reach was someone from an entirely different part of the world?

The fact that the official Love Island account then made the same joke about Nas and Siânnise, calling them "Princess Jasmine and Aladdin", was a further suggestion that we’re forced to see people of colour through a white gaze.

Scroll through your feed, and you’ll see people on X question how racism can possibly exist on the show when previous contestants such as Amber Gill, Josh Denzel and Ovie Soko. were all so popular. But this merely raises another complex issue; the fetishisation of mixed-race contestants.

Journalist Reiss Smith, who has written about this exact topic before, explains: “Society has always favoured a specific beauty ideal in both men and women – whiteness. People who have light brown skin are less removed from this ideal than those with dark skin, therefore they're often seen as more conventionally beautiful, and as such do better in the dating world due to unconscious bias,” he tells Cosmopolitan.

“Mixed-race is a huge umbrella term, not a specific racial identity in itself, and mixed raced people definitely have privileges over those with darker skin.

“Our lighter skin and sometimes whiter features are more palatable to a society where institutionalised racism and unconscious biases are very much real. This is even true among Black communities, where the traumas of colonialism and white supremacy continue to perpetuate the idea that lighter skin is beautiful.”

Increasing the cast’s diversity is a positive step forward, and it’s something the producers have been doing year on year, along with more representation in general. But it’s not the only answer to the issues surrounding race on the show. You can put as many different ethnicities as you like in a villa, but how can racist micro-aggressions stop when our society doesn’t give people of colour the tools to thrive in these environments?

Practically speaking, ITV could and should increase the diversity of people they hire on Love Island’s production and social media teams. They should ensure their employees are well-equipped to understand institutionalised racism, so they’re able to have these conversations instead of skirting around them.

Upon reaching out to ITV when the same issues arose, a spokesman told Cosmopolitan: "Love Island refutes any suggestion of racism in the strongest possible terms." And of course, there is only so much producers can control. It’s a reality show, after all, and as we’ve seen illustrated in the coupling up ceremonies, contestants will act autonomously.

But do these subtle - and more imperatively, the less subtle - suggestions of racism all need to make it through the editing process? Perhaps Love Island simply needs a few more people in the room who just get it.

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