At the time this essay is published on this blog, it is the summer of 2025, and Dami Hope and Indiyah Polack are in a relationship. A gorgeous and fashionable couple who each have a significant presence as content creators on social media, they met on Season 8 of the hit British reality dating show Love Island in 2022. Their story, however, did not start as an instant match. Both began their journey as “Islanders,” the name for contestants on the show, coupled with other people. On the first episode of Season 8, the public paired Dami with a woman named Amber, and Indiyah with the contestant Ikenna. Both couples were Black. In fact, they were the only Black people on the show at the beginning of that season, and by appearance only, the television audience had voted that they would suit each other the best. Both Dami and Indiyah made concerted efforts to establish a connection with Amber and Ikenna respectively. Although these pairings each lasted several episodes, Amber and Ikenna were eventually “dumped” from the Island. With their original mates now gone, Dami and Indiyah finally felt comfortable enough to openly confess to each other and the villa that they were attracted to each other, and thus their relationship began to blossom. After a series of trials throughout the season, in which they both briefly dated other people during the Casa Amor episodes, Dami and Indiyah reunited, made it to the finale, and finished the show in third place. Three years after the season premiered, Dami and Indiyah stand together as the only couple from Season 8 who remain in a committed romantic relationship.
Love Island UK originally aired in 2005 and 2006, and returned for a revival in 2015. The premise of the show involves a group of obnoxiously good-looking singles (by conventional standards of attractiveness) from across the UK who live in a villa together abroad and compete to be the television audience’s favorite couple. The couple who wins receives a cash prize. Each season, beginning with the initial coupling on the first episode, the Islanders live together, almost never traveling beyond the walls of the villa, while attempting to fabricate romantic relationships out of thin air. Sometimes couples break up and hope that someone new will come into the villa to “re-couple” with who will be a better match. Sometimes couples get back together. Sometimes new singles come into the villa, known as “Bombshells,” and everyone must re-couple regardless of whether they are happy in their relationships. The number of men and women on the show is almost always uneven so whoever does not get to re-couple risks getting dumped from the Island. Producers sprinkle formal challenges and informal parlor games throughout every episode to foster drama and chemistry amongst the Islanders. These games are both overtly sexual and cheesy in a tongue-in-cheek manner. Many games make kissing, mimicking sex positions, giving lap dances, and other actions that encourage lust amongst the Islanders mandatory. Of course jealousy, temptation, and wounded egos abound. Beginning with the 2015 revival, every season features many of the same themed episodes year after year, that both viewers and Islanders have come to anticipate. Each season is formulaic and predictable (to a certain extent) that has since transformed the show into possessing its own self-referential, hyper conscious micro culture that can be thought of as the Love Island way of life. Thus, after a decade of formulaic scenarios and interventions from producers and the public’s vote, Love Island has become its own Eurocentric cultural system of values doing the ultimate navelgazing within the world of reality dating shows that makes the values they recreate, repackage, and reproduce entertainingly “camp” while still holding them firmly in place alongside mainstream societal norms both within and outside the villa. The framework of the rhizome from the theoretical writings of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari provides shape and texture to this argument. Love Island is its own multiverse in the global realm of pop culture. The rhizome is to pop culture multiverses what the cha cha is to Top 40 hits. For example, the cha cha as a dance can be applied to a wide range of songs that all share a similar base rhythm. Similarly, one can apply the concept of the rhizome to an Oscar-winning film like Anora, to Love Island, or to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Within the framework of the rhizome, one starts with the themes and connections that arise in the context of the cultural artifact, connect them to mainstream discourse, and expand that to conversations in the academy and in other sectors of society. After providing an outline of the dynamics of Love Island, this essay articulates the rhizomatic nature of Love Island in further detail. Within the rhizome that is Love Island and the cultural concepts and values that expand beyond the walls of the villa and the show itself, Dami and Indiyah remaining in a romantic relationship to this day defies the odds of the show, given the preservation of heteronormativity and Eurocentricity that Love Island upholds despite its lighthearted and campy nature.
Considered a classic reality dating show with a cult following, Love Island has a surveillance vibe reminiscent of its predecessor, Big Brother. Cameras strategically placed around the villa document each couple’s daily ups and downs. In Season 8 the show begins in a new villa from previous seasons. The narrator, Ian Stirling, who is never present in the villa himself but whose distinctive voice marks him as a constant for television viewers at home, announces in the first episode that fifty-seven cameras cover the villa. He jokes that this is a show about “hot people doing mundane things,” which successfully lands as an inside joke for viewers who begin the season already knowing what to expect, and who are also likely aware that the show is often written off as shallow, inconsequential fodder in the world of television entertainment. Every few days, the couples compete in mandatory games and zany challenges all designed to nurture affection and physical connection amongst the Islanders. The games range from simple Truth or Dare matches to elaborate relay races complete with props and matching sexy, themed costumes. During the games, the Islanders often learn provocative trivia about each other, mostly related to their dating history. Couples that win a challenge earn a private date outside the villa or, as in earlier seasons, a video call from home. Every night, the Islanders dress up in clothes mere mortals typically reserve for clubbing, although some nights are particularly festive with themes like “white” parties or celebrating an Islander’s birthday. Ian explains in the first episode of Season 8 that even though the show is about fun and flirting, there is also fifty thousand pounds on the line for the winning couple.
In Season 8, the villa consists of an enclosed compound in a remote region in Mallorca, a location I imagine is selected for consistently warm weather. Although Islanders rarely leave the villa, the geographic location proves crucial for maximum screen time for Islanders to lounge around the garden in swim trunks and bikinis during the day and clubwear at night. Within the villa, couples sleep together in a communal bedroom, with each couple sharing a bed. If an Islander in a formal couple ever refuses to sleep next to their partner, their only other option is to sleep on one of the daybeds outdoors. I hypothesize that the game mandates sleeping together in order to more quickly establish physical connection amongst the Islanders. The house also includes a communal bathroom, a dressing room with rows of vanities for the women, and a terrace on the second floor. It seems as if Islanders are discouraged from spending too much time inside the villa with the exception of changing from daytime swimwear to nighttime clubwear in the evenings. The majority of the action on Love Island occurs outdoors in the garden or on the terrace. Getting ready in the evening provides an opportunity for the women and men to debrief with members of their own gender on the events of the day and make plans on how they want to spend the evening back in the garden.
The expansive garden includes several sitting and lounging areas, a pool, an outdoor kitchen (which is the only kitchen ever filmed), showers, and the fire pit. The fire pit serves as an essential location in the life of the villa. Eliminations (“dumpings”), games, and recouplings all occur around the firepit, a semicircular bench around a sleek, contemporary-style outdoor fireplace. The entire villa and garden is decorated in bright white furniture accented with acidic blue, pink, and yellow decor, including custom neon signs with cheeky phrases such as “Eat, Sleep, Crack On, Repeat.” The surreal surveilled nature of the show suspends the life of the villa in a vat of tension that subtly simmers under every interpersonal interaction on the show. Viewers can easily tell the Islanders are trying to live life as normally as possible, yet they all remain constantly aware that they are being watched and judged by the public. This adds a slightly sinister air to an otherwise lighthearted dynamic. Unlucky Islanders are voted out of the villa either by the public or the other Islanders. Once an Islander has been “dumped” from the island, they must pack, say their goodbyes, and leave, all in thirty minutes. Historically, a handful couples who meet on the show successfully withstand the test of time and the temptations from the world “outside” the villa, like Dami and Indiyah. Love Island is indeed a competition, but the emotions involved make it so much more messy and complicated than a typical competition show.
Over the years, producers have attempted to maintain a lid on the chaos by keeping certain standards in place, most significantly, a strictly heternormative dynamic within the villa. In the 2016 season, two women coupled up for a very short, ill-fated time that barely lasted a single day. One of the Islanders, Sophie, made a bold and shocking move when during her coupling speech, she announced that she chose Katie, another woman, to couple with instead of one of the men (Cosmopolitan). The move left producers scrambling, as now the ratio of men to women coupled was unintentionally imbalanced. Although a statement was never made about whether the producers condone this behavior, it is clear from subsequent seasons that the option to couple with a person of the same sex has since been shut down. Every once in a while, a former Islander will come out to Love Island fans after their season has ended as identifying as bisexual or queer. However, while Islanders live in the villa, queerness is never discussed on the show. Although neither Dami nor Indiyah have publicly stated that they identify as queer, their fashion choices as a couple defy binary standards of dressing in masculine/feminine ways. Perhaps on a deeper level, their mere existence as a couple may not be categorically queer, but as Black people with deeper skin complexions, they actively “queer” the notions of what an attractive, successful, Love Island couple can look like according to Eurocentric standards of desirability. Here queer is used as a verb and not an adjective. According to Black Queer studies scholar E. Patrick Johnson, who coined the term “quare” to denote the particular way in which Black people specifically “queer” Eurocentric societal norms regarding the intersections of race and sexuality, Black Queer studies points us to the fact that “monolithic identity formations, like monologic perspectives, cannot survive the crisis of (post)modernity” (Johnson, 6). Johnson makes this argument as a call for the need for Black Queer studies in addition to the distinct fields of Black studies and Queer studies. Black Queer studies highlight the intersectional reality that gender and sexuality are informed by racial dynamics, and vice versa. Methodologies that honor the “complexity of contemporary subjectivities” (Johnson, 6) allow us to understand how race, gender, sexuality, and other aspects of identity all interplay and interact with each other within experiences of the self and within interpersonal relationships. Black Queer studies is also not only relevant to the experiences of Black people who identify as queer, but also to Black people across the spectrum of sexuality and gender whose existence as Black people stands in opposition to the normativity of whiteness. Dami and Indiyah actively quare the dynamics of Love Island by choosing each other (choosing Black love) rather than dating individuals who more closely align with typical Eurocentric standards of beauty. Even though they are presumably a heterosexual couple, the fact that they are both Black people each with deeper complexions is enough to make their status as a Love Island couple atypical. They are not queer themselves as far as we know, but their relationship quares the show of Love Island. (I think it is important to contextualize this argument that outside the context of Love Island specifically as a theoretical rhizome of Eurocentricity and heteronormativity, categorizing their relationship as a quaring becomes immediately less relevant and probably even unnecessary. I don’t make any assumptions about their relationship or personal identities, and merely offer these observations as reflections related to broader discourses of race, gender, and sexuality.) When heteronormativity is dictated by whiteness and Eurocentricity, relationships that defy these standards exist as an active quaring of what is considered normative.
Indiyah, as a woman with a deeper brown complexion, stands as an anomaly in the history of Love Island in terms of her success on the show. Historically, amongst the Black women Islanders on the show, women with lighter complexions tend to have more successful dating experiences in the villa. Regardless of skin tone however, Black women in general tend to have a more difficult time finding successful matches on the show than their white counterparts. This is an observation that holds true not only for Love Island but across the board for Black women on reality dating shows. According to an article in Essence magazine, Black women historically have been late arrivals to reality dating shows. “For instance, Samira Mighty was Love Island UK’s first Black female contestant after four seasons. In its thirteenth season, Rachel Lindsay was the first Black woman to lead a Bachelor franchise, ‘The Bachelorette’” (Essence). Even after Black women were invited to compete on these shows, many have had unsuccessful dating experiences. Black women contestants from shows like Love is Blind, The Bachelor, Too Hot to Handle, Are You the One?, and yes, Love Island, have reported negative experiences on these shows. The article from Essence summarizes that “the idea (or the visual aspect) of being represented always trumps actual representation, especially in Hollywood.” Indiyah defies the odds of being a Black woman on reality tv, although her experience should not be an anomaly but rather par for the course.
I argue that part of the reason why Dami and Indiyah made it to the finale of Season 8 is because they actively and enthusiastically participated in every aspect of the show, no matter how silly, camp, or predictable. The “camp” of the show makes viewers come back for more every season, as we turn a blind eye to the shallowness of the normative standards they continue to uphold. The irony of Love Island’s campiness as a tool to uphold heteronormativity and Eurocentric beauty standards in part lies in the fact that the concept of camp has a queer history. Camp remerged in mainstream discourse in 2019, as the theme of that year’s Met Gala. Fans of celebrity and fashion cackled from the safety of their homes as we watched the rich and famous guests of the Met Gala scramble to embody this elusive term. Some seemed to nail it right on the head, while others failed miserably. The BBC, as one of the news outlets that reported on the Met Gala that year, took the theme as an opportunity to further explore what this term actually means. According to their research, the history of the word camp in this context dates back to the early 20th century:
“The first English definition of the term, which appeared in a 1909 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, conformed to popular, contemporary notions of camp: ‘ostentatious, exaggerated, affected, theatrical; effeminate or homosexual; pertaining to, characteristic of, homosexuals…’ If not synonymous with stereotypical male homosexuality, it was, as per one of the OED definitions, strongly associated with it.”
The mannerisms of then-celebrity Oscar Wilde was the point of reference for this term at the time. Since then, camp has lost some of its queer connotations, although the exaggerated, ostentatious nature of the concept remains. The reflections of Susan Sontag on the term, which served as the inspiration for the 2019 Met Gala theme, sheds more light on the term. The BBC notes that “to Sontag, [camp] transcended homosexual mannerisms.” She wrote that “the hallmark of Camp is the spirit of extravagance.” Love Island embodies the spirit of camp in the suffocatingly bright interior design of the villa itself, as the stark white walls and furniture in a style so-modern-it’s-sterile are punctuated by equally blinding neon accents such as bean bag chairs and cushions in acidic blue, yellow, and pink. All of the plants in the villa are visibly and obviously artificial. Nothing about the villa seems cozy or homey. This environment highlights the deliberate stiffness of the show that constantly reminds both the viewers and the Islanders that this is all a game, and at the end of the day it is a television show. In other words, don’t get too comfortable! The camp is found in the space between the articificality of the show’s setting and the expectation that viewers assume, or at the very least play along with, the idea that the love found on this show is real. Can Islanders find “real” love in an environment that is so blatantly artificial? Love Island encourages viewers to answer “yes,” and herein lies the camp. In addition to the camp of the villa itself, the show also perpetuates camp in the silly challenges that Islanders are required to participate in. The costumes worn during challenges are often hyper-sexualized versions of average everyday uniforms, such as sexy doctors, plumbers, mechanics, or flight attendants. The games are ridiculous, but Islanders who do well on the show are always good sports and play along. In Season 8, Dami and Indiyah competed just as enthusiastically as other successful couples on the show. However, as the essay earlier articulated, despite the queer history of camp, the campiness of the show does nothing to dismantle the heteronormativity and the Eurocentric beauty standards that Dami and Indiyah quared through their success as a couple on the show. Instead, the camp of the villa and the challenges throws into stark relief the behaviors and preferences of many Islanders that tend to reflect mainstream standards of desirability. White Islanders almost always win challenges and are picked first in coupling ceremonies, and the camp that surrounds them only makes these realities more distinct.
One of the most camp aspects of the show is the Hideaway. The Hideaway is a separate bedroom that sits across the garden from the main villa. Every few episodes, Islanders are invited to vote for one couple to spend a night in the Hideaway, usually a couple who is thriving and “deserves” the chance to have privacy to bond more with each other by enjoying privacy outside the communal bedroom. The voting process is casual, as Islanders shout the names of the couple they think should go into the Hideaway from their various spots lounging in the garden rather than submitting private votes through a formalized process. After a couple is selected, the Islanders cheer and immediately stop what they are doing. The group splits by gender. The women go to the dressing room to help the female member of the couple change into a sexy lingerie outfit while the men hype up the male member of the couple with whooping, shouting, and jumping in circles as a group. After each member of the chosen couple is properly dressed for the evening, the women usher their friend downstairs to meet the men in the bedroom, where the couple ogles each other in their underwear as the other Islanders coo and woop approvingly. The couple makes their way across the garden to the Hideaway, with the entire villa following behind them. Once they reach the entrance of the Hideaway, they bid farewell to their fellow Islanders, who return to the communal bedroom for the evening. The cameras follow the couple into the Hideaway, which is a garishingly pink bedroom fully decked out with more lingerie and kinky props. The next morning, the couple returns to the communal bedroom to greet their fellow Islanders, grinning sheepishly. The couple rarely shares details about their night alone, but assures everyone the evening made them closer as a couple. The hyper-ritualistic nature of Hideaway episodes makes the notion of a couple spending the night together alone seem bizarre and convoluted. Nevertheless, these scenes are produced to be seen as fun, flirty, and exciting despite the obviously orchestrated nature of the event. I would argue that this is camp in a nutshell.
In spite of, or perhaps because of its camp, Love Island deserves consideration beyond a source of presumably shallow entertainment because it recreates a dialectic that is a world within a world. Following the rules: be attractive, be likable, take risks without alienating yourself, be adventurous without being promiscuous; theoretically guarantees success. Fate, luck, and judgment (both from other Islanders and the public) also play a role in determining which couples make it to the finale. The camp of the show amplifies the obviousness of these norms, as if the show is encouraging viewers to be hyper aware of the realities that the show presents, while still allowing them to enjoy the drama of each season’s arc and the physical appearance of the attractive Islanders. Because dialectics are oppositional, much of what it means to be an Islander is contingent upon your relation to not only the person you’re in a couple with, but also other Islanders. Within the world of the villa, race, gender, and sexuality as social constructs are rarely discussed amongst the Islanders. In fact, most of the conversations between Islanders that make it through editing and to the episodes are surface level in nature. However, the dynamics of Eurocentricity, heteronormativity, colorism, and fatphobia linger directly under the surface of every interaction. Even if no one says anything biased or bigoted out loud, which they never do, it is clear who is considered the most desirable by how Islanders pick and choose each other during coupling ceremonies and how they interact with each other on a daily basis. Through the tension that is never spoken, Islanders are compelled to play the roles that are dictated to them in the outside world and that follow them into the villa. This is why moments like Dami and Indiyah finding each other in Season 8 and remaining together seem so refreshing and atypical.
The discussions thus far regarding the heteronormativity, Eurocentricity, and camp of Love Island as a television show together illustrate the depth and complexity of what this seemingly shallow reality show represents about Western society. The philosophers Deleuze and Guatarri offer a concept that articulates the breadth and scope with which Love Island both permeates and represents the zeitgeist of the current era in Western culture that extends far beyond the walls of the villa. “A rhizome ceaselessly establishes connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences, and social struggles” (Deleuze and Guatarri, 7). On the one hand, Love Island represents a world unto itself. After eleven seasons of the UK version alone, a culture and discourse has evolved within the show that both Islanders and viewers understand as a shared contextualized language. According to Deleuze and Guatarri, a language perpetuates itself in the speaking and only through the speaking. In the context of Love Island, words like “coupling up,” “dumping,” “hideaway,” “villa,” and “Islanders,” take on their own meanings that are slightly different from what we mean in the “outside” world. (Even the term “outside” takes on a new meaning to not mean the outdoors, but rather life beyond the villa.) The rhizome concept teaches us that because of heterogeneity, words do not always mean the same thing, and divergence happens and meaning changes over time. Even the way that the narrator Ian Stirling begins each episode with the declaration “TONIGHT” to announce what lies ahead has taken on its own significance as Islanders declare the word to each other with his familiar inflection to denote they know when drama is about to ensue. It has even appeared in the show Euphoria, in which Zendaya’s character Rue endures a depressive episode when all she can do is lie in bed and watch Love Island.
Additionally, even though dynamics of race, color, gender, and sexuality are never discussed on the show, the ways in which Love Island upholds these normative standards becomes public discourse amongst former Islanders, bloggers, and culture journalists who call out what the show refuses to address. In this way, even though the show itself does not contribute to critical discourse, it provides the context from which these conversations emerge. Many of the Islanders who compete on Love Island become social media influencers after their time on the show, because having a presence on Love Island, which has a massive audience, makes Islanders instant celebrities. Season 8 alone reportedly has over 250 million streams “making it the most watched series ever on ITV Hub,” according to ITV media, the home of Love Island. This does not factor in the number of viewers who stream it on other outlets such as Hulu and Peacock. Because of this massive exposure, Islanders in later seasons are less inconspicuous about coming onto the show as content creators who often already have strong followings. Sure, Islanders coming onto the show may be sincere about wanting to find love. And yet, even if finding true love is not a guarantee, gaining exponentially more followers, more brand deals, and more money, is a surer bet. In this way, Love Island has also transformed into a lucrative business endeavor, and thus becomes an agent of economic growth with an impact on Islanders and the systems in their orbit. Like an actual rhizome, the roots and shoots that stem from Love Island’s nodes extend to virtually every aspect of society.
Love Island, despite its camp, and despite the success of Dami and Indiyah as a couple, upholds the values of mainstream Western culture: heteronormativity, conventionally Eurocentric ideas of physical attractiveness, non-subversive behavior, and likableness. Even as Love Island perpetuates and upholds certain standards, it does all of this while recreating a micro-culture that is preserved and reproduced through each new season. By the time devoted viewers of the show arrive at Season 8, fans have become familiar with the “culture” of the villa. The Islanders themselves also provide evidence that they know how they are “supposed” to behave and what is expected of them by making comments that could be called “meta” or even breaking the fourth wall as they mimic Ian Stirling’s narrator voice or discuss how they think the public will perceive their behavior. While the same can be said for a number of reality dating shows, it is not true for all of them, especially those that accept queer romance. Love Island also differs from other “classic” contemporary dating shows like The Bachelor because it presents itself as fresh, hip, and trendy, not traditional. Yet, it successfully upholds very traditional values underneath the veneer of the campy, lighthearted fun. Dami and Indiyah, as the couple who finished in third place in Season 8 and remain the only couple from the season still in a relationship, highlight not only the ways in which they defied the odds, but also what makes them special. In many ways, Love Island certainly perpetuates harmful norms that if dismantled could benefit many both within and outside the villa. I predict that future seasons of Love Island will continue the formulaic structure of successful seasons past, and that we should not look to the producers of the show to do the work of critiquing racism, heteronormativity, colorism, or any other realities that cause real harm to both Islanders and viewers. What I will be curious to see however, is whether as critical discourse continues to evolve, how Love Island’s relevance will continue to hold up. Will Love Island remain as culturally relevant as I argue it is today as a rhizomatic mirror to Western values? Or will its camp fade into tackiness and one day serve as a relic of days past of a reality dating show that didn’t age well? Either way, I hope Dami and Indiyah, whether they stay together or not, will stand the test of time as Islanders who played the game, and who played it well by quaring it every step of the way.
Works Cited
Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia.
University of Minnesota Press, 1987.
Johnson, E. Patrick and Mae G. Henderson, editors. Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology.
Duke University Press, 2005.
“Love Island’s Katie Salmon’s sweet tribute to Sophie Gradon, who has passed away.”
Cosmopolitan. Accessed May 7, 2025. https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/entertainment/a21745298/love-island-sophie-gradon-dead-katie-salmon-tribute/
“Stop Using Black Women as Dating Show Props.” Essence GU. Accessed May 7, 2025.
https://girlsunited.essence.com/feedback/news/black-women-reality-dating-show-probs
“What does it mean to be camp?” BBC. Accessed May 7, 2025.
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20190503-what-does-it-mean-to-be-camp
“3.4 Million Watch Love Island Final.” ITV Media. Accessed May 7, 2025.
https://www.itvmedia.co.uk/news-and-resources/34-million-watch-love-island-final
Sankofa Virgo 
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