The question of complex female friendships and the absence of nuance in Love Island USA.
Huda and Olandria from Love Island S7, the crumbling state of audience participation, and the case for emotionally stunted sistas.
Love Island USA S7 started airing this June, and I tuned in for the first few episodes as audiences were tapping into the tenth and eleventh episodes. Safe to say I was a little behind, so after a few episodes and the SparkNotes nature of TikTok, I didn’t really need to watch these people interact with each other for an hour. I’ll just watch a debrief.
I got into this habit and quickly familiarised myself with the consensus at the time; Huda was insane, Jeremiah was a love bomber, and Ace was Tyrique Hyde from Love Island UK S10 in a different font. These opinions swayed me because I’d absorbed the popular opinions as my own, along with many edited clips; secondary research, if you will. The most important part of these opinions focused on Huda, and her less than savoury behaviour towards the new bombshells and her couple, Jeremiah.
The think pieces on Huda were pretty black and white, a narrative that has unfortunately continued to haunt the show until now. Huda’s behaviour is generally perceived as manipulative and, in some extreme cases, abusive, where her friends have to safeguard any woman who walks into the villa intending to even breathe near Jeremiah.
For me, there was an immediate dislike of Huda because I know a Huda. I’ve seen some of Huda’s behaviours in my past self: A quickness to anger, a lack of discernment in moments of emotional outbursts, and overall a desire, conscious or subconscious, to hurt someone. Airing out the fact that Jeremiah wasn’t attracted to Iris was for no other reason than to hurt Iris.
Because I didn’t watch those episodes— A good thing in hindsight because I would not have been able to finish it—my opinion of Huda lived within the silo of TikTok think pieces and comment sections that varied from well thought-out points to critically obtuse observations of Huda as a mother, Huda as a friend, and Huda as a person.
Two things to disclaim: We do not see these people for longer than an hour or two, six nights a week. The number of scenes featuring these outbursts can be edited to look worse for the sake of entertainment or tame for the sake of protecting someone’s image. Love Island is a heavily edited reality show that puts single people into a villa and forces them into uncomfortable situations in the name of love and drama. For this season, unfortunately, it seems that all the producers wanted was drama.
Disclaimer two: I will criticise Huda’s behaviour from the show, and that alone. She had a daughter at nineteen years old and, to our knowledge, has been raising her alone. I will not comment on her abilities as a mother because that would take away from any valid point I make, so I will try my best to keep the critiques aimed only at the show and what we, as the audience, see. Back to regularly scheduled programming:
Huda strikes me as one end of an emotionally stunted spectrum; at the beginning of the show, we get the sense that Huda had to grow up very quickly, which doesn’t come as a shock. Huda presents herself as a fun, charismatic, and emotionally mature person in the beginning, but as the show goes on and she meets and couples up with Jeremiah, her bandwidth for emotional maturity starts to unfurl.
Huda, from the moment a bombshell comes in with interest in Jeremiah, calls them a bitch. She calls Amaya a bitch and she calls Iris fake, a ‘escape goat’, for Jeremiah, and as for Jeremiah himself she calls him out his name several times. You get the picture.
Huda does not know how to handle her anger with grace or maturity. Frankly, I don’t expect anyone to because of the nature of anger itself, but it doesn’t escape me that she takes several digs at the women around Jeremiah. It’s very disturbing to watch her speak out of turn time and time again, only for one of her friends—usually Olandria, but we’ll get to her later—to calm her down. For a week or so, this cycle continues until Jeremiah is eventually dumped from the island, and thus begins Huda’s redemption arc.
Now again, I dipped in and out of watching the actual show, so my opinions on Huda were largely based on secondary thoughts from people who had watched the actual episodes, so imagine my surprise when, only a few episodes after Huda’s crash out(s), I see comments of people saying she’s grown.
This wasn’t as prevalent as it is now in the aftermath of the Chelley/Olandria Mean Girl debacle, but it was simmering underneath all the recouplings and more and more people getting pushed in and out of the villa during Casa Amor. This was the main thing I noticed: Huda was being given a redemption arc by the producers.
I can’t say for sure that this was the intention all along but it’s clear that in the absence of Jeremiah, ‘Hurricane Huda’ is no longer the form of entertainment the producers want—and in my opinion, she never was, watching someone behave like that is quite terrifying—so they had to flip the switch and redeem her in the eyes of the public.
Now I’d like you to imagine, as one of Huda’s friends, her closest in the villa in fact, having to deal with the fallout of her meltdown. Imagine spending twenty-four hours a day with a person who has proven herself to be incapable of regulating her emotions. No space or separation to collect your thoughts, essentially being on call just in case she crashes out again. It’s gonna take a fucking toll, isn’t it?
Enter: Olandria Carthen. Huda and Olandria were the first to enter the villa along with Chelley, and since then it seems like their relationship has only grown, but Olandria and Huda’s in particular formed a new spine as the show went on.
For a lot of Huda’s meltdowns, Olandria was front and centre in the aftermath, picking her up and letting her down gently. Many people referred to Olandria as the villa therapist, as Huda’s mom, and more recently, she’s been described by Jeremiah as the ‘soul of the villa.’ So you can also imagine the shock and surprise when Olandria confronts Huda about kissing Chris, a man both Huda and Chelley were getting to know, in a challenge where all the islanders are present.
In my opinion, I don’t think bringing this kiss up was entirely necessary because Huda was in a couple with him, but I can see why Olandria did it; from the moment Huda set a precedent with all the girls about ‘sisterhood’, there was a shift in the usual participation of Love Island contestants. Instead of exploring connections with other OG islanders and stepping on toes in the name of love, the OG islanders played it safe, and that was in part because of how Huda conditioned them.
As I mentioned, Huda’s behaviour was rough on everybody, bombshells and OG islanders alike. For the bombshells, there was a feeling of treading on very thin ice when getting to know Jeremiah, and for the OG girls, there was the subconscious signal that Jeremiah was off-limits. Huda would talk shit about a bombshell to the OG girls, and turn around to then thank the OG girls for sticking to ‘girl code’ and respecting the boundaries she set with Jeremiah. It was conditioning, no matter what you want to call it.
Olandria did to Huda what Huda did to Iris and Jeremiah; she aired out other people’s business, and it was messy! Evidently so, because the aftermath of this birthed, or rather affirmed, this narrative of Chelly, Olandria, and Cierra being ‘mean girls’ and bullying Huda.
The carnage this created was supermassive, but not in the show. From TikTok to Instagram to Twitter, there wasn’t a corner of the internet that went without the polarising opinions on whether or not Huda was getting ganged up on by ‘The Mean Girls’. The flack was especially targeted towards Chelley and Olandria because of their closeness to Huda. You would think there would be more analysis on why they confronted her as her two closest friends in the villa, but no, the internet proved once again that women cannot be humans; they must be caricatures.
A lot of the opinions in favour of Huda were vehemently against Chelley and Olandria, and, as many TikTok users have pointed out, there seems to be a general air of amnesia when it comes to Huda vs. The ‘Mean Girls’.
Huda’s behaviour caused this reaction, undoubtedly, and it was likely made worse by the girls being in such proximity to her despite Huda apologising. The main argument people use to defend Huda is that she’s changed and taken accountability for the way she behaved a few episodes ago. I personally don’t see how that’s possible given the time frame, but for the sake of nuance, let’s say she has, or rather, she’s in the process of growing. Why do Olandria and Chelley have to immediately forgive her? Living with someone who has shown a pattern of unpredictable emotional behaviours without a space of your own to retreat to is heavy, and it would not surprise me if Chelley and Olandria are simply drained.
Do I think they handled the Standing on Business Challenge well? Not really. Do I think they should’ve pulled Huda on her behaviour earlier? Maybe. Do I think they’re mean girls? Absolutely not.
I’ll spare you the rant about racial politics when it comes to Black women in dating shows, but know that it is, in fact, about race.
The grace that has been given to Huda by her fans has not extended to Chelley or Olandria, and instead, I’ve seen too many comments about how they’re just jealous of Huda and how they’ve been mean girls since the beginning—even though they saved Huda from elimination twice but I’ll come back to that—and that overall, they’re just nasty nasty girls that deserve all the hate they’re getting.
This is where the noise of audience participation starts to irk me. What inspired me to write this essay was a TikTok by user @asinderellastory about how the audience that’s calling these women mean girls are partaking in their own unhealthy bouts of bullying themselves. Olandria and Chelley’s Instagram handlers have since reopened their Instagram comments sections, but I’m sure you can tell why they closed them in the first place.
My main issue with all the discourse coming off the back of the Standing On Business challenge is that no nuance or grace is being given to Chelley and Olandria. I’m going to talk particularly about Olandria because I find her relationship with Huda to be fascinating and honestly very real in the sea of performative relationships this season has birthed.
I relate to Olandria in a lot of ways. I’ve never been in a serious relationship, and although I’m not the eldest daughter, there are still expectations I feel obligated to uphold because of the way I’ve been raised and the way society will inevitably treat me. Growth is a luxury, but optimisation is a necessity. For survival, you must craft the image best suited to all scenarios and come out on top as unaffected as possible. She mentions in an episode after the recoupling where Taylor chose another woman over her that in the real world, she’d cut him off quickly, but in the villa, she has to see him and be reminded of her feelings. I feel that in a lot of ways, Olandria is scared of stepping out of preconceived obligations to explore and be honest with how she really feels.
Olandria’s way of thinking is very similar to mine. I find it hard to cry in front of others, not necessarily because of weakness, but because I’m terrified that I won’t be able to control it. I’ve seen people say that Olandria is trying too hard to be unbothered, and I can kind of see that, but for the most part, I think she’s trying to be genuine with the knowledge that she is a dark-skinned Black woman who will be judged regardless of what she does.
In episode two or three, Cierra comes in as a bombshell, and Olandria’s couple, Taylor, stands up to make it known that he wants to explore a connection with Cierra. Most of the men stand up for Cierra, except Jeremiah, of course, and Huda takes this chance to comment on how the girls deserve real men. Olandria tells her to cool it, as she should, because girl now is not the time, and Huda starts crying a little while later. In her confessional, after finding out that Huda cried because of her, Olandria felt immediately remorseful at the thought of making her cry. She explains herself and apologises, and all is well.
For most of their conflicts, Huda and Olandria don’t take very long in hashing out their issues, which is one of the things I like about their dynamic.
My sister and I are deeply avoidant people, but I lean more into confrontation despite being terrified of it. Yes, I do contain multitudes. Then, after a while, one of us will crack a joke, and once the air is no longer tense, we talk about the issue.
Huda strikes me as a little sister to Olandria, which makes sense because Olandria is quite the opposite of her in how she handles conflict. In a recent episode, Olandria throws a little shade at Huda for her tendency to crash out instead of talking through things, which people obviously interpreted as nasty mean girl hullabaloo, but to me it seemed more like they’ve talked about Huda’s behaviour before and it’s something they can joke about now.
When people talk about complexity in female friendships across media, there’s never a firm definition of what a complex relationship between women looks like. Complexity in itself has several layers, and how we define a situation’s complexity is all about perspective. From Huda’s perspective, she’s assertive and brash and quick to anger. From Olandria’s perspective, she’s overly patient and kind of avoidant when it comes to her own feelings. I’m not gonna put too much of Taylor in this, but that man led her on and ruined her experience, and I stand on that.
In both perspectives, there’s a level of emotional stuntedness on different ends of the spectrum, but who we give grace to despite these complexities has become glaringly obvious.
Huda is now the people’s princess (bar Amaya Papaya, our sensitive gangsta), and Olandria is the nasty mean girl who’s delusional about her relationship with Taylor. This selective giving and taking of empathy is what I’ve been floored by time and time again as I’ve watched the discourse unfold. For every critical and empathetic take are five more that seem to possess no reason for existing other than to put one woman down in favour of another.
I’ve made it clear that for most of what we’ve seen, Olandria has given herself fully to the role of being Huda’s confidant, and the times she messes up are the ones people decide to latch onto. You don’t have to like Olandria, and shit you don’t have to like either of them really, but much like the ‘it’s not that deep’ discourse I think we’ve lost the ability to see these people as fully actualised beings instead of character’s that we poke and prod for our own entertainment. I don’t want to stand on any sort of moral high ground as though I’ve never participated in this kind of behaviour, but the way it’s manifested in the last few days because of Olandria is gross and frankly, lame.
Olandria is, like I said, on the end of the emotionally stunted spectrum where stoicism is seen as grace. I think she does have grace—I ride for my Bama Barbie—and I think she is a genuine person, but as a fellow dark-skinned Black woman, I see where she puts herself on the line for people and tries to mask her disappointment when it isn’t reciprocated.
Huda can crash out and redeem herself in a matter of a few days because the majority of her defenders are teenagers and young women who see themselves in her. They feel her anger and her frustration and believe that she’s a victim because they have once been victims. Much is the same for Olandria because most Black women can relate to shoving themselves in boxes for the sake of being palatable and agreeable, and subsequently feeling resentment for the person who stuffed them into that box, even if that person is yourself.
I can see why people like Huda, and I can see why people like Olandria. What I can’t see is the endless charge marching towards the narrative that Olandria has never liked Huda. Of all the girls, I would say that Olandria has stood behind Huda the most, even when she shouldn’t have, and even when the audience called her and the other girls stupid for saving Huda. This is the selective memory loss coming into play, choosing to ignore the fact that regardless of the arguments they have, Huda and Olandria’s relationship has withstood their conflicts because they want to work it out.
@asinderellastory makes a point in her video that ‘the audience position themselves as the morally superior arbiters of right and wrong’ and this is clear in many such cases; the people who judge Olandria for not being able to see Taylor’s non-verbal cues as easily as we the audience do, the people who believe Chelley is simply jealous of Huda instead of frustrated with her inability to stand by the rules she set up, and the people coming after anyone that doesn’t like Huda because they just support the ‘mean girls’. I’ve heard the term mean girls thrown around like dice too often recently, and despite Olandria and Chelly making up with Huda all in the first thirty minutes of the most recent episode, they’re still nasty people who don’t take accountability. Do you see what I mean?
I’ve seen a few takes on my fyp surrounding the state of audience participation for shows like Love Island, and I’ve agreed with most of them. The worst part of this season isn’t the cast, it’s the audience and the obsession with putting people into a ‘narrative cohesion’, as @sinderellastory calls it, that works for them. This season has its problems, don’t get me wrong, but the state of social surveillance and the dreadfully looming political climate in America make it hard to get involved without seeing parallels between real-world politics and villa politics that random people on the internet are making up.
At the end of it, what I know for sure is that reality TV, whilst still heavily prevalent in our current society, has a lot of kinks to work out behind the scenes, and it can start by putting in place better online safeguarding for contestants on these shows so that they aren’t exposed to such intensely polarising opinions on their characters. For people like Huda and Olandria, reality TV will always seek to use them as props and punching bags where necessary for entertainment, because that is the goal for these shows, regardless of the real friendships and the real relationships they form, the message still stands. Empathy does not always entertain, if it does at all.