it's rough out here as a black woman

Having spent the week inundated with clips of Love Island All Stars on my twitter feed, I got sucked into watching an episode (specifically, episode 3x09). Bro, did it have my blood boiling. A game of never have I ever led to a blow up between Whitney, Shaq and Jess and gosh did it have me vexed. Why was everyone ganging up on Whit, raising their voices and giving energy that just wasn’t needed to such a trivial situation? It was jarring.

My only solace is that in the 24 hours since, I have seen that the situation didn’t only get to me, it was triggering for a lot of black women, and black men and white allies are also speaking out in support of Whitney. From those doing recaps on social media to ex-islanders across the world. It is just so frustrating to know that were Whitney white, her reception and treatment would be so different. There is proof of this directly in front of us.

One of her best friends, Scott, is in the villa with her right now and they are two sides of the same coin. They are both outspoken, fight for what is right people who aren’t afraid of confrontation. But while Scott is received as the nations sweetheart and gets voted the favourite guy in the villa, Whitney gets labelled as “loud” and the guys who has been all heart eyes about her immediately checks out.

In the midst of this mayhem, Whit dropped this bar,

“Just because someone is crying doesn’t mean that they’re more upset than the other person.”

In that whole situation, Whit was the only one who kept herself calm and composed. She didn’t raise her voice, she didn’t shed a tear. She was quick to apologise to Shaq but he refused to listen to her. She kept it together better than most. Side note, seeing Shaq, a black man, work overtime to push the narrative that his so called friend, is an angry, traitorous black woman is very disappointing. Like the level of vim he gave Whit compared to other women was disgustingly huge. Lord knows what people in the villa would have said about her had she actually blown up.

It’s an unspoken rule of navigating the world as a black woman. You have to hold yourself to a higher standard than your counterparts. Any show of weakness will be weaponised against you. You get the least respect and grace and yet people also expect the world from you. It’s rough.

If you couldn’t already guess, I don’t think I’ll be tuning into anymore episodes of All Stars. Not only do I not enjoy watching people’s dry conversations as they develop Stockholm syndrome in the sun, but I’m still irked by that episode.