Love Island’s Nicolandria & the “swirl” agenda

Let me start by saying that I was a Nicolandria truther.

For nearly six weeks straight this summer, I joined the millions of viewers tuned in to see this year’s batch of Instagramable islanders quest to find love in a Fiji villa on Love Island USA’s seventh season. Two of the biggest contestants to emerge from its 36-episode run were Olandria Carthen and Nicolas Vansteenberghe — an interracial couple who, once a make-believe ship fueled by fan-edited videos online, became a prominent fixture on Season 7.

Olandria, a dark-skinned Black woman who’s an elevator sales professional from a tiny town in Alabama, and Nic, model, travel nurse and typical goofy white guy, were initially paired with different people for the majority of the season (Olandria with Taylor Williams, and Nic with Cierra Ortega, who left the show following a resurfaced post of her using an anti-Asian slur), though that didn’t stop fans from noting their steamy chemistry during the show’s many kissing challenges. When they finally coupled up during Casa Amor, and then again, at the tail end of the show, it was a twist that no one, not even the production-gods themselves, could’ve conjured up. “They called us crazy!” I commented, celebrating, online at the time. “They called us delusional!” My friends and I devoured the Nicolandria crumbs — and we weren’t alone. After the season’s finale, #Nicolandria, though landing in second place, surpassed the winners, Amaya Espinal and Bryan Arenales, in popularity.

But as weeks have passed, and ahead of the anticipated reunion special on Monday, I’ve noticed a strange tone to the fawning online discourse around Nicolandria: fans of the show and the couple seemingly applauding them in an obsessive and borderline fetishizing way. Viral posts fantasizing about Nic and Olandria as “somebody’s fine ass parents” and fanpages titled “come here cream” feel like they’ve crossed a line even for your standard parasocial post: like the value of their relationship lies less in the two’s compatibility and solely on the fact that they’re an interracial couple.

I should preface this by addressing the obvious: that I understand why viewers have taken on a parasocial liking to Olandria and Nic’s relationship in the first place — me included. As a Black woman, I’ve also struggled with feeling desirable, whether I was dating within or outside of my race, and witnessing Olandria find love made me emotional; I was happy to see a Black woman desired by someone who unapologetically admired her on reality TV.”

Monique Wilson, a New York City-based writer and host and of podcast Bet on Black, shares that sentiment: “When we see our experiences reflected in those stories, we’re always going to root for us to win.”

Kiara Smith, a Black pop culture writer, was also an initial advocate for the couple and the show’s so-called “swirl” agenda (“swirl” is a code word for interracial relationships that Smith uses to describe when Black people date outside of their race) over the past weeks.

“It goes against a narrative in the Black community that a Black woman can only be happy with a Black man,” Smith says. This isn’t to say that #Blacklove isn’t equally valid and beautiful, but it’s not the only way Black women can be loved, she adds. “Many times in my experience, Black men have very little interest in Black women, and many of them tend to go for women outside of their race that they deem as more submissive and susceptible to their bullshit.”

But, as I’ve been reminded lately, this thinking can be flawed. Much of Nicolandria’s journey reminded me of Season 6’s JaNa Craig and Kenny Rodriguez, one-third of season’s famed “Power Puff Gang” trifecta who catapulted their respective season to virality. Like Olandria, JaNa struggled to find connections in the villa before ending up in an interracial relationship with Kenny mid-way through the season. But after dating for nearly a year, the two broke up this August following allegations that Kenny, a Dominican man from the Bronx, cheated on JaNa, a dark-skinned Black woman. It was also alleged that Kenny spewed racist comments about JaNa and how he was in the relationship for clout. Around the same time, Love Island UK’s Whitney Adebayo from season 10, who is Nigerian, posted her split with Lochan Nowacki, who is half-Indian, claiming that he was a “culture vulture” and joked about her skin being “dirty.”

(As if anticipating future betrayal, Olandria spoke about her fears of interracial dating on Tish Cyrus’s “Sorry We’re Cyrus” podcast: “They [non-Black men] don’t mind being physical with you, but when it comes to actually valuing you as a woman, being in a relationship, and marrying you, it’s something totally different…Dating outside of my race has always scared me because am I a fetish to you?”)

Aiyana Ishmael, a New York City-based writer, points out that Nicolandria is arriving at a weird point in time where being in an interracial coupling right now is part of the zeitgeist, with trending TikTok songs like “got a white boy on my roster, he’d be feeding me pasta and lobster,” and proliferating jokes from Black women about how they’re “going to get a white man.”

The current era of interracial-couple trends like “Black women, soft life” enforces the idea that white men will give Black women a life of luxury and ease, Ishmael adds. “This idealized love fans have for what Black women deserve is because they have been mistreated by their own so much that they think the right answer is a non-Black man,” she says. “To have this modern fantasy that white men are gonna do right by all Black women is interesting, when historically that’s not [always] the case. It’s a little too dreamy for my own personal likings.”

What now fuels Smith’s pro-Nicolandria stance — and what should fuel everyone else’s — isn’t based on the fantasy of hot Black women dating hot non-black men; her support is rooted in wanting Black women, who are often portrayed and perceived as villains on TV, to find genuine happiness on and off screen, something that’s not often granted in the realm of romance-driven reality TV like The Bachelorette, who only got its first Black woman lead in 2017.

Nicolandria as a pair has clearly culturally resonated as they’ve racked up partnerships with Nyx Cosmetics, Kulani Kinis, among others, in addition to them becoming a cultural phenomenon even before they set foot out of the villa. No matter what happens at the reunion, or how their relationship unfolds, people should loosen their surveillance and stop projecting their interracial fantasies onto two people who were thrust into the limelight mere months ago and are still exploring their connection with millions tuned into their every move.

“If they don’t last forever, they don’t last forever,” Wilson says. Getting to witness it at all should be enough.