When Arab women appear on Western reality shows, they carry more than just their own stories. They step into spaces where their identities are often misunderstood. Watching recent seasons of Love Island USA, Love Is Blind UK, and Love Is Blind France, a pattern emerges: Arab women are visible, yes, but rarely free from the burden of representation. Take Huda Mustafa, for example, the Palestinian-American contestant on Love Island USA, the dating series where singles live together in a villa, pair up, and re-couple until one winning couple takes home a cash prize. From the moment she entered the villa, she was described as “too much” and “too intense.” Her openness, whether reacting to being love-bombed or confiding in a fellow contestant, was often reframed as manipulation. These judgments echoed a familiar script that women of color, particularly Arab women, are cast as dramatic or unstable, even when reacting to genuine emotional strain. In Love Is Blind UK, part of the global Netflix franchise where contestants date and get engaged without seeing each other until after a proposal, Moroccan Muslim contestant Maria Benkh spoke candidly about her expectations for a…
