"Where is the South Asian representation?"

With the winter edition of Love Island kicking off in just a few days time, one former cast member has criticised the show for its lack of diversity. Priya Gopaldas, who appeared on the show in 2021, took to Instagram to highlight the lack of South Asian cast members. In her stories, she wrote: "Love Island, where is the South Asian representation?" She then referred to her own time on the show, writing: "P.S. No, dropping someone in a week before the final is tokenism." In her next story, she shared a graphic from the 2021 census representing the population of the UK by ethnicity. This showed that Asian people constitute the second largest ethnic group following white people. Accompanying this, she wrote: "It's impossible to represent every ethnicity. Asians make up the 2nd highest proportion of the UK population so should be represented appropriately." Priya isn't the only Love Island contestant who has called out the show for not featuring many Asian contestants. Sharon Gafka, who also appeared on the 2021 season, also highlighted the issue. She told the Secure the Insecure podcast that she was "scapegoated for a tick box". "It was so nice to have me and another Asian contestant, Shannon, there for the first couple of days but she was booted off within 24 hours and then AJ, I don’t know how long AJ was in there for but Priya wasn’t in there for very long either." In its history, many Love Island fans have been calling out Love Island for its general lack of diversity, both in terms of ethnicity and size. This year, Love Island announced a new rule regarding the use of social media during the contestants' time in the villa. To protect the welfare of the stars' family and friends, all social media accounts will be frozen while the participants are in the villa.

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