Representation: What women want

Despite being the largest ethnic minority group in the UK, making up 7.5 per cent of the population, an Ofcom report in 2018 illustrated that we are the least represented of any group on TV in the UK. The statistics sadly illustrate this. In six seasons of Love Island, there has been only one other female South Asian contestant (Malin Andersson, S2). Netflix’s Too Hot To Handle again has had only one South Asian contestant. A South Asian woman called Shannon Singh became a part of the popular reality show Love Island but was eliminated in the early days. A website reported, “Not only was she praised by viewers on Twitter for being the bombshell of the season, she also had a family history that departed from the typical depiction of South Asian families on TV. Her Punjabi father was previously a stripper and she is a glamour model- a career that her parents actively supported. This shows a side to South Asian families that has never really been on TV before.”