Chasing White Boys Is Pop Culture’s Fav Bad Habit

The Summer I got (extra) tired of this trope

The Summer I Turned Pretty. My Life With the Walter Boys.

I am so over the POC girl + two white (or white-passing/racially ambiguous and suitable for a white palette) boys triangle.

Why do the YA shows that center young Black love—or love stories with other POC—not get the same hype, longevity, or cult-fan status? Forever on Netflix comes to mind:

I only hear it talked about in certain circles on social media and in real life—but The Summer I Turned Pretty? It’s q-white literally everywhere.

Is it a lack of marketing? Is it budget? A lack of imagination? Lack of care to push these stories hella forward? Probably all of the above.

I (non-seriously but also kinda for real) blame a lot of this on Episode 1, Season 4 of Broad City where Ilana says:

But before we get there, let’s talk about why I’m even here: this is the summer I am officially exhausted with this bizarre obsession over the POC girl chasing after white boy(s)—THEY ARE MULTIPLYING NOW AND SOMEONE MUST PULL THE PLUG.

Like… please. I’m done.

Falling in love with someone who happens to be white? Cool. Great. Wish you the best. But turning that dynamic into a template for pop culture over and over again? That’s a whole other thing. This isn’t new, and it’s not just YA, but right now these shows (and the women writing them) are my focus.

It feels like a pop culture DEI initiative that has since gone way too far. We ask/demand to be represented in far reaching pop culture and they say “Yeah girl for sure!—but like, only if whiteness remains the prize”…and that’s not progress.

Sometimes though—the call be coming from inside the house and it be your own people.

Let’s start with Mindy Kaling. I used to be a fan back in the day, like a HUGE one, but somewhere along the way it just got… weird. She is also guilty of the brown girl, white boy love triangle (looking at you, The Mindy Project) and I guess at first I overlooked it.

I get that in season one of a show you might have to appease white execs to ensure you get another season. Fine. I kinda get playing the game to get into the room. But once you’ve got a hit, you have more than a seat at the table… you can do what you want.

AND YET, EVEN AFTER SO MUCH FUCKING SUCCESS WHERE SHE NO LONGER NEEDS TO PROVE ANYTHING, THE LOVE INTERESTS OF HER BROWN CHARACTERS REMAIN WHITE (or white passing).

In almost everything she has created—The Mindy Project, Never Have I Ever, Sex Lives of College Girls—and even in stuff she’s produced (Late Night, Velma, A Nice Indian Boy), the main love interests are still white.

It feels like aligning herself so closely with whiteness has been her go-to forever. If we go back to her unaired pilot from 2006 (written with Brenda Withers), Mindy and Brenda, the love interest of Mindy was white. and even FURTHER back in 2001, while at Dartmouth, she wrote (with Brenda Withers) a play based on Matt Damon and Ben Affleck—two of the caucasianist men—called Matt and Ben….wottice going on here babes?

And it’s not just that the love interests are white—it’s the chase. These brown characters are always running after the white boy, only to get ignored, rejected, or—after enough humiliation—“rewarded” with an “omigosh wait, I do like her!” moment.

Like… help.

There’s something so wildly insidious about constantly positioning Black girls and other girls of color as the pursuers, while the white boys get to sit back and be convinced. It’s not romance—it’s begging for crumbs (or the bare minimum) and saying it’s a love story. ANNNNDDDD when this dynamic gets repeated over and over across YA, it doesn’t just stay on TV it starts shaping what we feel about who gets to be desired WITHOUT FUCKING QUESTION and who has to prove they’re WORTHY of desire at all.

I’ve said it OVER AND OVER AGAIN that pop culture bleeds into our real lives, whether you realize it or not. Why do you think so many people are looking for a Prince Charming?

Earlier, I talked about understanding the need to appease white folks just to get in the door. It’s not an ideal I subscribe to, but I won’t lie and say I don’t get it OR that I haven’t done it in the past. Which brings me to Jenny Han—the woman behind the show no one will stop talking about, The Summer I Turned Pretty.

In it, an Asian girl (Belly Conklin) is stuck in a love triangle with two white brothers, both of whom are the definition of mid men with mommy and daddy issues.

The show is based on books written by Han. But in the books, Belly is also white. Han made Belly Asian in the show once she had the power to do it—because back when she first started writing, every time she tried to give a story an Asian lead she got rejected. But making Belly Asian wasn’t some big flip of the script. She basically just dropped an Asian girl into the same overused blueprint—non-white girl chasing the same boring white boy(s).

If she really wanted to do something big, maybe Belly (who is half-white mind you), her brother, or even her mother for fucks sake could’ve had a meaningful Asian love interest. Instead, she gave a heavy lean into Taylor Swift and the very white fanbase that comes with her.

Jenny Han also made the To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before, another show where an Asian girl is in love with/has a crush on a bunch of white boys (and also one that is mixed race but giving palatable), AND the internet told me that she wrote another series, the Burn For Burn trilogy, where one of the leads is Asian and has—you guessed it—multiple white love interests.

Also on the Jenny Han train is XO, Kitty, the spin-off of To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. In that series, the Asian lead actually has multiple Asian love interests—but it also happens to be the show in the universe that folks dislike the most.

Black creators aren’t free from this trope either—Enter Shonda Rhimes. In Scandal, Kerry Washington’s Olivia Pope is stuck in a white boy love triangle. In Private Practice, Naomi (Audra Mc-fuckin’-Donald) has four love interests—three of them white. And of course, Yang on Grey’s Anatomy, while famously in love with Burke, also had relationships with two white boys.

In How To Get Away With Murder (PRODUCED by Shonda, NOT created by) we’re first introduced to Annalise and her white husband, Sam. Then there’s my beloved Bridgerton—which I DO NOT have time to get into (but had the time to get into it here for Vogue)—and Queen Charlotte, which leans all the way into the real-life Black girl/white boy love interest of it all.

So is all this as deep as internalized racism? Is it as heavy as straight-up fetishizing? Or is it really just not that serious and these creators just don’t see anything wrong with constantly placing their Black, Brown, and other POC lead girls into romantic storylines with white boys/men? Or am I projecting because I hated not seeing myself reflected in love stories unless the girl was chasing someone white? Or am I not projecting and it’s a very real thing that media has been showing us for decades how unworthy Black women are of love or how hard it is to love them or how easily replaceable they are?

MAYBE IT’S ALL OF THE ABOVE! MAYBE IT’S NONE OF THE ABOVE!

Sometimes, I get afraid to write and share opinions like this because when I’ve often seen it done and the backlash is usually something along the lines of “Black women complain about everything…it’s not that deep”

It’s kinda like…why does it have to be all of that? or why can’t my complaining ALSO be valid?

This is one of my most popular reviews on Letterboxd about the movie Plan B—so seems like I’m not the only one who feels this way about this topic.

EYE DONUT KNOW… but like I always say—WHO AMETH EYE TO ASK SUCH QUESTIONS!?

Anyway, enjoy your shows and not thinking about this stuff as deeply as I dooooooo!!!

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Extras:

• YOU KNOW WHAT ELSE I’M TIRED OF SEEING THAT I ALWAYS SEE IN FILM AND TV? BLACK or BROWN GIRL/WHITE PARTNER IN QUEER MOVIES! Like, I am BEGGING you to please stop this pairing and shake the tabbbbbblllleee!!!

• Also on that note—I know everyone knows I cannot STAND the dykey beloved films Carol and Portrait of A Lady on Fire—but I also did not like The Watermelon Woman (SURPRISE!)

• ALSO, WHILE WE’RE HERE, LET’S WRAP UP YEARNING ACROSS THE BOARD. STOP IT STOP IT STOPPPPPP ITTTTTTT!!!!

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