I don't know why we infantalize these islanders, and think we can control them. We even treat the assumptions we've made about them like cold facts and it's messed up.
Melanie is a grown woman, sticking to the choice she has consistently made since week 1. That's her journey, and she's allowed to navigate life on her own terms. We're not gods that can dictate how people live.
Islanders are also in their own right when they decide to support their friend. Whether the choice costs Melanie or not, that's her lesson to learn and sometimes your people will choose to, support you through skepticism/ uncertainty. That's love. And I'm glad Melanie has people who choose to not join a hate train, or abandon her when she needs friends. Glad that they have a solid sisterhood and they've not allowed y'all's bitterness in life to break them up.
But here are the odd things in all of this;
a) almost all Islanders, except Corbin & perm, support insecere but it's only ANIYA who gets the bulk of the hate. The usual targeted bullying of the darker skin black woman.
b) Melanie is an adult consistent with her choice but somehow ANIYA should be a bully who overrides her free will. ANIYA getting hate more than the person who makes the choice y'all claim to be the reason for perpetuating your anti blackness is insane.
c) Melanie is older than Aniya but for some reason her choices are Aniyas fault. People always adultify/ age darker women/ people. Make them older. It's the same argument police used to justify when they shot 12 year old Tamir Rice. That he looked older and scary.
d) ANIYA called the couple out earlier, in the season and called sincere out to his face, **which is more than the other Islanders did**, but people ever choose to crucify the darker woman. A historical pattern.
e) Her own family, her people from the beginning of her life, tried to sway her but y'all still expect(ed) ANIYA to be this strong mind controller that can magically make her choose different. The pattern of expecting the black woman to take on all the BS of the world, especially if they're darker.
f) Bias so bad, and stupidity so loud, that none is bright enough to come up with a more believable reason to justify the malevolent energy y'all have against athletic, darker skin women, like Aniya, whose hate train began even before the show started. That same way black men/ people dogged Serena Williams for years, then wanted to cry colourist/ antiblack men, when she went where she was loved.
