The Favorite Girl

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, sexual violence, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and gender discrimination.

Whiteness is a pervasive symbol in The Favorite Girl and represents purity and conformity. Everything in the Ivory Estate is white or off-white. This includes the clothing of the staff: “white dresses” and “white pants and white, tucked-in, button-downs” (198), as well as their hair. Daphne has a variety of blonde wigs, Bradley dyes his hair blonde, and Demi is forced to do the same. When the Ivory family mentions that Demi is different from the people they usually hire, she wonders, “Were they implying that because I was Indian or had brown-skin that stuck out abnormally in their safe haven of all-white?” (61). At one point, Ian mentions skin bleaching; his obsession with whiteness extends to racist attitudes.

Whiteness and off-whiteness also symbolize the Ivory family’s homicides and torture. One wall of Ian’s office is made of “human bones” that come from the women he kills (142). His white-therapy, a method of torture through sensory deprivation, includes keeping women in white rooms and feeding them only white foods, such as “[p]lain rice and yogurt” (193). At first, Demi is horrified by how the women are treated.