How beauty ruined reality TV

And why dad 'bods', divorcees and a crate of booze could save it

Photo Credit @ITV

I have a fantasy in which Love Island announces it’s doing away with twenty-something influencers from Newton Abbot and instead shifting its attention to a market that genuinely needs some help in the love department: the over 45s. I want bitter divorcees. I want 50-something bachelors who stare into the fire-pit late at night wondering where it all went wrong. I want mid-life women who have suddenly rediscovered their sex drive/sexuality and parents who have opted to go into the villa for nothing more than a bit of respite from the kids. 

I want rows that are about real things: failure, adultery, running away from life. When someone asks: ‘Where’s your head at?’ I want a therapy session where someone of a certain vintage unspools for forty-five minutes. I want to see real bodies that wobble and creak and stretch marks that glisten in the Majorcan sun. I want people who are genuinely looking for a second (or third or fourth) chance at love. Broken people trying to piece themselves back together. People who bring to a relationship a bit of baggage. Adults who can articulate their feelings when they’re ‘pulled for a chat.’

By the way, I should point out that I do like Love Island. I stumbled upon it half way through season 2 when some guy called Terry was having sex on top of the sheets with another contestant’s ex-girlfriend. ‘What f**ked up show is this?’ I said to my husband. And then we both watched every season, every After Sun episode and devoured every Reddit thread devoted to the show. 

That said, this year I wasn’t so sure I could dedicate another summer to watching a bunch of influencers who, let’s be honest, are not really looking for love anymore, but rather a Bohoo campaign and a permanent role on Geordie Shore. It’s hard to invest much emotional energy into a bunch of people who are treating the show more like a job application than a genuine shot at love. (Because let’s be honest, these people are not going to struggle to find willing  partners in the real world, are they?). This change in contestants happened around season 3 I would say, when it appeared producers starting to recruit via Instagram. Suddenly the contestants were better-looking, more gym-honed and certainly more self-conscious about how they looked and what they said. And for the record…way more boring. You know those strings of paper dolls you used to make when you were a kid- every one identical, in every way? That was what it felt like watching. Strings of paper dolls, as flat in life experiences and as bland in outlook as one another. That’s what recruiting via social media does for you. Social media’s very purpose is to project a life of perfection. And perfection, as I have learned after twenty years in magazines is rarely that interesting up close.

By the way, Love Island is not the only show to have done such an about-turn in how they recruit. I watched Big Brother for many years. I loved the way it brought together people who had lived real, full  lives.  Often at different ends of the spectrum. Where else would you find an ex-finance guy like Nasty Nick holing up with a someone like Craig Phillips, a straight-talking bricklayer from Liverpool. That’s how iconic TV moments were made- by adults who had lived their lives according to a set of principles they had, up until that point, thought were completely legitimate. Until they met someone else whose outlook on life was formed by a completely different bunch of experiences. It is how the best conversations always happen. Whether in life. Or on reality TV. By the time Big Brother hit season 17 (season 18 being the last one before they axed it) there were 22 housemates, 16 of whom were in their twenties.

But here’s the thing, I can absolutely imagine the temptation to recruit via social media. Think about it: every contestant brings with them their audience of young, social-media savvy fans. As TV battles with Youtube and now streaming services, the need to pull in a younger audience who will then publicise your show across social media is paramount. But it is, I fear, short-sighted given recruiting from social media will usually result in a cohort of contestant who are:

1: Very beautiful

In my limited experience, beautiful people tend not to be that interesting. Not all, of course. But most. And i get it! Davide, for example, doesn’t have to be that interesting when he looks like he’ stepped out of a Herb Ritt’s campaign. People tend to want to talk you when you look a certain way. It’s that simple. Ergo you spend scant time developing your conversational muscles. Ergo, this results in a beautiful but rather dull individual.

2: Very young and beautiful

Young people are not that interesting. I’m sorry but that’s true. There are exceptions, certainly. But how can you be when you’re not even a qualified adult until you hit 25? How can we expect a 19-year old like Gemma Owens to have a deep and meaningful conversation when she has so little life experience to draw on? (I realise if you don’t watch Love Island or read The Daily Mail Side-bar of Shame these names mean nothing to you. In which case substitute Gemma Owens for any 19-year old you know). I’m not judging young, beautiful people. (Okay, maybe a bit because I’m clearly eaten up with jealousy). I’m merely pointing out that it’s sort of not their fault if the conversation never moves beyond protein shakes and what they want for breakfast.

3: Young, beautiful and body-perfect

Have you seen the bodies on Love Island? Have you? Half those boys look like they have a bag of onions stashed under their torsos. I used to work alongside the boys at Men’s Health. Every year they famously did ‘body transformations’ where they basically worked out twice a day, kept Tupperware boxes of grilled chicken under their desks and dreamed of leg presses. Sure they looked incredible when they appeared in the pages of the magazine all buffed and bronzed, but few of them could keep those bodies up. Not if they wanted to keep their partners and enjoy their life that is . (I did my own body transformation once, which I believe you can still find evidence of on the internet, and let me tell you, I was the most boring, body-obsessed individual known to womankind through-out the entire thing). My point is, to look like these people look takes dedication. It means squirrelling away three quarters of your time and mental capacity into thinking about your body. This this makes you at least half as interesting as someone who spends that time going out and living life. (By the way, I’m not saying this makes them unfit for society. Just probably not that interesting for a reality show).

In my fantasy Love Island: Second Chance (oh yes, this is what I think it should be called), the ‘boys’ will sit on the sun loungers stroking their bellies and saying things like ‘all paid for!’ whilst laughing like hyenas. They will then suck in said bellies in the minute ‘Jane’, a fabulous divorcee from Deal, walks past. What they will not realise is that Jane has zero interest in any of them because she’s in the middle of her own sexual reawakening and more interested in Tanika- a 60-something, former rock-chick who has been in and out of rehab, chewed through several husbands and is in the villa only because she is going to a Majorcan ashram straight after.

In my head the producers will ply them all with crates of Whispering Angel so that by sunset they are all giddy and brave with their emotions. They will go wildly off script, tried to break out of the villa to go ‘clubbing’ in the nearest town and end up snogging like teenagers. That or the arguments result in someone screaming across the kitchen: ‘No wonder your bloody wife left you!’

In my head there will be a widower who find true love with the least likely person on earth. Their romance will capture the nation. There will be a couple of divorcees who find one another and in the process realise they were not the person the courts told them they were, only caught in the wrong marriage. The 57-year old bachelor who has only ever spent time with anyone under the age of 30 for the last ten years, will have an epiphany about his life choices and fall into the arms of a mother of five. It will be the messiest show on earth. Because love, true love is messy. And boy will it be fascinating to watch.

The Love Island Lexicon for the over 40s

The show has spawned some deliciously dreadful catch-phrases over the years, everything from ‘laying it on thick’ to ‘getting the ick’.  Here’s how they might be interpreted in my version of Love Island: Second Chance.

‘Melt’

Love Island translation: You’re being pathetic

Love Island: Second Chance interpretation: ’Hmmm…is someone making tuna melts in the kitchen?’

Factor 50

Love Island translation: When someone is being overly complimentary.

Love Island: Second Chance interpretation: A genuine concern about the level of UV protection you’ve brought with you

Pied

Love Island translation: When someone has been rejected, usually in a humiliating fashion

Love Island Second Chance interpretation: The hope that someone has ordered Greggs for dinner

‘I got a text!”

Love Island translation: Something is about to happen. Usually either a dumping or a recoupling

Love Island Second Chance interpretation: ‘Jesus Christ, not again. I wish they’d do these as voice notes instead. Don’t they realise no one brought their reading glasses with them?’

Muggy

Love Island translation: Someone’s taking the piss out of you

Love Island: Second Chance translation: ‘Another overcast day in Casa Amour.’ Better get the jigsaw set out then…

Are you watching Love Island? What do you think of this year’s contestants? And do you think the addition of older, more battle-scarred contestant would add a new level of interest?