Original Essay...

Why Young Men Shouldn’t Watch Love Island

Jonnie Bayfield

The new series of ITV2’s bleakly satisfying Love Island has made it very clear that sex, and single life has changed in the last six years since I’ve been happily shackled to one, brilliant individual. The nature of our long term relationship means that our traditional youths of sex and binge drinking were prematurely ruined. As far as we are concerned, looking back from the comfort of old fashioned, boring Love, the happenings in the villa are just a documentary about an irritating alien race, or at best some kind of Avengers: Endgame style premonition of our own, post Brexit dystopia. What troubles me most, however, about the nations most watched reality show, is how it’s affecting our understanding of young men, and modern Masculinity, for want of a more useful label.

The last five years has seen a necessary and useful renovation of maleness in which each of us has had to reflect, engage and actively evolve. My own ‘masculinity’ has always hung by a thread. I proudly consider myself to be a part timer, due to a fluid sexual outlook, and a love of Gardening, Interior Design and Gluten Free brownies. That last sentence alone is an indication as to just how hard it is to rid oneself of the cradle to grave conditioning, and so it comes as no surprise that, with each new series of Love Island, something has started to stir within me. Namely, a red blooded, dangerously emasculated raging bull type demi-bloke simmering in the pit of my soul.

It’s hard to believe that five years ago Love Island was as dead as UKIP, or the idea of leaving the EU. As a result of the shallow, borderline pornographic nature of an emerging everyday InstaCulture Love Island remerged, though no longer in the guise of a post ironic guilty pleasure, but seemingly as a guidebook on how men and women should not only look, but how they should act. My aforementioned monster finds it hard to watch an entire land mass of better looking men, with their impossible metabolisms, getting more sexual attention and becoming wealthier by the second simply for being topless and drinking water. We can no longer say ‘Are these the kind of men we want our boys looking up to?’ because they already are. The damage is already done.

The show openly endorses the kind of machismo that liberal society thought it was rid of at the end of the 90’s, and predominantly feeds an exclusively male idea of selection, and ranking. When the boys are huddled in their quarters discussing the physical attributes of the girls, they only occasionally take breath to consider anything other than the meat on their bones. The only other discernible factor in the male selection process is whether or not the girls have ‘Bants’ (a term which now umbrellas everything from dumbness to true wit). Therefore, it seems, that we, the viewing public are now openly applauding the objectification of women, as opposed to crushing it. Our complicity is holding the gates open to an entire generation of young men whilst telling them that female affection is nothing more than a chew toy at the end of Male playtime.

More dangerous still is how comfortable the contestants are when in the act of negotiating sex. Those feelings, that nervousness that takes over in the early stages of a relationship is not something to be sterilised, but cradled. The anxiety around love and sex, which none of the men on Love Island ever seem to be affected by, is crucial when understanding boundaries, and mutual respect. It was exactly this lack of boundary, and respect throughout previous, derogatory decades that lead directly to last years overdue Me Too eruption, so why are we welcoming it onto our screens today?

Physically, these man represent a male form so grotesquely unachievable for the majority of young men, that it’s no wonder Steroid sales are at an all time high, which will also mean that rage levels, mood swings and shrunken genitals are too. Most disturbing of all is how I think we have simply swapped one awful form of male personality for another.

The so called cheeky chap has become our generation's equivalent of the Victorian Gentlemen, just without the venereal disease and coat tails. Men are now being taught to subconsciously hide their own truth behind a veneer of glowing teeth, and well oiled charisma. These men are not the rebooted handsome devils we all want them to be, but a bunch of fakers. They have adopted the attributes they know will reap the most reward, but trust me when I say that beneath, it’s just the same old sexism clutching a personalised water bottle. If society has rightly decided that us men should no longer be aggressive or upfront, then it is now allowing us to be repressed, and oily. To appear sensitive, in place of ever truly being vulnerable.

In the end, physicality is still at the core of modern masculinity, and I find it interesting that Love Island hides the off camera gym, protein shakes, and supplements. In the past, potbellied brawlers would want their bodies and their brawn to do the talking. Today, on ITV2, it’s all been hidden away from us for fear us ordinary boys might get a glimpse of the tireless, hollow work involved in maintaining bodies like temples. It seems we have finally caught up with the opposite sex when it comes to being shamed and left wanting on a daily basis. The difference is, however, that flawed, ordinary men were never conditioned to accept such levels of self loathing, longing, nor the vulnerability that stems from going unpicked. So surely we will deal with all this in the only way we know how? - displaced aggression. The very thing we thought we’d rid ourselves of.