Kelly Earley: The resilience of the Love Island cast needs to be studied

FOR THE LAST decade of my life, I have kept reality TV at arm’s length. As far as I’m concerned, the genre peaked in 2016, during the Celebrity Big Brother “David’s dead” incident, which saw Angie Bowie communicating the news of David Bowie’s death in a manner that caused grave confusion to her housemates on the show. What ensued is indescribable and can only be understood by watching the video of Tiffany Pollard spiralling, in sincere belief that her Celebrity Big Brother housemate, David Gest, died during filming.

For a lot of people, this was the last time that the theatre of reality television was truly exhilarating. Not for everyone, though, as the highly unserious Real Housewives franchise has witnessed a major revival. I have a major aversion to this style of show, which is punctuated at every ad break by repetitive previews of whatever dramatic climax each episode will reach. By the time the event actually occurs in the show, you’ve already seen it six times.

With all of that said, I’m in no position to judge people who watch reality television. There are probably meetings at RTÉ’s head office where execs are looking at my RTÉ Player viewing data asking “How much Fair City can one person watch?”

Recently though, my weeknights have featured fewer visits to Carrigstown and more trips to Casa Amor. It’s not my first time watching Love Island, but now that I’m firmly outside of the age range of participants, I’m in awe of what the contestants are capable of.

Lab rats in swimwear

The first thing that Love Island contestants need some recognition for is their social battery. It’d be hard enough committing to an eight-week-long holiday with your close friends, but to do it with a bunch of strangers? That takes a special kind of vigour.

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Couple that with the fact that contestants are discouraged from taking naps (if you’re asleep, you’re not involved in any drama), that’s many people’s idea of hell. What’s worse is that nobody is allowed to vape or smoke a cigarette on camera, so there’s little relief for the nicotine dependent who find themselves mired in conflict.

When I began to investigate the rules that the contestants must abide by, things were much worse than I imagined. When you realise the rules that are in place, it seems less like a dating show and more like a social experiment.

Nobody is allowed to read a book and for obvious reasons, watching a film is completely off the cards. Imagine losing an entire summer that could have been spent on personal and cultural enrichment to the entanglement of a situationship that resembles a psychological thriller. We’ve all been there, I suppose.

What the general public don’t have to deal with, however, is living with their ex of three weeks immediately after a break-up and watching them move on with someone else under the same roof. Few would wish that on their worst enemy, so lucky for most, it’s an experience limited solely to islanders and my lesbian compatriots as they endure the housing crisis.

Each morning, Love Island’s contestants are woken up abruptly by harsh lights and filming starts right away. Under the bright white lights, the cast resemble lab rats being tested to see how much their cortisol will spike under different conditions.

Holiday from hell

As part of the experiment, they’re denied any alone time – which is a trade-off they seem happy to make for the daily access to barbers and bikini waxers. Very little time is spent indoors during the day time, presumably so the production team can go inside and make their beds and meticulously ensure all of the sponsored skincare products have their labels facing towards the camera. Despite all of this outdoors time, which is rarely spent in the shade, the cast mostly manage to evade sunburn, thanks to the suncream bottles outside that also have their labels strategically facing towards the camera. Now, that’s an advertisement.

Another thing that’s off the cards is listening to music. When you realise this, it makes sense why the gang were so happy to see Bebe Rexha rocking up to the villa.

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What the cast don’t know is that outside of the house, “Last night a Tampax saved my vibe” has become the song of the summer, thanks to its prominence in the Virgin Media Player advertisements. This sounds facetious, but Dublin DJ Maria Lawlor was playing the tampon advertisement’s soundtrack out the window of Jack Nealon’s to a crowded Capel Street audience on Pride (who went wild when they heard it).

On that note, for what is essentially a large-scale girls’ holiday, there’s very little talk of cramps and periods, which would probably occupy at least 40% of the conversation if my pals were on Love Island. Perhaps the Tampax has really saved their vibe after all.

In essence, Love Island is like if you took all of the good parts out of a holiday. Nobody is ever in the pool. There are no trips to the big Alcampo or Mercadona to stock up on obscure crisps or tapas and charcuterie components. No siestas. Nobody’s gorging on supermercado ice cream sandwiches. Instead, they are all being fed the absolute worst parts of a romantic relationship.

To top it all off, the Casa Amor cast then join and are subjected to the humiliation ritual of being abandoned as soon as they get back to the main villa as the lads undergo some Freudian-type panic when they realise they’re going to lose their primary attachment. This stuff isn’t for the faint of heart.

And yet somehow, they manage to smile through it all. Or maybe they are actually experiencing great distress. Sometimes it is hard to tell with the veneers.

Kelly Earley is a writer and podcaster from Coolock, who has a deep interest in culture, technology, community and social justice. She writes for The Journal every week.

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